You know, I get all the criticisms of Ragnarok, I see where they are coming from, I agree with a number of them, and they’re all valid even if I don’t agree with all of them, but…
I just wish there was a little more positivity around the film… for instance, I would love to read some in-depth positive discussion around it, because I personally enjoyed it, I think it did some new interesting things with the direction of Thor and Loki’s relationship and characters and I don’t think it butchered their characterizations. I do think that the style feels like a radical departure from the previous films, and that humorous style in which the narrative was painted jarred at times with the emotions it conveyed.
Most of the positivity I see on Tumblr tends to come from more pro-Thor, anti-Loki blogs (which I care absolutely nothing for) or from shippy blogs. Among the blogs I tend to relate more to (more gen-focused and Loki-supportive) the only discussion I can seem to find is discourse on how bad Ragnarok was. Which, again, I can understand, but at times it’s just a little downing.
I don’t like to be a downer, because I totally understand how it feels to be looking for positivity and coming across negativity instead. I consider myself to be more analytical than negative. Unfortunately, analysis can often result in pointing out the negative aspects of something.
However…I think I can explain why it is that you notice positivity coming from the pro-Thor anti-Loki blogs. Simply put -there’s a reason why people like the things that they do.
Thor appeals to a certain kind of person. More specifically, the manner in which he’s been characterized appeals to a certain kind of person. And that is the kind of person who finds movies like Ragnarok amusing. Thor is not a deep thinker. He’s not stupid by any means, but he’s not introspective. He’s not intellectual. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just who he is. He’s a physical guy, for the most part. He’s a jock. He acts based on gut instinct. He doesn’t look below the surface of things. He sees no need to. He’s ego driven. And thus -he appeals to people who function similarly. The protagonist electrocuting his no good brother? That’s hilarious. Using the no good brother as a battering ram? He had it coming, of course. He’s no good. Duh!
To be perfectly honest, if one doesn’t dig TOO deeply, Ragnarok is a very entertaining movie. It’s visually stunning. The music is great. The dialogue is witty. If you completely disregard the established canon for the characters and don’t think too deeply about the implications of anything they are saying or doing, the movie is great fun. Thor fans are looking for what is explicit and Ragnarok is full of it.
Now -Loki fans are the opposite of that. They are deep thinkers. They take things very seriously. They want to to know the WHY of everything. They are largely made up of people who know what it is to be rejected and despised, or at the very least, to feel different. They see the pain that is unspoken. Behind every one of Loki’s words or actions, they see the contributing trauma. They see more than what is shown. Loki fans are always looking for what is implicit. Give them a film directed by a Shakespearean actor like Sir Kenneth Branagh and they will are happy as a pig in shit.
So, Ragnarok is not without merit. But you’re not likely to find many die hard Loki fans who don’t have at least some criticisms of its treatment of their favorite character.
I think maybe my calling certain blogs “anti-Loki” is a bit strong, through they are definitely pro-Thor. I don’t believe that people who prefer Thor are necessarily more shallow or less introspective, or that people who prefer Loki are deeper thinkers. It feels too much like generalizing and slapping a label on people. I have encountered a number of intelligent analytical people who loved Ragnarok and who also see Loki as a complex character more than a villain and who are pro-Loki AND pro-Thor (What do I even mean by pro-Thor? I guess I mean that they didn’t see Thor’s actions/characterization in Ragnarok as mainly problematic). I wish there were more of those people.
I’m not saying I want to see zero criticisms, I’m saying I want to see some other discussion mixed in as well. A lot of the problems Loki fans on here have seem to be with Ragnarok dismissing Loki’s past sufferings, experiences and depth as a character, when I don’t feel it did that. I feel like Loki changed and grew in this film, as he does in every film he has appeared in. To say that Loki has been moving beyond his past pain and trauma is not the same as belittling those experiences, even if I agree that it is easy to read the film as saying that Loki should “just get over it.” And that is one legitimate interpretation of the film, but it is not the only one, and it is not mine. I take issue with the concept that, if you can move on in any way from your past pain, if you can get better, then your pain and struggles must not have been real in the first place. It’s invalidating. That kind of thinking has got me stuck a long time before. It has got many people who suffer from mental illness stuck.
I appreciate Loki in Ragnarok, because he has clearly done some healing for himself in the interval, has started being willing to discuss some of what he went through (in the play and in his convo with Thor in prison), some of the sharpest pain has worn off, but he is still recovering, still struggling with how exactly to move on from it and who exactly he is in the aftermath. This is not unusual for those who have gone through trauma/mental illness, this is part of the recovery period where they are looking to build their life back.
Loki was afraid to confront Hela, which has been criticized as a cowardly characterization of the character – but I disagree. Fear is not cowardly, fear is a survival mechanism. Loki in the Avengers and in TDW would probably have thrown himself recklessly into the fight, regardless of the odds (and in this case I’m certain the odds are that Hela would have easily defeated them both and Loki KNOWS the odds because he isn’t actually stupid), because he was self-destructive and didn’t truly care about his life. In contrast in Thor 1, before he learns the shattering truth and even before he gives up all hope on the Bifrost, Loki clearly favored non-confrontational methods first, as on Jotunheim when he preferred to placate rather than provoke Laufey. In moving past some of his self-destructiveness, Loki is in a way going back to who he was before. There was nothing to be won from confronting Hela then and there, what he couldn’t account for in his panic was her following.
In my opinion, Loki was seeking his sense of direction in this film. He has overcome some of his past self-destructiveness, but without yet having a clear idea of where to go from here. Like I said, he’s been recovering, it’s a tenuous period where he is rediscovering and redefining himself, he’s going back and looking at his memories and taking back his own narrative – where he was once “the monster that parents tell their children about,” he chooses to be the “savior of Asgard” – but it’s a process and he was just not ready yet to confront Hela and save Asgard.
Loki says “Take US back” which means him AND Thor, and this is key. Loki was trying to get Thor to stay on Sakaar, and I’ve discussed this before, but I personally think Loki’s main, selfish goal throughout most of the film was to keep Thor alive, to not lose the last of his family. On the one hand, I consider this bravery, that Loki seems to have reached a level of honesty with himself, that he does value his family, the family that let him down and hurt him, inadvertently or not, and that could still reject him (see again his conversation with Thor, he had to know that Thor might still reject his help and invalidate his sincerity), rather than simply pushing them away and running from the pain of past and potential rejection.
Ragnarok is not perfect, obviously. The dynamic between the brothers is unbalanced, and Loki might not have returned to Thor’s side for the healthiest of reasons – their relationship will always have a flavor of codependency to me. But for me, this does not invalidate what I consider to be good character development and progress on Loki’s part. Besides, I love that I have a reflection of how messed-up and hurtful relationships can be in real life, even when the other person does love you. I also disagree that the narrative affirms Thor at every turning, he is mocked plenty as well while he flounders in Sakaar at the mercy of Valkyrie and the Grandmaster. The film stops mocking both Thor and Loki once they are back on Asgard working towards a selfless goal, rescuing the survivors on Asgard.
It’s just my opinion. I get most people will probably disagree with me, and that’s okay.
I can’t speak for other Loki fans who have been criticizing Ragnarok, but my problem with its depiction of Loki’s psychology is not that it shows him having “moved past” his trauma; rather, it either ignores it, or actively mocks and minimizes it. A few people who have a negative overall opinion of TR, like @foundlingmother, have decided for the purpose of fanfiction (or avoiding despair) to read the play as Loki’s self-therapy, his attempt to come to terms with his heritage and achieve some kind of catharsis regarding his sacrifice… but that’s an extremely generous interpretation, and I doubt very much that it’s the one the film’s creators (screenwriter Eric Pearson as well as director Taika Waititi) intended. The film doesn’t even acknowledge that Loki’s Jotun heritage was ever a problem for him or for Asgard; if the revelation in the play was intended to show reconciliation of himself and/or Asgard to the idea, it might have alluded to the fact that Asgardians (used to) regard Frost Giants as monsters. It also seems implausible that it’s supposed to help him move past his near-death experience, because the movie never acknowledges that Loki was actually stabbed, whether or not he believed he was going to die. Loki never contests Thor’s claim that he “faked his death” – suggesting that he staged the whole thing – and the movie invites us to think that the only reason he did it was to usurp the throne, and that the only reason he did that was so he could glorify himself and live in luxury, rather than, say, hiding from Thanos and trying to keep the Infinity Stones away from him, or even taking (not totally unjustified) revenge on Odin for his lies and maltreatment.
Someone else pointed out recently that the play has Loki say “I’m sorry about that thing with the Tesseract. I just couldn’t help myself,” and then his next line is “I’m a trickster,” which seems to be intended as an explanation. I guess I can see why he wouldn’t want to reveal to all of Asgard that he was under severe pressure from a bigger supervillain… but he didn’t have to mention it at all. This, and the implied explanation for Loki’s seizing the throne, is a general pattern: TR consistently reduces Loki’s motivation to “I’m a trickster, it’s in my nature” – or, effectively, “I did it for the lulz” – when his motivations in previous films have never been that simplistic. Arguably, letting the Frost Giants in to disrupt Thor’s coronation and goading him into trying to go to Jotunheim might have been partly out of mischief (“to ruin my brother’s big day”), but it was also because he wanted to prove to Odin that Thor wasn’t ready to rule – and he wasn’t wrong about that. His reasons for lying, betraying Thor, and causing destruction throughout Thor are envy and resentment, the desire to prove himself to Odin, and emotional pain over the revelation of his origins. His reasons for invading Earth in The Avengers are ambition, anger at Thor and Odin, and some level of coercion from Thanos.
There are definitely respects in which Loki acts like a trickster in earlier films, weaving complicated schemes, delighting in chaos, and hiding his true intentions; but he always has comprehensible, psychologically realistic motivations for his crimes and betrayals. What’s more, it should be clear from watching the previous movies that he almost never enjoys betraying Thor. FFS, he’s crying while he fights him at the end of Thor; he’s obviously affected, even tempted, by Thor’s pleas for him to come home in The Avengers, he hesitates before he drops the cage, he has tears in his eyes when he stabs Thor on the tower. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, TR ignores all of that and scrapes Loki’s psychology paper-thin, essentializing him as a simplistic version of the trickster archetype who just can’t resist the urge to betray people for shits and giggles.
It’s only because of this denial of Loki’s psychological depth and motivational complexity that TR can set up the bit where Thor “tricks the trickster” and gives that lecture about change. As @endiness (and others, probably) has speculated, the creators seem to have ignored all of Loki’s character development in previous films precisely so that Thor can get all the credit for his “reform” and “redemption.” It’s not at all clear why Loki betrays Thor on Sakaar; again, people trying to rescue the movie’s characterization can speculate that it’s because Loki is pissed at Thor for dismissing him, or maybe to keep Thor from what Loki thinks of as a suicide mission to fight Hela, but I think (and Thor’s little speech strongly suggests) the movie wants us to assume Loki did it for the same reason it claims he went after the Tesseract: “I just couldn’t help myself. I’m a trickster.” It’s really kind of rich that Thor is preaching at Loki about growth and change, considering how much Loki has changed over the course of the films, while TR regresses Thor back to the brash arrogance of the first film – no, worse; it makes him narcissistic and cruel in a way he wasn’t even at the beginning of Thor, as oblivious and insensitive as he could be. Many of the people who condemn TR are people who love Thor (almost) as much as they love Loki, and all of them agree that it ruins Thor’s character even more than Loki’s. I kind of don’t understand how the “Thor stans” can still call him a kindhearted little ray of sunshine in light of his behavior toward Bruce/Hulk as well as Loki… but as I said before, I think they’re motivated to like the movie and the version of Thor that together put Loki in his place.
As I’ve said, it’s possible to give the portrayal of Loki a more generous interpretation than I’ve offered, but part of the reason I seriously doubt it’s intended that way is that if you put the text of the movie, including the mocking tone of the little play, together with Taika Waititi’s interviews and other conduct, you get a picture of someone who is contemptuous of the rest of the Thor franchise, of Loki as a character, of Tom Hiddleston as an actor, and of Tom Hiddleston-as-Loki’s mostly female fans. Of course, people who are more gung-ho than I am about “the death of the author” have a policy of ignoring the artist’s intentions entirely, and that might be a good strategy if you want to stay positive about the movie.
This is the most direct addressing of the points I raised that I have ever got, so thank you. I hadn’t thought about framing Loki’s actions and motivations throughout Ragnarok through the lens of the specific wording in the play. Hm. The play is one of those things I’m still thinking on – because I agree entirely with everything you have to say about the complex psychological motives behind all of Loki’s past actions.
As to Thor…I admit I have devoted most of my energy to thinking about Loki in this film, and haven’t perfectly worked through my conflicting feelings on Thor’s characterization. I do feel like I understand why Thor is acting this way, considering that Loki has hurt him in the past, but their problems run both ways, and I would have liked it a lot better if Thor would have acknowledged this at all and tried even once to genuinely reach out to Loki. I get that the film is trying to say that sometimes if a relationship is toxic, it’s better to cut off contact than continue to try to help someone who refuses to change, à la A&E Intervention. The execution could have been done better, because I don’t think Thor has given Loki a proper chance at communication first or recognized his own role in the problem yet, before deciding to just leave him vulnerable on Sakaar. So, yes, much of what Thor does in this film sometimes feels unkind or thoughtless, if not cruel.
I disagree on the part where you say it is entirely unclear why Loki betrays Thor on Sakaar again. I thought there a good number of signs that Loki was anxious about Thor going back to Asgard, from reminding Thor that “our sister destroyed you hammer like a piece of glass, you’re not seriously thinking of going back” to his anger that Valkyrie had helped Thor escape.
But you bring up a lot of good interesting points…I understand a little better now why people take issue with the film. I don’t disagree with you that the mocking tone of the play and Waititi’s words don’t mesh very well with my interpretation. I am aware of what Waititi has said, I guess I had kind of decided to throw that out. I usually am a stickler for authorial intent, but in this case I’m willing to make an exception, because Ragnarok is not only Waititi’s creation, it’s also the actors’ and furthermore must be understood within the wider context of previous movies. Like, I am pretty sure Loki was not meant to have faked his death in TDW – so, since Ragnarok implied he did, but never makes any definite statement on it either way, I will continue to assume that he did not.
Another thing I am not doing is taking Thor’s words and interpretation within the film as the framing for the narrative of the film, even if I suspect that authorial intent intended the film to be read that way. So when Thor talks down to Loki and accuses him of not changing and growing – I am not assuming that that is the interpretation of Loki that the film says is correct. I’m just taking it as presenting Thor’s opinion on Loki. Thor’s POV, and not necessarily the film’s POV. Thor also believes that Odin is “stronger” (that was a WHATT??!? moment for me) even after learning about all the bloodshed and lies he kept, and I don’t think that the film is condoning those lies and bloodshed. Well maybe that all sounds a bit convoluted. Call it mental gymnastics if you will, I guess, it’s the interpretation I enjoy better.
Well, I am an academic philosopher. Addressing points directly is kind of what we do.
There are more problems with Thor’s characterization than just the way he treats Loki, though of course the electrocution scene is the most glaring example of how callous, self-satisfied, and careless of others’ well-being he is in TR. The way he manipulates Hulk and Bruce, telling each that he likes him better than the other, is meant to be funny, but he really just comes off as an insensitive jerk. Likewise with the “Is he though?” about Bruce being powerful and useful. All the self-congratulatory “That’s what heroes do” crap… it feels like a disdainful parody of the actual heroism that Thor and the other Avengers have shown throughout the MCU. It’s one thing to be self-aware about the inherent silliness of superhero movies (which Marvel generally is); it’s another to mock one’s own franchise, both narrowly (the Thor films) and broadly (the MCU), at every turn. And regarding Thor’s “tough love” in “cutting off a toxic relationship” (which, BTW, I’ve been convinced was not actually the goal; Thor was just manipulating Loki by giving him what looked like an ultimatum, and fully expected him to fall in line)… I encourage you to read this post if you haven’t already.
I can’t use the block quote indentation thing to quote from your post because Tumblr has been making the font huge (why?!), so I’ll use italics:
“Another thing I am not doing is taking Thor’s words and interpretation within the film as the framing for the narrative of the film, even if I suspect that authorial intent intended the film to be read that way. So when Thor talks down to Loki and accuses him of not changing and growing – I am not assuming that that is the interpretation of Loki that the film says is correct. I’m just taking it as presenting Thor’s opinion on Loki. Thor’s POV, and not necessarily the film’s POV.”
It seems perfectly clear to me that the film does intend for us to read Thor’s interpretation of Loki’s actions and character flaws as correct, and to applaud him for turning the tables on Loki, telling him what’s what, and getting him to grow up and get over himself and just do what Thor wants him to. As a writer of canon-compliant Thor/Loki fanfiction, however, I find myself in a bind: given that Ragnarok is now part of canon, how can I continue to write in a way that makes both of them basically sympathetic (while acknowledging their flaws)? So for the purpose of fanfiction, I’ve been making interpretive moves similar to yours; I’ve had Loki (and Heimdall!) reproach Thor for his actions, and I’ve had Thor recognize that he overreacted in anger and feel guilty about it, even though I know that the Thor of TR (whom I’ve been calling Thor* because I consider him a completely different character than the Thor of the previous films) probably still thinks he’s perfectly justified, and Loki* (to use the same convention) probably agrees. But the difference between our approaches is that I’m being unrealistically charitable only for the purpose of fanfiction, while my default interpretation of the movie takes into account the authors’ intended interpretation and is therefore almost wholly negative (except that I like what they did with Heimdall and mostly like Valkyrie).
Loki is the Philosopher King 