Oh look, I found another reason why I hate this movie:

blockmind:

mentallydatingahotcelebrity:

Literally everything Thor does in this movie is condescending and uncaring toward Loki. He’s not even remotely nice to him. His brother who said “Sometimes I’m envious of you, but never doubt my love” “I didn’t do it for him.” This entire movie was just a stage for Thor to be “awesome God of Thunder” and to put Loki in some sort of sideshow space. 

Exactly where he started in the first film.

He’s back to just having to go along with Thor regardless of how he feels about the matter “let’s do get help, you love it.” “I hate it, it’s embarrassing” “we’re doing it”

Loki literally tells Thor he finds that modus operandi degrading and Thor essentially replies “I don’t give a flying fuck what you think, we’re doing it because I want to, so deal.” and Loki, of course, does exactly that.

Because that’s how it’s been with Thor for all their adult lives.

“know your place, brother.”

“Enough.”

TR took Thor back to square one. He’s not the mature, thoughtful king-in-training he was in TDW (I will ALWAYS prefer that version of him; it was true to his character arc). He’s gone back to the selfish, arrogant “it’s all about me” outlook. He doesn’t care about Loki, doesn’t ask his opinion– unlike the carefully executed plan of TDW where Loki gets to use his skills equally alongside Thor’s brawn. 

But the one thing that really gets me about that comment above is this part: “while Loki thought it was an affectionate pat” 

What. The. Hell?!?!?! God forbid Loki actually receive some real, genuine affection from Thor because he’s just a trickster, so he doesn’t really matter. That was beaten in our faces OVER AND OVER AND OVER by Taika Waititi–

Loki is just a dumb trickster who has no motive and no life-plan.

Loki just wants to drink margaritas and watch bad theater about himself because he’s a glorified narcissist.

Loki just wants to fuck the Grandmaster (or at least the GM wants to fuck him).

Loki and all of his past issues were non-issues, so stop feeling sorry for him.

Oh, and my favorite, though I don’t think I can contribute this to TW, but rather whoever wrote the script:

“You’ll always be the God of Mischief, but you could be something more.”

We’re supposed to admire Thor’s cleverness and kingly wisdom in this scene, when actually all this is doing is subtly reinforcing the fact that Loki’s been treated as the punching bag, the jokes-on-legs, the “if we have no SMART ideas I’ll just throw my LITTLE brother at the bad guys”.

What. 

The. 

FUCK.

I thought Thor was pretty cleverly executed given that he’s tried dealing with Loki in failure after failure to bridge that gap. The unconditional love of Thor 1 didn’t help, the attempt to regain common ground and offer a hand in Thor 2 ended in Loki faking his own death and usurping Asgard. 

The problem was that Thor was enabling him rather than helping him. By Ragnarok he’s mature enough to guess how Loki is going to act, and he helps Loki help himself. Stepping back from the relationship logically, Thor’s love and trust has been abused time and time again and I don’t blame him from stepping back from it when he’s stuck in the same old loop of enabling Loki into the next fresh batch of bullshit. 

I’ll preface the next statement by saying that I love Loki in all his incarnations dearly but it’s not as though he’s NOT guilty of some pretty despicable shit that Thor has been more than patient over (I’m talking about the entirety of The Avengers) so I think Thor is pretty validated in his suspicion and distance. 

For what it’s worth, it DOES work and we see Loki in a better place at the end of TR and I suspect he needed someone he loves and respects to be sick of his bullshit in a dismissive way or he was never going to change. Which is reminiscent of what happened to his character arc in the comics but that’s a whole different thing. Loki’s been through a lot of writers in the MCU with varying quality and difference of characterization but personally I still think the biggest injustice is what happened in Infinity War. 

Regarding the claim that Thor was “enabling” Loki by continuing to reach out to him, I would encourage you to read this post, because I really can’t say it any better. It was written by someone who liked Ragnarok for several months until having a conversation that led to the realizations described in the post.

The only reason “it DOES work and we see Loki in a better place at the end of TR” is because the same writer(s) who wrote that gambit ensured that it would work. (People who have read the novelization and said the betrayal-electrocution sequence wasn’t in there lead me to believe we have Taika himself, not Eric Pearson, to thank for that little bit of amateur relationship counseling.) It’s not like they tested it out on an actual person with the same complex of mental illnesses as Loki, as seen in previous movies. It’s not clear what he has (depression? bipolar? BPD?), but it should be clear to anyone that he’s unwell; he doesn’t just betray people for shits and giggles. And it’s debatable whether Loki is really in a “better place” at the end of TR. He’s been cowed into submission; he’s accepted a place as Thor’s inferior.

It also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say that Loki abused Thor’s love and trust in TDW, except given the assumptions about what happened that TR wants to push on us. It tells us again and again that Loki “faked his death” – but a more plausible reading, considering that Loki’s illusions aren’t tangible, is that Loki actually was impaled, thought he was going to die, and took advantage of the situation when he unexpectedly woke up. And considering that Thor told him he would just put him back in prison after they finished avenging Frigga (“Vengeance. And afterward this cell”), can you completely blame Loki for doing what he did? Can you completely blame him for exiling Odin, after all the shit Odin has pulled? TR totally ignores all the intelligible reasons Loki had for doing what he did: avoiding getting thrown in solitary confinement for life, with no Frigga to visit him – or worse (remember, “Frigga is the only reason you’re still alive”?); getting back at Odin for his lies and rejection (and for locking him away without actually asking why he invaded Midgard…); putting himself in a position of safety and power from which he could hide from Thanos and make efforts to thwart him (remember, it was Loki who sent Sif and Volstagg to store the Aether with the Collector). None of that is even mentioned; it’s just because Loki is such an incorrigible trickster and wants to lounge around in his bathrobe eating grapes and watching self-glorifying plays. That’s never who Loki has been in the MCU. He always has comprehensible, psychologically compelling reasons for his misdeeds: envy, resentment, the need for his father’s approval, internalized racism, vengefulness, threats and coercion from Thanos. Naked hedonistic self-interest has never been a significant part of his motivation. It’s only by completely reframing everything he’s ever done that TR makes it remotely plausible that Loki needs this kind of “tough love” to just “get over himself” and start being a good guy. What he needs is for someone to really listen, which Thor, even with all his pleas for him to come home, has never done.