foundlingmother
replied to your post “Still unfollowing people who post/reblog ill-informed kneejerk Whedon…”

In response to my comment: “on later thought, it occurs to me that Waititi’s mental ableism is more likely meant to be hurtful than Whedon’s sexism.”

I suppose if we believe he thinks mentally ill people are whiny and need a serving of tough love. But I kind of think he just doesn’t see Loki as mentally ill. There are plenty of people on this site who believe Loki’s suicide attempt was just him escaping punishment, that everything he’s ever said that’s given him depth (just wanting to be Thor’s equal) was a lie, etc. That he’s just a selfish trickster. I might be being to generous, but I kind of thought TW was (½)

(2/2) too mentally healthy to recognize Loki’s mental health problems, and too focused on the class privilege of both Thor and Loki to recognize they can have legit struggles that others identify with. I know a lot of people in real life who really honestly believe that wealthy people don’t have the right to be upset about anything in their life.

I’m going to guess the main reason some people don’t believe Loki’s suicide attempt was real is because of the bit in Ragnarok where Loki is telling the story at the Sakaarian cocktail party and says “at that moment I let go” and everyone laughs. Because that only makes sense if it’s a “Look how clever I am, I escaped Thor and Odin’s efforts to hold me to account.” If those people had actually watched Thor 1, and seen the empty look on Loki’s tearful face – or heard Kenneth Branagh’s commentary, saying “This is the moment when the thin steel rod holding his mind together just snaps” – they would not be saying that.

People who take Ragnarok’s claims to supersede previous canon are fake fans. That’s right, I said it. I’m not saying people who came in late, or even people who saw Ragnarok first, are fake fans; I didn’t get into the MCU until after AOU came out in 2015 (although I *did* watch everything in the correct order; I wasn’t raised by wolves). But if you think what comes later is somehow more valid – or that one later movie that goes against 3 (for Loki) or 4 (for Thor) movies’ worth of previous narrative and character-building can erase all of them – that just makes no damn sense.(*) People who are fans of Thor and Loki as they appear in TR – or as I prefer to call them, Thor* and Loki* (I use that philosophical convention to indicate false identity because Shmor and Shmoki just sound silly) – are not fans of the same characters as those of us who love them because of their appearances in previous movies, and it is beyond absurd for these latecomers to say that the rest of us are mistaken about who Thor and Loki really are, or that the “correct” characterization was only reached in the 4th or 5th movie in which they appeared. People who think that they are the same characters are just confused (somewhat understandably, but still).

As for TW: the inability to recognize mental illness as mental illness when it should be really fucking obvious comes very close to malicious ableism. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were skeptical of the existence of mental illness, and he thinks the whole thing is just an excuse for rich white people to be weak and lazy. Of course, mental illness is at least as prevalent among poor people and/or people of color… but it can be more easily attributed to adverse circumstances. TW is probably one of those people (like the people you know) who thinks that treating “mental illness” in poor people is a bourgeois effort to privatize social problems and keep the proletariat sedated in order to stave off revolution. (Not that I think TW is really a Marxist… but you get the idea.)

I’ve said this before, but it is a really bizarre and very recent attitude that only poor, underprivileged people have real and interesting problems. This claim isn’t even borne out in people’s consumption behavior: everyone is still fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous. Poor people’s struggles to make ends meet are entirely too common, and the people who actually experience that seem to find it boring to watch… though the bleeding-hearted rich might be interested in it as a kind of pity porn. From Homer to Sophocles to Shakespeare to superhero comics to tabloids, people want to hear about the high political struggles, epic battles, and screwed-up love lives of gods, heroes, and kings. They want the larger than life, but they also want to perceive the common humanity that the great and mighty share with everyone else – and yes, that includes the Greek and Norse gods, who were deliberately, profoundly human. Novels and TV have brought the travails of the middle class and sometimes the poor into the orbit of popular literature, but it’s still more often people’s love lives than their struggles against oppression… and shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Empire indicate that it’s still the present-day warrior classes, royalty, and aristocracy that fascinate. Social justice evangelists can insist that people shouldn’t care about these things, but they can’t truly claim that no one does care.

(*) A caveat: I do accept the recent X-Men movies’ cutting The Last Stand (2006) out of the canon because the general consensus is that it’s not up to the quality standard of its predecessors, and the writer, Simon Kinberg, has continued to write and produce the more recent movies. I’ll take a writer’s rejection of his own past work much more seriously than a new writer/director’s rejection of a bunch of other people’s work.

How Ragnarok Took Everything From Loki and Its Consequences

lucianalight:

I wanted to write this post since I
watched TR but I wasn’t calm enough for it until now. Even writing so little
about how TR unfairly treated Loki’s character and disrespected him and his
fans in my TR reviews made me angry enough to start shouting in my head and
rendered me unable to write it the way I wanted. Then IW happened and it was
the cause for another wave of rage in me. So it took me a long time.

We always talk about how TR
disrespected Loki and took away a lot of his canon characterizations and
motives and his arc from him. I noticed we never explained it in details and it
caused a lot of misunderstandings about why we hate TR and what we mean. So
this is a detailed explanation of how TR took everything from Loki.

Keep reading

Again, great analysis, and I just have to highlight the conclusion:

“By dismissing Loki’s pain, the narrative paints Loki as someone who is always in the wrong and Thor as blameless in everything. It leads to Thor dismissing Loki’s pain and it leads to disguising Thor and Loki’s imbalanced relationship (Thor as superior and Loki as inferior the way they started in the first Thor movie) as reconciliation and healing.

“You know what all of this led to right? A Loki robbed of his sacrifice, bravery, intelligence and planning skills, his magic and power had no place in IW. He was useless in the authors’ minds. He was healed after all! What else could Loki do except failing at tricking Thanos when he could be outsmarted by Thor and Dr. Strange. What else could Loki do except attacking Thanos with a tiny dagger when that was all the weapons he was left with? At least they gave him his bravery back so his stupid attack makes some sense. In their minds the only way his story could end, and he could completely be redeemed was a true sacrifice (which was pointless since Thanos could still kill Thor) in which he actually dies with no resurrection. This is how they took away Loki from us, by taking away everything from his character first and then when he had nothing left they killed him.”

This is why I’m still so pissed about Loki’s death in IW. Not just because he died – not just because it was unnecessarily brutal and graphic – but because it made him into a plot device rather than a character; because it passed the judgment that he had outlived his interest and usefulness and could only serve as a functionary in someone else’s story. It wasted the potential for a payoff of the connection to Thanos established in The Avengers; it showed that the creators (writers, producers, and directors) did not care enough about Loki’s character to give us that payoff or even tell us what the hell happened with Loki and Thanos. But Loki’s treatment in Ragnarok should have shown us that it was inevitable. Of course Markus & McFeely couldn’t know how thoroughly Taika Waititi was planning to ridicule and emasculate Loki, but if they saw the basic script, they might have had some idea of how his power, intelligence, and complexity were going to be minimized, and how the narrative was going to tie a neat little bow on his “redemption” and “reconciliation” with Thor. And of course these movies have no time for recovery from trauma, except maybe if your name is Tony Stark (and he has RDJ going to bat for him).

I was glad that Loki turned out not to be dead at the end of TDW because I thought he was going to have more time to develop his relationship with Thor and achieve genuine reconciliation, that we might find out what happened with Thanos, that Thor might finally ask what happened, that they might confront the prejudice against Frost Giants that led both of them to kill so many in Thor 1. But now I agree with @lucianalight: I would rather that he had died being noble and clever (turning on the grenade while impaled!!) than live to have everything that made him a magnificent character negated and shat on.

A Different Story

lucianalight:

I think you know me by now. This is a long post.

*Major Spoilers for Avengers Infinity War and AoA*

Keep reading

I can’t believe I hadn’t read and reblogged this before… so much of it is so perfect, I kind of want to highlight the whole thing, but I’ll keep myself to a few paragraphs:

“Why do we care so much? Because we see ourselves in Loki. We, who felt different, were different, and were alone because of it. We, who knew how it felt to be ridiculed, rejected, vilified and despite all our efforts, never accepted, never loved for who we are. We, who hide all our hurt and pain under a mask but at some point we just couldn’t take it anymore and exploded. So we identified with Loki. …

“To a number of fans and audience, especially male audience with beliefs from a toxic masculinity culture this seemed threatening that a queer coded and/or feminine coded villain gets more female fans than heavily masculine coded heroes. They hated him. And they started to belittle his fans, by implying that Loki was only popular because of Tom or because he is pretty! That Loki’s fans are a bunch of fools that only lust after him for his looks. It seems they deliberately don’t want to understand. Still, it doesn’t really matter, right? Marvel won’t force the ideas of toxic masculinity on us, right? Wrong!

“Ragnarok happened.

“Ragnarok happened and it stepped on everything that was Loki. His characterization, his arc, his powers, his goals, his fans. Ragnarok ridiculed Loki in every possible way. It insulted us, made fun of us, told us that we were a bunch of fools for caring for Loki because he is just a stupid troublemaker. Ragnarok was a disaster of toxic masculinity.

“We saw it. We saw everything that was wrong with Ragnarok and pointed it out. But what were [I amend to: ARE] we called? Stans, apologists, haters, antis. …

“He didn’t deserve to die as a plot device to give Thor sth to avenge. We didn’t deserve this. We deserved to see the god of mischief in all his trickster glory. ‘No resurrection this time’ was directed to us, not Thor. They were telling us that you can rage and try to fight, but at the end, you are nothing, you will be broken like a ragdoll so the real hero can be heroic. The story is not about you, it was never about you. You are just a tragedy, you don’t deserve happiness, you can only be redeemed by sacrificing yourself. …

“The fate of Gamora and Nebula is also angers me. One gets killed in a disguise of love and the other gets tortured. The two characters that deserved to avenge themselves more than anyone, to get a chance for a proper fight, was used as plot devices. It’s disgusting! Gamora, Nebula and Loki, all feminine coded and/or queer coded characters were crushed by their masculine coded abuser. Toxic masculinity.”

Ragnarok and Infinity War were the triumph of toxic masculinity. For the people who will no doubt reply, “But Ragnarok was so great for queer representation!”… many people, some of whom are queer (I’m bi myself), strongly disagree. At the same time that Loki was more overtly coded as gay, he was made to look ridiculous, shallow, and incompetent. The other gay-coded character, the Grandmaster, was also depicted as ridiculous, and morally repugnant besides. This is not revolutionary; this is perfectly standard villainous queer-coding (thanks again, @fuckyeahrichardiii). The implied relationship between Loki and the Grandmaster cannot be anything other than predatory and opportunistic, which further reinforces negative stereotypes. Valkyrie’s bisexuality was not made explicit, unless you count the flashback scene with her presumed lover dying for her, which, again, is not revolutionary in any way (tragic dead lesbians, yay!).

Contrary to what a lot of Tumblr seems to think, white men do not have a monopoly on toxic masculinity. I’ve been seeing people make a point of adding “white” when talking about men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and attention – probably with the (admirable) aim to counter the *equally false* notion that non-white cultures are uniformly more misogynistic than white culture. Toxic masculinity manifests differently in different cultures, but the basic phenomenon crosses lines of race. We cannot assume that Ragnarok must be exempt from it because Taika Waititi is not white (or wears pineapple rompers); and a careful consideration of its characterization and tone – as well as the decision to replace Jane Foster, a woman whose strength is her intellect, with a woman who is “more Thor’s equal” because she can beat people up (adding Valkyrie would have been a much better decision, but we can’t have more than two central female characters, can we?) – yields the diagnosis that it drips with toxic masculinity.

the-haven-of-fiction:

peoplearenotdiamonds:

hiddlememes:

free-loki:

cheese-and-craziness:

Now if that’s doesn’t spark a Loki movie, I don’t know what will.

I love you for saying this.

“Not enough Loki.” -Rolling Stone

Just casually bringing this back in 2018

^^^ in which I am reminded how much I love The Dark World and detest Ragnarok

And Taika Waititi’s response to this critical consensus – probably motivated by Chris Hemsworth, and with the blessing of Kevin Feige – was to gut Loki’s character, to ridicule and emasculate him at every turn, to deprive him of the complex interiority that all of these critics love, to reduce his motivations to “I couldn’t help myself, I’m a trickster” (an actual line from the ridiculous play in Ragnarok), a.k.a. “I did it for the lulz.”

Don’t give me that “But he foregrounded Thor and Loki’s relationship!” bullshit. He reinforced and endorsed the imbalance that was always present; he dismissed and delegitimized all of Loki’s grievances and presented his complete submission to Thor’s will as his redemption.

shine-of-asgard:

loki-god-of-menace:

lokihiddleston:

“Almighty Thanos, I, Loki, Prince of Asgard… Odinson… The
rightful king of Jotunheim, God of Mischief… Do hereby pledge to you, my
undying fidelity.”

[That deep, steadying, terrified breath before his attempt on Thanos’ life just kills me. You can see the tears clinging to his eyes. You can watch him stiffen and coil. You can see him pull all of himself together to make this last, resigned but still brave-to-the-end attempt at bringing down Thanos. It’s heart-wrenching, watching him go to his death to protect Thor.

He deserved better. He always will.]

Anyone remembers the little promotion video of TH filming this and making little up and down jumps? Some people wanted to see a sign of hope in that. I remember thinking that it looked the opposite. Like psyching oneself to do something very unpleasant. Like a come on, let’s get this over with.

Feige also commented some time ago on the scene being difficult for TH. That’s 3 people saying the same fucking thing! So… Not cute. Not funny. And don’t try to tell me TH didn’t know Loki was being shat on. He might have tried to give his best in that scene, but no-one in fandom can even phantom what was going on there. What was Loki trying to accomplish. Concpiracy theories abound. Which is a big mark of how badly written that scene was. It has zero closure and zero sense. But nothing of it it TH fault.

God now I hate these hacks with renewed passion.

I wish Tom had had the power, or maybe the chutzpah, to protest on his character’s behalf. I wish I could believe that there was some big plan, some greater sense, to this absolutely idiotic and gratuitously violent and gruesome death. Which is to say, I wish Markus & McFeely and the Russo brothers had any sense of character or narrative logic.

But more than anything, I wish Feige and Marvel hadn’t alienated Joss Whedon. I wish he had been writing Infinity War. Honestly, I kind of wish he had been around to put the brakes on Taika Waititi’s (and Chris Hemsworth’s) complete mangling of Thor, Loki, and Bruce’s characters. He, unlike M&M and the Russos, had affection and understanding for the Asgardian characters. He was invested in making Loki interesting and formidable, as a reluctant villain and antihero (as reflected in the scenes he rewrote in TDW). He established the connection between Loki and Thanos and I firmly believe he intended to give us some payoff for it.

I find it absurd and ironic that the Marvel higher-ups were doing enough micromanaging on AOU that Joss Whedon threw up his hands in frustration, but apparently they gave Waititi completely free rein to ad lib his way through Ragnarok. I think that shows how little they care about the Thor franchise; it was making them less money, so they were willing to throw it under the bus artistically.

latent-thoughts:

mastreworld:

kaori04:

foundlingmother:

Loki fans don’t dislike Ragnarok!Loki because he’s heroic, mischievous, charming, etc.

Loki fans dislike Ragnarok!Loki because Ragnarok mocks and/or ignores Loki’s depth, character arc and development, and mental health issues.

Fuck it, let’s get a little too personal, shall we? Warning: what comes under the cut is heavy shit.

Keep reading

Yes, thank you! I am so tired of seeing statements as “how can you dislile Ragnarok!Loki if he is so mischievous/witty/funny and overcomes his traumas all of a sudden because Thor specifically told him to and becomes happy instead of miserable probably because he realised that being happy is better then being miserable. And also his perfect brother approves, that’s what really matters, right?” Yep, that’s all real reasons how people are improving their mental state in real life, not the opposite, nope.

Also such statements show that these people never really read why some of us dislike TR and just made up reasons we don’t like it themselves and now are accusing us that we are having wrong reasons that are not even our reasons asdsgahfgd

Yes, this! It took me 28 years to get a proper diagnosis as proof that I have an innate neurological disability and am not lazy or difficult for the heck of it. The attitude towards people with neurological or emotional trauma is despicable and seeing it so blatantly displayed in a movie is fucking hurtful. We don’t deserve respect in “normal” people’s eyes, do we? It’s perfectly fine to make fun of us and put us down because we can’t function the way people are supposed to.

As for “Loki stan”, that’s a title I’d wear with pride.

This bigotry by certain Thor: Ragnarok fans matches well with the callous attitude of TW, CH and the writers of the movie. Mental health issues and trauma are made fun of in the form of immature humor.

It’s a typical case of where a person hurts you and then calls you stupid for reacting negatively to it, as it was supposed to be a joke.

The sheer level of the dismissal and rudeness is baffling. Saying things like-

“You’re not fun at all!”

“You just hate on everything!”

“Why take a movie seriously? It’s not real life!”

“You just want his dick, that’s all!”

It reflects how TW sees the character of Loki and his fandom. It’s why that scene with the play is like a direct slap to those people who dared to identify with Loki and his pain, who dared to like a character which was crafted with care and love by its actor.

Of course these fans don’t get it. They’re too far up TW’s ass (yes, I’m taking this argument now, as us Loki fans are reduced to being thirsty for his dick). Character nuances are lost on them, including Thor’s. They’re wooed by the colours and action sequences, which btw are more the result of a dedicated Marvel team, rather than TW’s brainchild.

Also, as a POC living in a country ravaged by colonialism, I feel like cutting those bitches who say that we’re only targeting TW because he’s a brown guy. Incompetence and arrogance is what I hate, not the bloody skin colour.

/Rant over.

thortunes:

Tag yourself, I’m Tom Hiddleston’s silent screams and internal monologue rejecting the artlessness of every single thing that is happening to me

#first taika #then the russos #why tom cant have nice things

Guess he’d better stick to Shakespeare and little art films, eh, @duskyhuedladysatan? He’ll be happier, we’ll be happier, and the morons at the big studios who don’t know how to deal with him will be happier, too.

can someone explain this plothole: loki tells the revengers that hes run out of favor with the grandmaster and in exchange for a ship, he wants passage through the devils anus. Then thor tells him in the elevator that this is a perfect place for you, lawless yada yadh and both agree that he should stay (even though 2 seconds ago he told thor he’s run out of favor with the grandmaster) did loki betray thor last minute so he can stay on Sakaar like Thor wants him to? did thor not even hear him

juliabohemian:

shine-of-asgard:

edge-of-silvermoon:

lokihiddleston:

.

They need Loki to betray Thor for no reason so they can stomp on Loki’s character harder, and give Thor a chance for grandstanding, what else is there to it? This betrayal literally serves no other purpose than give Thor the chance to deliver his “you can be more” lectures. It’s lazy and sloppy writing.

Waititi and Hemsworth wanted a scene of Thor triumphing over Loki as a “payback” for 3 movies or Loki outsmarting him, and they wrote… that. Whatever the hell it was. And it’s been proven that it was a last minute addition because the official novel doesn’t have this last “twist”. Loki leaves with everyone, willingly.

Could we just re-shoot the movie and have it like the novel? So it isn’t this ridiculous mess? Like did no one edit this film besides TW? Did anyone check for consistency or to be sure that it made sense? How does something make it all the way to the theater with that many mistakes?

This thread is missing the original answer, which was a screenshot of another anonymous ask:

“It’s not really a plothole. Loki has only fallen out of favor with the Grandmaster because he did not return with Thor and his champion as promised. But Thor/Valkyrie are staging a revolt with Korg. So once the Grandmaster is out of power, Thor knows Loki could take over. However, Loki decides that he could regain favor with the Grandmaster by giving him Thor and then probably Bruce. I think though that Loki partially chose this route because he honestly didn’t think that Thor stood a chance against Hela […] I think at least partially, Loki is trying to keep his brother alive.”

There is something to that… but I still think @edge-of-silvermoon and @shine-of-asgard hit the nail on the head. Not only were Loki’s last-minute betrayal and Thor*’s (this is not the same person as the Thor of previous films) ultimatum/electrocution combo not in the novel (which I haven’t read), but we have some indication from the trailers that they shot a version where Loki came in the small ship with the rest of the Revengers: the clips of him standing on the bridge in a row with Thor, Valkyrie, and Hulk, and that shot of Hulk punching him off the bridge like he did to Thor in The Avengers. The betrayal and subsequent smackdown were a later addition – probably by Waititi rather than the screenwriter (Eric Pearson), possibly at Hemsworth’s behest – and I suspect that they wanted three things out of it:

To show Thor*’s “character growth”: he has learned not to fall for Loki*’s tricks and illusions anymore (I’m using Loki* because the motivation for the betrayal, which I still think is basically “shits and giggles,” is not in keeping with Loki’s established character).
The famous “trickster tricked” narrative trope. That’s fine in and of itself; we saw it in The Avengers when Black Widow successfully pulls her “wounded gazelle” act on Loki and again when Hawkeye shoots an arrow at Loki, Loki catches it, and then the arrow explodes. We also saw it in TDW when Thor handcuffed Loki and then pushed him out of the Dark Elf ship onto the skiff. This version, however, is undermotivated and unnecessarily cruel, and I really do think the purpose was to assert Thor*’s superiority over Loki. It also gives us the completely unintended irony of Thor*, who has reverted to a cruelty and arrogance worse than that he was humbled for in Thor 1, lecturing to Loki, who has evolved quite a bit over the past 3 films, about the need for “growth and change.”
As @endiness argued a while back: “i do legitimately believe that loki’s character was regressed in order to make thor responsible for loki’s character growth (rather than loki himself) to kind of prop thor up and have him come off as the better character […] loki’s character had to start out in ragnarok regressed (and far beyond where he was at the end of tdw) and passive, stay that way for most of the movie as most of his actions were dictated by other characters, and then only ‘change’ after and because thor prompted him to through reverse psychology.”

ms-cellanies:

catwinchester:

cosmicjoke:

littlefanthing:

cosmicjoke:

One of the lines in “Thor: The Dark World” that gets overlooked, I think (possibly because Marvel cut it from the final edit) was when Thor is talking to Frigga about Loki, and she says to him that he and Odin always shone so brightly, it was hard for Loki to find any sun for himself, or something to that effect.

Anyway, this is such a massively important line, because it basically tells us EVERYTHING about Loki’s childhood, and how he felt. And here again is yet another example of how absolutely WRONG Taika Waitit’s view of these characters was, given what I heard about him wanting to include a flashback in Ragnarok showing Thor as a sensitive and bullied child, and Loki as dark and mean. That would have been in DIRECT conflict with everything we know about these characters, just like everything else in Ragnarok is.

From what Frigga says to Thor, it’s plain as day that Loki as a child was always struggling just to catch up to Thor, to try and be equal to him, not just in Odin’s and Frigga’s eyes, but in the eyes of probably the entire kingdom. It tells us that Thor, as a boy, was as popular and well liked, as charming and charismatic and as easy to make friends as he is as an adult, and that Loki was very much the introvert, quiet, awkward and isolated. And from Loki’s desperation to win Odin’s approval in the first Thor film, I think it becomes apparent that that desperation grew directly from his feeling inadequate and lesser to the standard of both his father and his big brother growing up. And it’s just so unbelievably sad, to envision that. To envision Loki constantly struggling, trying to match Thor, trying to make himself seem as good as Thor for Odin, trying to make himself seem like a “true and worthy son”, as he says in the first film. How anyone could miss this about his character is beyond me, unless they’re being willfully obtuse.

And we see from this one line, that Loki’s entire motivation is based on a feeling of lack on his own part. He feels like he’s less. He feels like he isn’t as good as Thor, and that Odin must not love him because he’s not as good as Thor, and until he discovers he’s a Jotun, he doesn’t know why, and he can’t figure it out, and he keeps trying and trying to do the right thing to somehow make him, in his father’s eyes, Thor’s equal. Think of the kind of psychological effect that would have on a person, especially a young man growing up in the kind of culture Loki did. Think of the burden of constantly feeling like there’s something WRONG with you, because you’re constantly measuring yourself against the perfection of an older sibling who everyone loves, while everyone treats you like you’re strange, and even are at times outwardly hostile and cruel to you. Think of the weight of trying to figure out how to change yourself so that others will treat you like they treat your perfect older sibling, but not being able to, because you don’t really know what it is about you that makes everyone dislike or hate you in the first place. And then think of what it must have been like, to discover you’re from a race of beings who the people you’ve grown up around consider to be monsters, who are those people’s mortal enemies, and coming to the swift and awful realization that that must have been it all along. That THAT’S what was wrong with you. That that’s why you’ve always been an outcast.

I just think that one moment from The Dark World was so important for understanding Loki’s character.

And yet, once again, Marvel proves it’s own stupidity by cutting it out. Just like they cut out so many scenes from the first Thor film which showed Loki in a more sympathetic light. Gee, it’s almost like they didn’t want people feeling for him. Too bad they ended up doing so anyway.

Yeah, Taika is clearly biased against Loki, for whatever reason. Logic suggests that an anti-imperialist poc would identify with Loki’s character and his storyline, but Taika seems to have rejected him in favor of Thor. I can’t understand it at all. Can anyone think of a plausible explanation.

Well definitely Taika favors Thor, and what I think it really comes down to is, he favors Chris Hemsworth over Tom Hiddleston. Tom is a total professional actor and he takes his craft seriously. I don’t get that impression with Chris. Chris seems to have more or less given up trying to be a serious actor, taking on one comedic role after another, probably because all his attempts at serious drama got panned by the critics. And Chris has a goofy kind of personality with a goofy sense of humor, and for whatever reason, that appealed to Takia Waititi and they hit it off. You get the definite impression that wasn’t the case with Tom. Every interview with Tom done during Ragnarok’s promotion, he talks about how well Takia and Chris got along, and you just get the sense from it that Tom was very much the outsider to their little party. Takia is also one of those directors that HAS to put himself in his own films, which smacks of a massive ego problem. He isn’t satisfied with being behind the scenes. He wants to be the star too. Which tells me he doesn’t appreciate actors or understand what it takes to BE an actor. He’s one of these people, it seems to me, that thinks anyone can do it. But no, it takes a LOT of talent to be a good actor. It’s an actual art. I just don’t think Tom was able to relate at all to what seemed like the idiotic atmosphere on the set of Ragnarok, and I also get the sense that Taika Waititi aggressively shut Tom out of any collaboration regarding Loki’s character, for example Tom’s saying how he was trying to give Matt Daemon (Chris Hemsworth’s friend, by the way) lines that Loki would say, and Taika Waititi just kept telling him no, and giving his own lines, as if he knew better what Loki would say than Tom. He basically steam rolled him. Tom’s a sophisticated, very intelligent and high class man, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that irritated and intimidated a low class shill like Waititi.

Tom’s a sophisticated, very intelligent and high class man, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that irritated and intimidated a low class shill like Waititi.

I think you’re right. I also think it could be his background, He’s English and went to Eton (known as school of Kings for a reason).

A lot of people hate that. And I get why. A perfect example, there’s a show on BBC at the moment about Jeremy Thorpe trying to murder his gay lover, and he basically got away with it because the judge was an old Etonian, like Thorpe, and was incredibly biased in his favour, pretty much instructing the jury to find Thorpe not guilty. “The establishment” has historically protected its own, even from murder charges.

Some people can’t see past that privilege to the individual.

Never mind that Tom’s grandfather was a dockworker, oh no, if he went to Eton he’s got to be an evil establishment coloniser intent on keeping the working man down.

Reblogging for the latest comments, which I’m onboard with. I think there’s another aspect at play in all this as well. I’ve always seen the relationship between Thor/Loki as classic sibling rivalry…..anyone else remember the Smothers’ Brothers schtick of “Mom always loved you best?” Thor’s the favored child in the THOR films but LOKI is the favored character by the fans and critics. If you go back and watch all of the Chris/Tom interviews for Thor there isn’t a single one where Tom doesn’t deflect a question to sing the praises of Chris. Never, that I’ve seen, has Tom put himself out there as the star, better actor or slighted Chris in any way. I feel certain that CH, in the real world, feels that Tom has, so to speak, stolen his thunder. Personally I put the tearing down of Loki in Ragnarok on the shoulders of both Taika & Chris. Ragnarok was clearly The Assassination of Loki.

This last comment is exactly right. I suspect that Taika and maybe also Chris assume that Tom thinks he’s better than them because he’s educated, cultured, and classically trained. He *is* better than them: he’s kinder, more empathetic, a better actor with a better understanding of human psychology and dramatic narrative, and 100% less narcissistic. But he doesn’t know that and he would never act like he thinks he’s better than anyone.

I want to emphasize that the important sense in which Waititi and Hemsworth are “low class” has nothing to do with money or genealogy. It’s entirely about mindset. They lack “class” in the normative sense. They are low class in the same way as the Trumps (though to a lesser extent, of course). You can be in the highest echelons of society and still regard everything as a competition with you (and maybe your buddies) against the world that you must win at all costs.

trickster-grrrl:

cosmicjoke:

One of the lines in “Thor: The Dark World” that gets overlooked, I think (possibly because Marvel cut it from the final edit) was when Thor is talking to Frigga about Loki, and she says to him that he and Odin always shone so brightly, it was hard for Loki to find any sun for himself, or something to that effect.

Anyway, this is such a massively important line, because it basically tells us EVERYTHING about Loki’s childhood, and how he felt. And here again is yet another example of how absolutely WRONG Taika Waitit’s view of these characters was, given what I heard about him wanting to include a flashback in Ragnarok showing Thor as a sensitive and bullied child, and Loki as dark and mean. That would have been in DIRECT conflict with everything we know about these characters, just like everything else in Ragnarok is.

From what Frigga says to Thor, it’s plain as day that Loki as a child was always struggling just to catch up to Thor, to try and be equal to him, not just in Odin’s and Frigga’s eyes, but in the eyes of probably the entire kingdom. It tells us that Thor, as a boy, was as popular and well liked, as charming and charismatic and as easy to make friends as he is as an adult, and that Loki was very much the introvert, quiet, awkward and isolated. And from Loki’s desperation to win Odin’s approval in the first Thor film, I think it becomes apparent that that desperation grew directly from his feeling inadequate and lesser to the standard of both his father and his big brother growing up. And it’s just so unbelievably sad, to envision that. To envision Loki constantly struggling, trying to match Thor, trying to make himself seem as good as Thor for Odin, trying to make himself seem like a “true and worthy son”, as he says in the first film. How anyone could miss this about his character is beyond me, unless they’re being willfully obtuse.

And we see from this one line, that Loki’s entire motivation is based on a feeling of lack on his own part. He feels like he’s less. He feels like he isn’t as good as Thor, and that Odin must not love him because he’s not as good as Thor, and until he discovers he’s a Jotun, he doesn’t know why, and he can’t figure it out, and he keeps trying and trying to do the right thing to somehow make him, in his father’s eyes, Thor’s equal. Think of the kind of psychological effect that would have on a person, especially a young man growing up in the kind of culture Loki did. Think of the burden of constantly feeling like there’s something WRONG with you, because you’re constantly measuring yourself against the perfection of an older sibling who everyone loves, while everyone treats you like you’re strange, and even are at times outwardly hostile and cruel to you. Think of the weight of trying to figure out how to change yourself so that others will treat you like they treat your perfect older sibling, but not being able to, because you don’t really know what it is about you that makes everyone dislike or hate you in the first place. And then think of what it must have been like, to discover you’re from a race of beings who the people you’ve grown up around consider to be monsters, who are those people’s mortal enemies, and coming to the swift and awful realization that that must have been it all along. That THAT’S what was wrong with you. That that’s why you’ve always been an outcast.

I just think that one moment from The Dark World was so important for understanding Loki’s character.

And yet, once again, Marvel proves it’s own stupidity by cutting it out. Just like they cut out so many scenes from the first Thor film which showed Loki in a more sympathetic light. Gee, it’s almost like they didn’t want people feeling for him. Too bad they ended up doing so anyway.

WAITITI WANTED TO SHOW THOR AS BULLIED BY LOKI WHAT?!?!?!

Because he thinks the only way to make a hero likable and relatable is to show them as an awkward outsider. And since Thor is the hero… But of course this completely ignores/denies the “high brought low”/ “humble the proud” storyline of the first “Thor” movie.

Taika was not interested in “respectfully disrespecting” the previous movies; he just didn’t give a shit. And has no storytelling or character range, apparently.