'Thor 2: The Dark World' and 'Game of Thrones' Director Talks Common Ground Between Asgard and Westeros

Thor 2: The Dark World director Alan Taylor, also known for his work on HBO's Game of Thrones, talks about the similarities between Asgard and Westeros.

You might not recognize the name, but odds are you are very familiar with director Alan Taylor's body of work. The self professed "recovering TV director" has a rather impressive resume that includes hit shows like Lost, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, The West Wing, Law and Order, and Mad Men, just to name a few. However, it's his work on the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones that best prepared him for his role in Thor: The Dark World. Taylor spoke with Cinema Blend from the set of the new film, where he compared the Seven Kingdoms to the Nine Realms:

"I think it was partly that -- exactly the things that I've found myself enjoying on Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones was the first fantasy thing I've done, and like a lot of people who enjoy the show, watching it I didn't expect to respond to that world. But when I started doing it, I really started to love it; [I] started to realize that [it has] some of the things I'm naturally drawn to, like epic-scale imagery, [and] it's also grounded in these new relationships. And that's sort of what you can find in Thor as well. And there's this funny thing. I realize I've been drawn in, again and again, you know, when I did Deadwood, and when I did Rome, I love things that have one foot in history. I was gonna be a history professor before I sold out and went into TV, so things that speak to me, that evoke that, it's really exciting to me. And Thor, even though he's a Marvel character, is also obviously deeply-rooted in Norse mythology. And you can see the look of our sets is deeply embedded or drawn from numerous sources and Celtic sources, and I just love drawing on past cultures. That's a thrill to me. I saw Avengers around the time – a rough cut, around the time that I was getting involved – and loved the balance to tones that Marvel does."

Thor: The Dark World opens in theaters on November 8.