MCU News & Tweets on Twitter

seidrade:

lord-huggington:

loptrlaufey:

WTF!!! ;_;

?????????

This is truly bizarre and…creepy? Parts of the delivery make this almost sound improvised? (Would that be normal for test footage?) Either that, or at one point, Thanos’ motive for killing Loki was written a little differently? I don’t even know.

Anyway I’m so tired of his dumbass face, they wasted Josh Brolin on such a poorly written villain. Just gonna rewatch Deadpool 2 and think about his sweet lovely crush on Ryan Reynolds. (Tbh I kinda wish Ryan Reynolds got to be in charge of the MCU, he seems to actually get it. Anyway, tangent over.)

This sounds like they may have been toying with a different characterization of Thanos – when they weren’t making a bullshit attempt to make him sympathetic, and he was just an evil nutjob with a weird sense of humor (which was how I wrote him). Not that the way he killed Loki in the movie was particularly sympathetic, but they sort of made it a “Greedo shot first” situation with Loki siccing the Hulk on him and then making that unbelievably stupid attempt to stab him. At that point, Thanos could be construed as killing him to avenge personal betrayal in addition to the breach of their previous agreement. But in this video, Thanos seems to be saying that he has to kill Loki simply because he has no more use for him – which is what I would expect from a straight-up psychopath-in-love-with-Death Thanos rather than that asinine “humanitarian” version they ended up pushing on us.

papertownsy:

When Marvel puts Tom and Mark together so they can now spoil things they know nothing about x

That wouldn’t have been hard…

Maybe the movie would have sucked less if the writers hadn’t spent so much time writing fake scripts to keep everything Top Secret.

silverloke:

asfksfsdf the way he’s preparing himself to die

I’m only OK with this if I imagine it in a different context. I’m going to pretend this comes after Loki has done his damnedest to undermine Thanos’s team from within and actually keep Thor safe, rather than just dying pointlessly and leaving Thor no better off than he was. This is after Loki has played a long game and now his cover has been blown, or he’s been forced to reveal his true colors because he can’t do what Thanos demands to prove his loyalty. This is in the final act of Infinity War, not the first 5 minutes. That would be worth the acting job Tom Hiddleston is doing here.

loxxxlay:

dragon-heart-98:

capntony:

Do you have second thoughts?
Not anymore.

Ok but first of all, they’re not just criminals because ross said so, they’re criminals because they actively and wilfully committed crimes (illegally invading foreign countries, massive destruction of property, endangering civilians, seriously injuring/possibly killing law enforcement people just doing their damn job). Second, visions not there because he chose to go play happy couples with the crazy lady that put him through several floors of a building for no reason, not because of the accords. And third, Rhodey literally stated at the end of civil war that he doesn’t regret supporting the accords in spite of his injury, so why the sudden 180 here. Honestly the murder of James Rhodes was probably the most thorough and devastating in the entirety of infinity war, and this for set commemorates the exact moment I gave up all hope for the mcu

lmao so i dont really have a stake in this fight but i find these contradictions hilarious because guess who the directors were for civil war? :’)

The writers, Markus and McFeely, don’t seem to be aware of what they wrote. They think they made it clear that Cap was right and Tony was wrong, but for many of us (including Chris Evans) they did the exact opposite.

juliabohemian:

peoplearenotdiamonds:

STOP KILLING LOKI. JUST FUCKING STOP. HIM LIVING WOULD BE REFRESHING AT THIS POINT, MARVEL.

Or you know… another character acknowledging Loki’s pain. Or another character acknowledging that Loki has a reason for doing anything he’s ever done, other than him just being evil. Or another character just liking Loki for who he is. Or Thor acknowledging how shitty it must have been for Loki to find out he was adopted. Or Thor even acknowledging that Loki was lied to his entire life. Or Thor admitting to ever being a less than perfect brother.

But at this point, I would settle for Loki not being dead.

Tbh, I’m thinking he should’ve stayed dead in The Dark World, because it’s all been downhill from there.

incredifishface:

philosopherking1887:

@foundlingmother replied to your post

“Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s…”

Yeah, Thor 100% has the capacity to understand Loki’s grievances, he just didn’t get a chance to because he wasn’t even in Ragnarok, Thor* was. Heimdall might not be a saint, but I think it’s wrong to assume he saw Loki with Thanos. It seems unlikely he would have mentioned none of that. As for Loki pulling a double-cross… while I get the appeal of this, it seems like such an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc even ignoring Ragnarok.

I’m not sure I think it would have been Whedon’s angle.

I mean, I know that Thanos behaves kind of stupid in GotG, but I feel like having him accept Loki as his ally with all that happens… would have undermined him as a villain.

Right… I wasn’t completely on board with all of @juliabohemian‘s analysis on my other post. She and I seem to fundamentally disagree about Thor’s moral character and disposition toward Loki as shown in previous films: I think the character called “Thor” in Ragnarok is a radical departure from Thor as we’ve seen him in previous movies, which is why I refer to him as Thor*; she, and many other non-Thorki-shipping Loki fans, think that Ragnarok amplifies Thor’s previous tendencies toward self-absorption and insensitivity, but is not completely discontinuous with the character. I don’t see us coming to full agreement on that issue anytime soon, and that’s fine.

As to the issue of the double-cross being “an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc”… I actually disagree with you there. If you just mean it would have been unrealistic for Thanos to accept Loki as his ally, I do see where you’re coming from there, but there are ways around it. The idea of having Thanos take Thor as a hostage is one way. That way Thanos wouldn’t have to trust Loki; he would just have to trust Loki’s unwillingness to allow harm to come to Thor, which given what Thanos knows about him he absolutely would and should. I think that would appeal to Thanos for a couple of reasons:

(1) Good old-fashioned sadism. Whedon’s Thanos clearly wasn’t into any of that pseudo-benevolent Malthusian bullshit; the reference to “courting death” in the Avengers tag scene indicated that Whedon was picturing a Thanos obsessed with Lady Death like he is in the comics. No attempt would have been made to make that Thanos sympathetic. That Thanos is a creepy fucker who would have gotten a kick out of torturing Thor physically (just a little) and torturing Loki psychologically with the knowledge that a step out of line would mean pain and/or permanent damage to Thor. Ooh, maybe he would have cut off a finger or a toe when Loki made a decision to undermine Thanos that he was just barely able to pass off as an incompetent fuck-up. And Loki would have known that… and wouldn’t have hesitated to trade his own pain, but when it’s Thor’s it’s so much worse. (Should I be worried about myself, coming up with this shit?)

(2) It would mean that Loki wasn’t a completely wasted investment. If Thanos were a good economist (which clearly he isn’t…), he wouldn’t buy into the sunk costs fallacy, and he’d be perfectly happy cutting his losses and cutting Loki loose… but I think he’s into narrative neatness (OK, this is just “Abyss” Thanos now, never mind what Whedon would have done) and he would like the idea of making Loki useful after all. Plus, there must have been a reason he thought it was a good idea to trust Loki with the Tesseract retrieval mission – and the Mind Stone! – in the first place; he must think he’s good at some stuff.

If by “unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc,” you mean it wouldn’t be a realistic place for Loki’s character progression to go, then I definitely disagree. Part of what was so objectionable about Thor*’s treatment of Loki in Ragnarok was that he was effectively demanding that Loki become a different person as a condition of maintaining a relationship with Thor* (classic sign of an abusive relationship, btw). Of course, that demand was also based on the faulty premise, assumed by Ragnarok but by none of the previous films, that Loki’s basic nature or “essence” was the “god of mischief” who betrays people out of hedonistic self-interest or just because he thinks it’s fun. I mean, it’s not unreasonable for Thor to demand that Loki stop betraying him, but when you’re working on the assumption that that’s what Loki has been doing their whole lives, instead of just for the past 6 really shitty years out of 1000+, and that it’s just in his nature to do that, then you’ve really gotta wonder why Thor put up with it for as long as he did… and also you don’t give an abusive “change fundamentally or I’m leaving” ultimatum; you just fucking leave.

One of the best parts of TDW, which totally got me the first time I watched it, was when Loki makes a show of betraying Thor to trick Malekith into drawing the Aether from Jane. That was absolutely brilliant because it was Thor and Loki, together, taking advantage of some of Loki’s most distinctive features – illusion magic, acting ability, and a reputation for treachery – to achieve a good aim they shared. Having Loki pull a long con on Thanos would be that gambit writ large. And ideally, this time – in order for it to represent a progression from the incident in TDW rather than just a replay – Thor would not be on on the plan… but he would indicate, perhaps while conversing in a dungeon with one of Thanos’s other unfortunate prisoners, that he believes Loki is still on his side and is planning to double-cross Thanos in the end. He doesn’t know; he harbors some doubts; but he believes. That would represent character growth for both Thor and Loki: Thor is forced to trust Loki for a long period of uncertainty; and Loki is, on some level, trusting Thor to trust him. That, too, would be a source of anguish for Loki – wondering whether Thor thinks that Loki has betrayed him again, more grievously than ever – but he hopes, and maybe even believes (William James will-to-believe style, because it helps), that Thor believes Loki is doing the right thing, in his indirect, strategic way.

@fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @incredifishface, @seidrade, I’m bringing y’all in on my harebrained IW do-over ideas because I’m curious to know what you think. (I’m never writing this as a fic, because I’m not that good at plot details, but just the outline.)

i appreciate it, but I think I’ll pass. I can’t engage this level of mind power into fixing a movie I wouldn’t even have made. I simply don’t want to give Thanos a second of my mental time. He’s a stupid character with stupid motivations and he bores me. I would have preferred ye olde “rule the universe hur hur hur” kind of villain 145977577647 times, and failing that, the Thanos in love with Hela / Death was a good route to go to.

So all the artistic and narrative decisions started from a point which for me was already irreparably stupid and boring. they killed Loki in the first 5 minutes, and that’s when they lost me and never got me back.

If I was to conjecture ways to improve this film, it would be with an entirely different villain, with different motivations, and so my contribution as to what part Thor and Loki played in that imaginary story that never was is moot.

i’m bitter and miserable and you’ll find me in the universe next door raving about the Transformers. Now THAT is a plot.

I completely agree with you about the version of Thanos we saw in Infinity War, as written by those dimwitted hacks-turned-freshman boys in philosophy seminar Markus & McFeely and made “sympathetic” by the equally sophomoric Russos. I’m only interested in reimagining the movie with the Thanos who was in love with Death/Hela, largely because in the fic I’ve been writing about what happened to Loki between Thor and The Avengers, that was the motivation I was assuming (and actually wrote in, long before we got the ridiculous movie version of Thanos). And also because I’m fantasizing about the version of IW that Joss Whedon would have written if he hadn’t gotten fed up with Marvel’s meddling in AOU. I really don’t think he would have killed Loki in the first 5 minutes, because he was the one who established the connection with Thanos in the first place and would have wanted to give it a satisfying payoff, and aside from that all the evidence suggests that he was genuinely impressed with the work Hiddleston and Branagh put into building Loki’s character and was invested in continuing to give him depth and interest.

I’m also vaguely assuming in this imagining that we got the version of Ragnarok that we deserved, though I’m also not completely clear on what that would have looked like. Thor and Loki would have had a real fucking conversation, for one thing. I think it was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Hela actually had half of her face missing (Guillermo loves that shit), and she and Loki bonded over being seen by the world and themselves as monsters. Maybe she was Loki’s mother, not Thor’s sister. And she definitely didn’t die at the end, because she needs to show up as Thanos’s would-be love interest in IW.

juliabohemian:

philosopherking1887:

philosopherking1887:

Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s death scene in Infinity War as if it’s touching or redemptive. It was just stupid. He would have done Thor a lot more good if he’d actually tried to be a mole in Thanos’s campaign and pull another long con. As far as he knew, Thanos was just going to kill Thor as soon as he’d killed Loki; he did, in fact, leave Thor to die, and Thor was just lucky the Guardians happened to be close by. If Loki had actually tried to make a go of the double-cross, Thanos might have kept Thor alive to use as leverage over Loki. Which would not have been fun for either of them, but at least Loki would have known that he was safe-ish, and it would have bought both of them time to figure out a way to get the better of Thanos.

I’m never going to write that better version of Infinity War, because I don’t really know how to write comic book movies and also I don’t have time. But in my head there’s a vague version of what it would have been like if Joss Whedon had been writing it, including Loki pretending to be on Thanos’s side for most of the movie(s) and setting up some truly ingenious way to betray him at the end. And maybe he would then die heroically or maybe he would actually survive to start over with Thor, I don’t know. But his arc would have been worthy of the character as Hiddleston, Miller & Stentz, Branagh, and Whedon had established him.

Oh, and we would have found out WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED with Loki and Thanos in between “Thor 1” and “The Avengers.”

I think that some people are choosing to interpret aspects of that scene as touching or redemptive because it makes them feel better. Because the alternative is embracing that it was utterly pointless and that Loki’s death was just torture porn, a plot device to hype Thanos as a villain and to fuel Thor’s manpain. And that is a bitter pill to swallow.

What I mostly can’t handle are posts that say shit like:

Aww…isn’t it sweet how Odin forgave Loki in Ragnarok. No. Because that’s not what actually happened at all. And Loki’s list of grievances against Odin are far greater than anything Odin might hold against him. One might be able to argue that Odin voluntarily stayed in exile because he realized what a piece of shit he was and felt guilty about it. Perhaps Odin learned what happened to Loki when he fell from the Bifrost and felt bad for imprisoning him. But since nothing was explicitly stated, we can’t know that for sure.

Aww…isn’t is touching how Thor forgave Loki at the end of Ragnarok. No. Because that’s not what happened. Loki realized that in order to make things work with Thor, he would have to set aside his long list of valid grievances and accept that Thor was simply never going to understand his suffering. Thor was never going to understand him. And Loki finally embraced that his quest to be regarded Thor’s equal was a futile one. This isn’t to say Thor is a bad person either. Just that he doesn’t have the capacity to accept or understand what Loki has experienced or to give him what he needs. As I have stated in previous meta, Thor is a product of a flawed society and flawed parenting, just as Loki is.

Aww…isn’t it sweet how Heimdall accepted Loki at the end of Ragnarok. Well no. Because that’s not what really happened either. Heimdall is no saint in all of this, although I suspect he’s a good deal more responsible than most of the people who surround him. He is aware of a lot more than anyone else too. Meaning he has no plausible deniability. He should have been aware of at least SOME degree of Loki’s interaction with Thanos, even if he didn’t see any of the possible torture or abuse. He was also probably aware that Odin chose to stay on Earth, instead of reclaiming the throne, and of all the positive things that Loki did while posing as Odin (such as separating infinity stones and sending them far away) which is why he does not attempt to arrest Loki for his deception.

Aww…isn’t it cute how Loki accepted who he was in IW? No, it’s not cute. Yes, I do believe that Loki said Odinson and looked at Thor as a way of saying “we are brothers, regardless of all the other bullshit”. It may have been his way of saying goodbye. But a lot of his dialogue during this scene comes from a place of deep dysfunction. Thor’s last words to Loki are words of disapproval. Which is appropriate, since the bulk of their exchanged dialogue is basically Thor either judging or disapproving of Loki in some capacity. Loki accepting that he is Jotun is good, in a way. But it still does not address the racism that prevented him from doing so sooner. Loki stating that he is the god of mischief is actually rather confusing. Because the word mischief implies a lack of purpose. It implies just doing random shit for laughs. And that is actually the opposite of the Loki we saw prior to Ragnarok.

People interpret things in a way that comforts them. A lack of continuity is frustrating. So they will knit things together in a way that makes them feel consistent, even if they are most certainly not.

I mean, Thor was also a victim of unbelievably shitty writing – or should I say “writing”? since so much was improvised or just dictated on the spot by TW – in Ragnarok.

philosopherking1887:

Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s death scene in Infinity War as if it’s touching or redemptive. It was just stupid. He would have done Thor a lot more good if he’d actually tried to be a mole in Thanos’s campaign and pull another long con. As far as he knew, Thanos was just going to kill Thor as soon as he’d killed Loki; he did, in fact, leave Thor to die, and Thor was just lucky the Guardians happened to be close by. If Loki had actually tried to make a go of the double-cross, Thanos might have kept Thor alive to use as leverage over Loki. Which would not have been fun for either of them, but at least Loki would have known that he was safe-ish, and it would have bought both of them time to figure out a way to get the better of Thanos.

I’m never going to write that better version of Infinity War, because I don’t really know how to write comic book movies and also I don’t have time. But in my head there’s a vague version of what it would have been like if Joss Whedon had been writing it, including Loki pretending to be on Thanos’s side for most of the movie(s) and setting up some truly ingenious way to betray him at the end. And maybe he would then die heroically or maybe he would actually survive to start over with Thor, I don’t know. But his arc would have been worthy of the character as Hiddleston, Miller & Stentz, Branagh, and Whedon had established him.

Oh, and we would have found out WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED with Loki and Thanos in between “Thor 1” and “The Avengers.”

Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s death scene in Infinity War as if it’s touching or redemptive. It was just stupid. He would have done Thor a lot more good if he’d actually tried to be a mole in Thanos’s campaign and pull another long con. As far as he knew, Thanos was just going to kill Thor as soon as he’d killed Loki; he did, in fact, leave Thor to die, and Thor was just lucky the Guardians happened to be close by. If Loki had actually tried to make a go of the double-cross, Thanos might have kept Thor alive to use as leverage over Loki. Which would not have been fun for either of them, but at least Loki would have known that he was safe-ish, and it would have bought both of them time to figure out a way to get the better of Thanos.

I’m never going to write that better version of Infinity War, because I don’t really know how to write comic book movies and also I don’t have time. But in my head there’s a vague version of what it would have been like if Joss Whedon had been writing it, including Loki pretending to be on Thanos’s side for most of the movie(s) and setting up some truly ingenious way to betray him at the end. And maybe he would then die heroically or maybe he would actually survive to start over with Thor, I don’t know. But his arc would have been worthy of the character as Hiddleston, Miller & Stentz, Branagh, and Whedon had established him.

So I know you’ve probably discussed this at length at some point, but the way Loki was dealt in Infinity War… Why do you think he was utilized in that way, to literally be thrown to the side like a broken rag doll? Do you think it just had to do with the Russo’s trying to cram everyone in? Or could it be that he might return in some form and this was there way of including him now without raising questions about his whereabouts? (1/2)

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: 1 2 3 4

Here are reblogs of other people’s rants: 1 2 3

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.