So, let me tell you my feelings on Captain Marvel. In general, I appreciate that they are finally giving a woman her own movie – definitely late in the game, but better late than never, I guess. And from what I know of Captain Marvel (which, admittedly, isn’t much at all), she’s a cool character who is very powerful. Also, it’s taking place in the 90s, which – um, yes, please. All of my 90s feels. So I don’t necessarily have a problem with Captain Marvel herself.
However. The way that she is being shoe-horned into the current phase of the MCU feels very, very out of place. I mean, there has not been a single mention of her in 18 movies, and now suddenly, we see that Fury has her on speed-beeper for an emergency? Why haven’t we seen this before? It seems to me that when aliens were attacking New York for the first time ever would have been a good time to call in an emergency. Why didn’t Fury recruit her for the Avengers Initiative? Why wasn’t she alluded to or foreshadowed?
Maybe these things will be explained in her movie, I don’t know. But essentially we’re getting this character whom no one’s ever heard of (in-universe, I mean) swooping in at the eleventh hour with all of her extraordinary powers to save the day because the Avengers – the heroes we’ve grown to care about deeply – couldn’t. And that’s how they want to conclude this MCU phase? With a big old dues ex machina? What is the goal here, exactly? Because if the goal is good storytelling, then Marvel, you’re doing it wrong.
It would have been fabulous to truly see Loki’s journey come full circle with Thanos and the Infinity stones. It would have been immensely rewarding and fitting to end this MCU phase with the first villain being the latest hero. Fighting side by side with Thor. Saving the planet he once tried to invade. I mean, it’s poetic. Unfortunately, Marvel seems to operate under the assumption that once a person flimsily recovers from their depression/mental health issues and makes a flimsy peace with their brother, then that person literally has no reason left to live anymore and can be killed off. Marvel seems to operate under the assumption that death is the only way to find redemption – like, if you don’t die for it, it doesn’t mean anything, I suppose? I don’t know what the logic is, but either way, we deserved Loki and there’s no need, at this point in the game, for a completely brand new character to come in and be the savior.
But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I still think Whedon would have given a satisfying payoff for the Loki-Thanos connection he established. The MCU is a prime example of a horse designed by committee, and boy, is it a narrative mess.
Personally, it all just felt so cheap to me, how it played out. Like if you’re going to kill him off, can it not be in a more realistic way, deserving of his character and all the effort Tom Hiddleston’s put into him? I’d rather have just not seen him at all, really. Well, maybe not, idk. What do you think? (2/2)
I’ve definitely ranted about this before; here are links to some posts where I’ve talked about it: 1234
Anyway, long story short: I think the people who made IW (screenwriters Markus & McFeely, the Russos, Kevin Feige) didn’t give a shit about Loki as a character. The writers/directors who have mostly worked on Captain America movies clearly don’t really care about the Asgardian characters. The Russos basically confirmed that they used his death as “motivation” for Thor, to “strip him down to nothing” (as if that wasn’t something that had been done in every single other movie he’s been in…) and watch him claw his way back up. It also seems to be the case that they had to turn Loki (and Thor!) into an idiot to give Thanos a chance to “prove” how powerful and dangerous he is, which, needless to say, did not prove what they wanted it to prove.
This may be a stretch, but I also suspect that Marvel wanted to distance itself from Loki’s mostly female fanbase. Like much of the rest of the Marvel fandom on here (hello, Thor and Ragnarok stans!), the Powers That Be at Marvel think Loki’s fans are just a bunch of airheaded teenage girls and maybe the occasional sexually frustrated middle-aged woman who are just creaming themselves over Tom Hiddleston. Women weren’t supposed to go for the vaguely effeminate, ambiguously queer-coded, morally gray part-time villain; we’re supposed to be swooning over the muscle-bound, morally self-certain male power fantasies they’re selling (or Tony Stark, if we insist on a little more darkness; wise-cracking billionaires are still within bounds). I felt the “No more resurrections” line and the excessive gruesome brutality of Loki’s death as a deliberate spiteful jab at us.
I do not think Loki will be coming back in the future, relative to the timeline of IW, though we will be seeing him in the past when Tony and whoever else goes time-traveling in A4. I think “No more resurrections” was the creators breaking the fourth wall.
Oh, I also dug up a confirmation from the Russos that Valkyrie and some of the Asgardians got off the ship on escape pods, so there’s that.
From a Forbes article about Dave Bautista’s threat not to return for GOTG3 and the possibility of a “soft reboot”: “While we’re assuming that the events of Avengers 4 brings back the half of humanity wiped out by Thanos’ finger-snap of doom at the end of Infinity War, there is no law saying that Gamora (who was tossed off a cliff by her adopted father so that he could earn the Soul Stone) can’t stay as dead as Loki.”
“As dead as Loki”? Really? Was that fucking necessary, you fucking asshole?
Marvel: Odin’s presence was the only thing keeping Thanos from destroying Asgard. Marvel: Loki overpowered Odin and exiled him to Earth for several years. Also Marvel: Thanos choked out Loki no problem
Consistency and logic have never been their strong points.
Kevin Feige:“The scene with Loki in chains being led towards Odin at the beginning of the movie was one of the additional photography scenes, and it actually came about for a couple of reasons. I was reading the tie-in comic and they had that scene in it. I get all the comics when they’re published – I flip through some of them, and I was flipping through that one and I went, ‘Holy crap – this has got to be in the movie!’ It’s slightly different in the comic than it is in the movie, but I thought this has to be in the movie. So I called Tom [Hiddleston] and we talked about his availability, and we said we were gonna do this scene. So he goes, ‘Remember, I pitched you that scene. Months ago!’ Well, I did not remember, but I believed him, and I’m happy for him to take credit for it because he does an amazing job in the movie.” [x]
Tom always ahead of them lol
Yes! Proof that he is smarter and more talented than them and has the perfect understanding of his character and Marvel didn’t deserve him.
Proof both that TH knows his character better than anyone else and that Marvel doesn’t give a shit and never had. They HAD a perfect villain, who was perfect precisely because he wasn’t a villain and because he was relatable and complex and people loved him. But they decided that since maybe Loki had a bit too many female fans and looked a little bit effeminate and wasn’t much of a heavy muscly hitter and used brains instead of force… That maybe he had cooties, you know, so better let him go or Marvel’s masculinity would be questioned or something. So they squandered a perfectly rich and nuanced character in favor of a muscly, gigantic and overpowered New Awesome Villain ™ with the most laughable and forced Moral Dilemma ™ ever that would totally appeal to the target adolescent male audience and pushed him down everybody’s throats.
Thanks for nothing, Feige. Your intelligence is on the same level as that of the adolescents you’re trying to woo, except they’ll grow and wise up and you… Well… won’t.
“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.
It doesn’t mean Brolin (and Thanos) didn’t enjoy crunching the Hulk
with a cheap-shot kick — “I love that Thanos uses a knee. That was
great.” And Brolin was cool with choking out demigod Loki (Tom
Hiddleston), a longtime Marvel favorite. All of this in the first
10 minutes of “Infinity War.”
Brolin says he did have sympathy for Hiddleston, who was “obsessed” with nailing what looks to be his last scene as Loki.
“He had been with that character for so long. And he’s so
lauded for doing it,” says Brolin. “Tom was so vulnerable at that
moment. So choking him out wasn’t the most fun thing I have ever done.”
But Brolin loves the fan furor on the internet over his lightning rod characters, especially Thanos.
“On Instagram people are posting things like, ‘I hate
you,’ ” says Brolin. “That’s fantastic. I’m, like, the one guy who
smiles when he sees that. It’s like, ‘It worked.’ ”
“What looks to be his last scene”? What happened to the flashbacks in Avengers 4? Were those filmed earlier? Or does it mean last in the fictional timeline, since clearly Marvel has no intention of using whatever time travel shenanigans happen in Avengers 4 to bring back Loki along with the dusted folks?
P.S. clearly Josh Brolin has more respect and compassion for Tom and his/Loki’s fans than the assholes responsible for producing the enormous stinking turd that was “Infinity War” (i.e., Markus & McFeely, the Russos, and Feige).
Loki, God of Mischief, at the San Diego Comic Con in 2013.
Featurette about that one time, at the SDCC, when Tom Hiddleston dressed up as Loki for a short appearance on stage and messed up with our lives forever.
Loki is the Philosopher King 