rewatched the beginning of the first thor movie and i think it could have benefitted from showing us more of thor and loki’s childhood? like they’re in the vault as kids with their dad and then BAM thor’s coronation. thor’s friends say loki has “always been jealous of thor” and “always one for mischief” but it would have been better to SEE that, if only briefly, to watch these two characters grow up and become different people so maybe more people would get why loki felt he was in thors shadow?

foundlingmother:

I think it would have been cute, but I don’t know that it would make a difference. 

1. It’s not like Thor doesn’t already have scenes that are meant to show Loki being mocked or in Thor’s shadow (admittedly some of the best examples were cut, but I know people who believe Loki’s got no legit problems who’ve seen those scenes). People will write anything off to fit their idea of what a character’s about.
2. Some hate for Loki comes as a reaction to people who don’t acknowledge his faults. It puts a lot of thoughtful people in the middle of a big fight over the character. We expect him to be held accountable, so we hate him, and we ask people to recognize the motivations for his crimes as something more then “he’s just evil”, so we’re stanning for him or woobifying him.
3. Part of why so many people have decided Loki’s a shallow, lazy, power hungry narcissist is Thor: Ragnarok being deemed the best Thor movie (I know this because I’ve followed the same people, and I know that pre-Ragnarok’s release they saw Loki’s character slightly more sympathetically). I take issue with this because it’s the third Thor movie, and it completely reboots both Loki and Thor’s character arcs. The characterization just doesn’t flow well with the other movie in the MCU. People will continue to hold it up as the pinnacle of Thor and Loki, and retroactively apply the character traits they present in Ragnarok to the other movies, despite that not being how time and story structure works.

What I’m saying is that people who overlook Loki’s motivations aren’t concerned about logic or canon. They may say they are, but they’re really not. They just want a simple heroes and villains narrative, and that’s not what Thor is. It’s not even what Ragnarok is, truth be told, but somehow the movie successfully convinced people that a mean Thor was a hero (maybe because he keeps saying he is–people seem to believe everything that comes out of Thor’s mouth even when he’s demonstrably wrong and/or overreacting because he’s upset).