Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada has been praising Marvel’s upcoming slate a lot recently. Last month he said Captain America will “rock everyone’s socks off” and now he’s claiming that Kenneth Branagh’s Thor will “redefine what a super hero movie can be”.

From ComicBookResources:

We are incredibly confident. And there isn’t much I could say to convince people beyond, “Look at these designs! Look at this script! Look at the moments in this story and tell me it won’t be a huge success.” But, that’s obviously something I can’t do, so the one thing I can say – and I’ve said as much to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige – is that people are going to go into this movie with a preconceived idea about what it will be. If you’re a comics fan, you’ll have a preconceived notion of what you’re going to get. If you’re a non-comics fan, you’ll have another notion of what the movie is all about. And what’s really amazing is that both groups will walk away going, “I’ve never seen anything like this before within the super hero genre.” It’s so cool, and I don’t want to use the word unusual, but it is unusual in the sense that it redefines what a super hero movie can be. It’s not the expected story or settings. That part of it is incredibly exciting to me.

I want to believe him and get all excited, however I guess we’ll have to wait until 2011 to see if his claims are correct. The cast is set and filming will begin in January, so hopefully we will get our first look at Chris Hemsworth as Thor over the upcoming months.

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With all the behind the scenes footage from Iron Man 2 and casting details on Thor it’s quite easy to forget that Marvel are actually working on the Captain America movie too. The film is currently scheduled to be released in May 2011, which is two months after Thor, however they still need to put together a cast and there is also the small issue of finding Captain America himself.

Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada recently spoke to Comic Book Resources and praised the film, but he didn’t give anything away.

Quesada offered a brief update on “The First Avenger: Captain America,” with which he’s had some involvement. “I’ve seen a couple of outlines and an initial screenplay, and it’s going to rock everyone’s socks off,” he said. “It’s very unexpected, the kind of movie it is.” Quesada added that “Captain America” sets up “The Avengers” in “a fantastic way” and also mentioned that there is an undisclosed wish list of actors to play the star-spangled superhero.

Captain America is expected to start filming next summer, so in between now and then we should be getting some big developments. The Wolfman director Joe Johnston is directing, and the writers are the guys responsible for The Chronicles of Narnia scripts.

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Being both an actor and a director has it’s advantages, especially when you are presenting an idea to someone in order for them to give you lots and lots of money to make your dream movie. A recent case study for this is when Kenneth Branagh (Valkyrie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) pitched his idea for Thor to the Marvel Creative Committee. Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics Joe Quesada was there, and he recounted the event to Comic Book Resources.

We had one big creative meeting with the Marvel Creative Committee, which now works on all of our movies and I have the honor to be a part of. We sat with Kenneth and discussed the “Thor” movie and the overarching story of what that’s going to be, just to give our input before anything was put down to paper by screenwriters.

And it was one of the highlights of my time here at Marvel because not only did Branagh sit there and give you the story beat for beat, he and [Marvel Studios head] Kevin Feige formed a great team. It was performance art. Kevin would give us the establishment of the shot and the situation: “Here we are. We’re in (take your pick of location). And here’s Odin and he’s coming up to (pick a character).” And then Kenneth would come in and give you the color commentary. “Odin has an air of majesty to him” and he’d act out the Odin part or the Thor part. So we sat there and literally got a three-hour one-man show from Kenneth Branagh. It was fantastic. People pay a lot of money for that kind of performance by one of the world’s greatest living actors.

And of course, he’s got that great, charming British accent, so it makes it all go down easy too. [laughs] He could have said anything, and we would have said, “Yeah. Make that.” He has such a passion for the material, and he’s sitting there describing things from the Kirby run and things from the Simonson run, citing places where the mythology conflicted in Marvel history and how we’re going to streamline it. It was just fascinating to watch.

He also spoke about Iron Man 2 and his fondness for director Jon Favreau. Click here to read the whole thing!

Everything I’ve read about Thor so far is getting me excited, and I haven’t even read one single Thor comic. It will be a while before we get anything cool to look at as filming doesn’t start till January, but at least we know Kenneth Branagh is the right man for the job.

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