Iron Man 3 took place months after the events of The Avengers and offered moviegoers a very isolated story about Tony Stark. Outside of dealing with panic attacks resulting from what Stark experienced in the infamous battle of New York, there were no story implications directly resulting or reliant upon Iron Man 2 or The Avengers.

For the next Phase Two film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe however, that's not the case. Thor: The Dark World takes place a year and a half after the original Thor, a few monts after The Avengers, but in all of that time, the heroes of Asgard have had to directly deal with the results of the events of the original Thor.

Screen Rant visited the production of Thor 2 last October and on our first day on set, executive producer Craig Kyle walked us through the "war room," a room full of conceptual art of the events, characters, locations, weapons and vehicles of the film. He briefly offered story details and introduced the film by letting us know status of the characters, Asgard and larger universe at the beginning of the story.

"What's wonderful about these films, and so many of you guys know the books, you know, we read ‘em for the ongoing stories and then we love these big disaster moments that happen that draw all these lines together. And again there're so many people out there that never read comics, so they didn't understand how good these stories can get and that now we have a lot to draft off of after Avengers. Now our guys, who have amazing arcs coming in their own lives, had to step out, deal with this big threat, and now come back.

Well, now all those threats continue to send a ripple effects throughout our model cinematic universe. We have Iron Man, who's Tony Stark, who's pretty torn up from the effects of being in that combat. You have Thor, who had to take the prisoner, Loki, back Asgard to be dealt with, and this time he's gonna be locked up in a cell where he's not gonna have control. You have Erik Selvig who had a god in his head messing around for an entire movie, which probably isn't good for your psyche. Lots of these threats continue to just spread outwards in ways that only deepen the stories we're about to tell in these individual sagas."

The Thor universe however, with Asgard and the other realms it aims to protect, has the most repercussions to deal with from the events of Thor and The Avengers. Thor for instance, ended with the Rainbow Bridge and Observatory being destroyed, meaning Asgard has lost its primary method of transportation between the realms, making those other planets vulnerable.

[gallery columns="2" ids="372183,372184" orderby="rand"]

And for The Avengers, Midgard (Earth) has now been made known to the Marvel Cosmos (see: Thanos) where there are factions and unruly creatures who may not have the best of intentions for our home. Kyle continues:

"It's truly our job to kinda bring the books to life in a way that made them so popular when we were all kids and, you know, it's a big duty, but we're doing our best. We brought Alan Taylor on and he's done such amazing work in Mad Men, and Game of Thrones, and Sopranos, and Rome. And we had spent a lot of time in the palace since the Royal Family had come during a time of celebration.

The Bifrost was destroyed at the end of the first Thor. Odin had to break a lot of rules and laws, and take a lot of himself to send Thor to Earth in The Avengers. And during that time when they couldn't jump from Asgard to the other worlds chaos reigned. And so we come into a time of real strife in the nine realms. You've got Marauders who are moving from world to world that are pillaging and attacking helpless planets, because they know the cops can't come. And we just catch into a story in a way finding out where the hell is everybody, you know?"

The primary antagonist of Thor: The Dark World is the king of the Dark Elves, Malekith, and we know he holds a personal grudge against Odin and his ancestry which will play a part in the story. Odin "breaking rules" to send Thor to Earth to recover Loki and the Tesseract (Cosmic Cube) during the events of The Avengers will have implications on Asgard and Odin as well, we just don't know how yet or if that plays any part in the reawakening of Malekith and return of his army.

The Marauders are another new faction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They're a ragtag group of space pirates comprised of various alien races from the worlds outside of the nine realms. More on that from Screen Rant soon!

Alan Taylor directs Thor 2 off of Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s screenplay. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins.

_____

Thor: The Dark World on November 8, 2013, Captain America: The Winter Soldier on April 4, 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy on August 1, 2014The Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1, 2015, Ant-Man on July 31, 2015, and unannounced films for May 6 2016, July 8 2016 and May 5 2017.

Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes for your Marvel movie news!