ladyofmidgard:

Ragnarok thoughts

This is me, arriving late to the party, trying to sort through my conflicting feelings about this movie.

Things I loved:

• Valkyrie. I literally have no complaints about her, she was just awesome. And little bby Thor admiring the Valkyries and wanting to be one of them?? My heart.
• Loki was just…so attractive. And Thor in his gladiator armor?? *clutches chest, wheezing*
• I loved the twist at the end where the point was never that they should try to prevent Ragnarok at all, but let it happen. I feel like this ties back to the myths, even if in a faint and tangential way.
• “Frigga would’ve been proud.” And Loki’s face, like he’s trying not to cry…
• Also Odin letting go of life because he’s tired and ready to be with Frigga. That, i believe.
• “I love you, my sons.” DAMN. This is literally all i wanted. Odin accepting and acknowledging both of his sons and trying to make some peace with them. I’m so, so, so not okay.
• Thor saying that prayer alone in his cell that his father’s soul will be welcomed in Valhalla…and Loki finishing the prayer with him. I feel like that was a very subtle and underrated moment of genuine feeling and solidarity.
• The music and the aesthetic. I actually enjoyed both planets, and the different moods created by both of them.
• FUCKING. HEIMDALL. I LITERALLY WANTED TO CRY. EVACUATING ALL THE COMMONERS. PROTECTING THE INNOCENT. HE IS SO GOOD. The true hero of this movie.
• Poor Bruce sacrificing his own existence to save lives of strangers and aliens. I felt so bad for him. And that’s why Bruce is a real Avenger.
• “Loki, I thought the world of you.” Brb, crying.
• “You’ll always be the god of mischief. But you could be so much more.” !!!!!!!!!!!!! Thor still has some faith and wants Loki to prove him right. I just. I have to lie down.
• Calling each other “brother” again????!!!!! Um, thank you.
• Anthony Hopkins seriously deserves an Oscar for playing Odin!Loki.

Things I…did not love:

• Slaughtering the Warriors Three like it was no big deal. Barely even giving Volstagg and Fandral a line before taking them out. Just…not cool.
• Writing out Jane off-screen with a single line. Also not very cool.
• Surtur looked kinda silly and lazily animated. Ah, well.
• Thor electrocuting Loki was pretty cold. Like, I’m sure he knew Loki would find a way to escape it, but that was pretty dark, even for these two.

Mixed feelings…

• I liked the backstory about Odin’s darker, bloodier history with Hela, and how his solution was to literally cover it up. Odin has always been a bit of an ambiguous character, and I’ve always felt that raising his sons had softened him into a more peaceful and wise and compassionate leader than he used to be. (I still argue that Loki is the main reason he decided to make a treaty with Jotunheim.) That being said, I wish we’d gotten some more information on how and why Odin changed. Hela made it sound like he just suddenly woke up and realized mass slaughtering was bad. Maybe Frigga was the reason? But we can only speculate.
• That scene with Loki watching the stage version of TDW, especially the humorous slant on his “death” scene. Yes, it was funny and believable that Loki would be that vain and try to clean up his “posthumous” reputation in Asgard. But did the movie really need to mock a genuinely heart-wrenching scene?? I felt kind of uneasy about that. That being said, it ties back into the deleted TDW scene of Loki’s “coronation”: he likes to make believe that things happened differently. He wants to believe, at least for a moment, that he was truly heroic and beloved by others and did the right thing…at least to hate himself a little less for a minute.
• I guess it’s confirmed that Loki is a reasonably decent king, in that Asgard itself is running smoothly and he’s taking care of the day to day affairs, the board meetings, the bureaucracy that younger Thor would have had little patience for. It’s just that Loki’s isolationist policy (all the other worlds can burn for all he cares) doesn’t work. And I guess this movie confirms that, while he has a casual disregard for “lower” life forms, he does actually care about Asgardians, in his way.
• Loki standing next to Thor’s makeshift throne, at his side, the way it always should have been, left me with all sorts of bittersweet tears. Mainly because i know Marvel will find some way to fuck it all up.

“But did the movie really need to mock a genuinely heart-wrenching scene?? I felt kind of uneasy about that.” – I felt called out, honestly. Like they were pointing out how calculated that scene was to wrench hearts and making fun of us for allowing ourselves to be manipulated that way. But yeah, good point about the connection to the deleted coronation scene.