Tag: infinity war rewrite

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.

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.

@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.)