Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, TV | Tagged: Dan DeLeeuw, disney, loki, McDonald's, owen wilson, sophia di martino, tom hiddleston

Loki Director on Recreating '80s McDonald's; '70s-Style Chase Scenes

Loki director Dan DeLeeuw on the show's '70s-inspired chase scenes and recreating an 80s McDonald's for Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie.

There's no doubt time travel's certainly going to play a bigger part in the Disney+ series Loki. Dan DeLeeuw, who directed season two's second episode, "Breaking Brad," used some '70s style inspired chase scenes as protagonists Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) go after missing TVA hunter X-05 (Rafel Casal), who rebranded himself as movie star Brad Wolfe. The two are after him because he might know the whereabouts of the Loki variant and revolutionary Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino).

"It was pretty great. It's definitely a non-sequitur from what [Marvel] traditionally has done, but it was such a great time. We based the premiere on a lot of the James Bond movies," DeLeeuw told Entertainment Weekly about capturing the '70s movie premiere scenes. "They had the big marquees, which inspired the Zaniac sign outside, and we got to have the chase around London with the punks and the mods. We had to figure out ways to make sure that the mods made sense in '77. The mod phase was kind of coming back a little bit, especially with [the 1979 film] Quadrophenia. There's all these puzzle pieces. You worry about the script and the characters and everything else, and then you just spent a day picking out [background actors], like, 'Hey, that's a really cool mod!' or 'That's a cool-looking punk!' Time travel is fun."

Chasing X-05 also helped remind Loki of who he is as he taunts him for going soft. "Well, he's stripped of his magic in season 1. It was something that I missed, but they needed to do it for story reasons," DeLeeuw said. "But it was originally scripted as just a chase through London. We were going to play with it as inspired by 'The French Connection.' But you start asking questions, like, well, Loki is out in the world. He has magic. Why is he chasing this guy? So, we did a bit of a misdirect. It's been drilled into Loki's brain by Mobius: Don't use magic, don't use magic, don't use magic. And then Brad ends up tricking him, and at that point, Loki's like, 'Oh, okay,' and switches back into his darker side.

The God of Trickery returned to form after his humbling experience. "He uses his magic to play a cat-and-mouse game, making the punks and the mods and tricking Brad to have the shadows grab him. He could have just caught him, but he really needs to twist the knife a little bit," DeLeeuw said. "So, it was really great designing that. From a story standpoint, we wanted to make it a part of his character as Loki's figuring out who he is and accepting his dark side. He can be evil without being evil, and he can use Loki logic that only makes sense to Loki."

As far as the path of Loki finding Sylvie working at an '80s McDonalds, "We talked about it, like, how are we going to achieve this? For a while, it was like, let's build a set. And then [production designer Kasra Farahani] pushed, like, 'Let's find a location. Ultimately, it'll be better,'" DeLeeuw said. "We needed Broxton, Okla., to be outside in London, and you don't usually get a nice field that looks like Broxton, Okla. But they found a restaurant that had not been in business for a while. We walked in, and we were like, 'Oh, wow.' Kasra was there with all his designs and his artwork. It was great because it had the windows on the front that are of the '80s, and it had the windows that were curved. Kasra reached out to McDonald's, and he got all the wallpaper designs. He also got a mold, so he could cast his own [plastic] hamburger. And it went from this restaurant that had leaks in the roof to having old cash registers and the McDonald's tree and a playground for all the kids to play in. It was this strange time warp."

Loki streams Thursdays on Disney+. For more on the McDonald's sequence and Loki and Mobius' scene over pie, you can check out the interview here.

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