Director Alan Taylor, best known for his work on HBO's Game of Thrones, takes the helm of this fall's highly-anticipated superhero sequel Thor: The Dark World, in theaters November 8. The director recently spoke about his experiences on the set, describing how Marvel Studios wanted to make the sequel much different than 2011's Thor.

"I love doing period stuff, and I was immersed in Game of Thrones. I was lucky that Marvel seemed to have an appetite for that this time. They'd consciously steered away from that kind of thing in the first one. Because they wanted to make sure they were distinguishing themselves from Lord of the Rings. They didn't want to be mistaken for that. But by the time I came along it seemed like they were ready to embrace a slightly more historical attitude towards it."

When asked why fans will see Thor and other Asgardians on horseback in the sequel, the filmmaker explained that the horse is held in high regard within the Asgard culture, despite their advances in technology.

"In my mind this is an ancient, ancient culture that highly reveres the horse and the culture of the horse. We still use fountain pens because we think they're really cool - it's not like we all use laser pens. So I think there's a living culture that keeps these things. To me the defining thing was that Thor is a superhero among many superheroes, but the thing that makes him different is the thing that should be featured in the movie. And that is that he's also a warrior prince from ancient culture."

We reported last week that the new trailer for Thor: The Dark World debuts Tuesday, September 17 during ABC's broadcast of Iron Man 2, starting at 8 PM ET.