Thor: The Dark World star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje recently sat down with MTV to discuss his two roles in the massively hyped upcoming followup to 2011’s Thor.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje is set to play a character that soon transforms into another character with the duo of Algrim and Kurse. The Englishman had nothing but surprise when dealing with the job, something he viewed as a “massive opportunity.”
“You go in thinking, ‘Yeah this is great.’ But when you get in there, you’re like whoa; six hours of makeup, prosthetics, all the physical [stuff],” Akinnuoye-Agbaje said. “But honestly, I loved it. It’s going to be such an epic.”
The transformation the young black actor makes for Thor: The Dark World is truly astounding. He reportedly goes from having dark skin, black hair and brown eyes to having a blonde mop and blue eyes.
“I have blonde hair, blue eyes, pointed ears, fangs, horns; everything you could want as boy in an action hero movie,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje said. “It’s amazing. The fighting was really demanding. For instance, Kurse is the one that does all the fighting.”
Luckily, the fighting isn’t too much of a strain on any of the actors — it’s the costumes. While everyone donning a medieval-styled costume in Thor: The Dark World gets his fair share of a workout, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje maintains he had to keep a strict regimen just to keep up.
“It’s forty pounds of extra weight and the good thing about it is that it’s very flexible and elastic,” the actor said. “I have a routine before I put it on: I stretch and do all my pilates. You see this big creature doing pilates, it’s great. And then we’d have to go fight. Me and Chris [Hemsworth] go toe-to-toe. It was hardcore.”
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was not at all shy to reveal how exactly some of these fights actually occurred. He does admit that “Loki has some amazing fights,” but is adamant in saying “Kurse is having it with everybody,” in that he gets to take a piece of every hero and villain in the film.
“Thor and Kurse fight differently,” he explained. “Chris has his hammer while Kurse is very animalistic, he’s got horns. So I tried to go with that flow. My movements are [basically] like an animal: twisting my body, turning my head, all kinds of things. Kurse is meant to be extremely powerful, nothing can stop him. It’s a great ride.”
2006’s Thor really set itself apart from your average super-hero films in that it showed what can be done when inheriting an entirely separate universe. This is in part due to the direction of Kenneth Branagh, who will not be directing Thor: The Dark World but still set a potentially awesome franchise in motion. Hopefully Alan Taylor keeps up the momentum and delivers a decent product to his eagerly awaiting audiences. Be on the lookout for Thor: The Dark World come Nov. 8 2013.
