A couple of thoughts I had after I listened to this interview by Russos:
– If you’re killing off a character, and audience doesn’t believe it, you’re doing something wrong.
– If you’re killing off a character, and have to break the 4th wall by using another character as your voice to tell the audience this is true, you’re doing something wrong.
– If you have to do the previous twice, you’re doing something wrong.
– If you have to kill of 7/8 of a race to make your character more interesting and human, you’re doing something wrong.
– If you think you have to kill the character to complete their arc, you’re wrong.
All of this infuriates me. You can’t just ignore the fact that Loki has a huge fanbase just because you don’t want them to exist, especially when they are partially responsible for the success of the franchise.
I guess 10 minutes of screentime didn’t warrant it?
Sorry, I had to.
Uhm, I’m sure there is a technical reason for this, but I’ll go with:
-he isn’t an Avenger
-he isn’t the name of a franchise (like RDJ as Iron Man, Evans as Captain America, etc.)
-he isn’t a major part of the movie
-Marvel is full of dumbos who thought they had a second class character but hired a first class actor to play him and then didn’t properly explore said character when said actor gave the world an intriguing, complex, and fascinating portrayal that goes beyond anything else said dumbos have put on screen
Not sorry.
Kevin Feige said all this shit after Thor and The Avengers about how they were “putting their chips on Loki” because the movies wouldn’t work if Loki wasn’t a compelling villain… but his popularity took off beyond what they wanted him for. They intended him to be a function, not really a character. But when your Shakespearean director hires another Shakespearean actor, you’re going to get a character – and one who’s more interesting than the characters you’re trying to foreground. So they did their best in Ragnarok and IW to reduce him back to a function.
This is going to be a very personal post, with very personal opinion. You don’t have to agree and surely things can be see differently and in a way more positevely but I have to say it. Feel free to ignore this useless post.
You know what upset me, beyond Loki’s fate, beyond the utterly disrespect towards him, beyond his character regression (he starts by being the God of Mischief and ended by being a silly knife-thrower, deprived of any of his own powers. We don’t see him playing significant tricks and illusions since TDW.), beyond any attempt to dismiss him?
The “No more resurrection this time”. I know…apparently things not ended here, next year Avengers 4 will be released and we will finally see if all this nonsense can be fixed up (well, I’m seriously hopeless regarding Loki, but anyway…another unrequited opinion of mine.).
However this line makes me cringe. Because in my eyes, I see it address not only at Loki as merely character for plot needs, but to what he represents for his audience.
Personally speaking, I feel deeply connected to him, because i’m one of his army, one of his people,…one of those persons who sees him like a symbol of…can I say hope? I am insecure about everything, my life is a bunch of mess, I have deep fears and anxiety, I am the black sheep for one particular half of my family because I’m the female and the introvert (on the contrary, my brother is the first male heir, the only man who carry on family name, the extrovert…) and I haven’t reached any social achievement. I am always been the loser,…in most things, the average one.
Then Loki is arrived and his figure was so powerful for me. He was lied to, he’s been hurts, he failed but he never give up. He fights. He stands proud. He lives his life being himself. He craves love and attention, and despite all he never misses to help in his own way. He’s an outsider who fights no matter what. He’s complex, deep, emotional, smart and frail. Yet strong. Despite all the superheroes around him, he fights and never give up.
So I did it too. I tried to stay strong. I can’t explain how…as I can’t tell you all the nights passed writing pages on my journal talking to him for venting all my shit out.
But now they said that “No resurrection this time”. So we lose. No, I wrong,…I lose. My heart is broken, not only because Loki’s fate, but because they’ve stated that there’s no place for me. For the outsider, for the life-long loser. No hope. I’ll be always the average, no matter how much I try, or fight for. I don’t know…I don’t even seen IW, I can’t bear to see THAT scene… either way that line was brutal. Words weight, are important, and those words are been cruel. For Loki. For me. I don’t know about others, for me are been mean. I feel forgotten and left behind.
I know, I overreact…it’s surely true, I admit. But this is what I feel these days. And I understand also that it’s stupid reacting this way for a movie, or a fictional character…we have discussed many times how fictional characters often are not only merely fiction. But something beyond fiction. I also know that in my beloved Loki’s Speech I screamed that my King will live forever and ever, this is something I feel deep in my soul. For now.
Sorry for this long post full of nonsense. It was just a personal outburst no one is forced to read. It’s been a need I had to let this out.
Don’t apologize for expressing how you feel. It’s not nonsense. This whole thing… it’s like being slapped in the face over and over.
Just… fuck Marvel and their nazi propaganda.
Indeed don’t apologize, you are not alone. If Loki has thought me one thing: no matter how many times you get battered down, always make sure to rise again. (The time lying on the ground crying and screaming doesn’t matter, just eventually get up and rise above yourself when the time feels right for you.)
Don’t apologize for how you feel. Just know that he is OUR Loki as much as Marvel’s… he has many fates, as many fates as fans.
Popular culture has always had a love-hate relationship with social outsiders. They need us, because we are interesting, and creative. They need us because without a little bit of chaos, society (and art) stagnate. But they never want to keep us.
They bring in an Agent of Chaos™ (like a Fallen Woman, or The Gay, or in this case Loki) and they use that Agent of Chaos™ as a vehicle for social renewal, but they don’t know what to do with The Outsider™ once things have been renewed. Because if they want to have Moral Standards™, they can’t possibly integrate the Fallen Woman or The Gay into the fabric of Re-established Society, because then it looks like they’re condoning Antisocial Behavior™.
This usually means that The Outsider has to be gotten rid of somehow. For most of literary history, that means that The Fallen Woman, or The Gay has to die–for the Victorians, it usually meant the Fallen Woman fell ill of some kind of elegant disease and wasted away slowly. Loki got killed to fuel his valiant brother on to a Vengeful Quest™.
We, as outsiders, will have to write our own endings, because pop culture (esp Hollywood) will not do it for us. It sucks, but we are strong, and we are creative, and we will not be ashamed of who we are anymore.
We may not have as big a budget, but we have fan fiction, and fan art, and we have each other.
On top of all the bullshit reasons for what happened in the first ten minutes of IW the Russos are saying Tom is getting too old to play Loki?
Tom Hiddleston is getting TOO OLD to play Loki?
Thor
The Avengers
Thor: The Dark World
Thor: Ragnarok
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 4 (on set filming)
Yeah…there is a HUGE difference in his looks thanks to his age *rolls eyes* Fucking idiots. Killing off a beloved character and a huge fan favorite not only for stupid reasons that reduce his character to a mere shadow behind Thor but because Tom is getting “too old” is idiotic. I feel awful for Tom Hiddleston because that is insulting. On top of that they even mention how it upset Tom to find out what happened to Loki (a character he genuinely loves).
All of the actors are aging and their ages quite often don’t match up with their characters. I’m not saying that because I want those characters to get killed off but I’m pointing out the ridiculousness of that statement. Why not just admit you didn’t know what to do with the character in IW and decided to take an easy out by sacrificing him and then milking the fan’s love of the character/actor during promotions? Loki didn’t need to die and he certainly didn’t need to die like that. A story doesn’t come full circle only when the character has been brutally murdered and that character certainly shouldn’t be killed as some kind of twisted motivation for Thor. Death isn’t the only motivation. It’s a cheap, easy motivation and Loki’s character deserves more.
This better be a bunch of bullshit to throw everyone off of Avengers 4 and not the actual truth. Also, because I can, someone started a petition for Loki. Fans managed to bring him back in Thor: The Dark World…why not again?
T H I S
I am counting on those leaked pics from A4 as actually being in the film. And if they go back in time to the first Avengers to unwind what Thanos did then they can DAMN WELL unwind Loki’s ‘death’ as well. He’s a god, for fuck’s sake.
Except they won’t undo Loki’s death because they want him to stay dead. They’ll taunt his fans with this little flashback, maybe allow us to hope they’ll actually give him a meaningful role in the next movie so that maybe we’ll buy movie tickets, and then yank it away again because we’re not the fans they’re looking for. If Thor wonders why they can’t turn time back far enough to save Loki, Heimdall, and half of Asgard, Doctor Strange or Hank Pym or Captain Marvel or someone will say something cryptic about how they can only defeat Thanos if those people stay dead, or how it would be disastrous to cause too much disruption to the fabric of spacetime, or some similar bullshit. But it’s just as likely that Thor won’t ask. They wanted to fridge Loki and Heimdall to give Thor the proper “motivation,” to have him appropriately desperate and desolate, but they probably won’t even think to have him try to save the people he lost.
The age thing was just a flimsy excuse. They were filming IW and A4 concurrently, so Hiddleston wouldn’t be any older if they left him alive in the latter. No one was saying that he had to keep appearing in MCU movies forever, but killing a character violently isn’t the only way to take them out of future films. They just don’t care about giving a plausible or satisfying end to his character arc.
So Marvel is saying Using Loki’s death as revenge motivation for Thor. Wasn’t the story going that Loki had been tortured and tormented by Thanos into attacking New York, and the fact that this was done to his brother couldn’t have been enough motivation for Thor? No, they had to just brutally kill him off and get him out of the picture because they’re at a loss as to what to do with him. Those brilliant minds at Marvel.
Agree, plus, even if we go by the way of Thor’s character arc, his personal growth came from him setting aside his revenge fantasies and laying down his life for the protection of people of Puente Antiguo. From laying aside his sense of superiority and becoming a team member of Avengers to protect Earth. Heck, even in Ragnarok, Thor was hell-bent on returning to Asgard to protect its people from Hela. Why did they have to destroy it and make personal revenge the only ‘worthy’ motivation for him?
I find it infinitely sad that ‘heroes’ would need it to be ‘personal’ before they muster the motivation to do the right thing and fight the big bad to protect innocent lives. It is pathetic, uninspired writing indeed.
First of all, here’s the link so that you can listen for yourself if you want. And to avoid confusion about what the hell everyone is talking about.
This confirms what I’ve thought since I first saw Infinity War: that the “No resurrections this time” line was coming directly from the creators rather than just from Thanos; that the filmmakers are tired of Loki, don’t understand why fans (especially fans who aren’t members of their straight cis male target audience) find him so interesting, and are perfectly happy to disregard character in order to use him as a plot device. And they really do sound smug about it; it’s like they’re glad to be rid of this unexpected favorite of the silly fangirls whose money they’ll happily take but whose affection they don’t really want (God forbid these movies should be mistaken for chick flicks!).
Loki’s death was in no way intended to serve his character arc, regardless of what people say about how it shows that he’s redeemed himself (gotta have that good old redemption through death) and is now willing to die for Thor (which he already showed he was in TDW, ignoring Ragnarok’s retcon that he deliberately faked it). His death was made as quick and violent as possible to build up Thanos as a villain – which, btw, doesn’t even work if “the reigning villain of the Marvel Universe” has to be acting uncharacteristically stupid for Thanos to be able to kill him – and to get Thor to a place where he’s lost everything. Again. Because that totally hasn’t been done before in the first Thor movie and again in Thor: Ragnarok. In short, Loki was fridged, and not even in a plausible or helpful way.
I guess I must have been giving some credence to the theories of why Loki is still alive or will come back, because this confirmation makes me feel sick. I don’t know if I’m going to boycott the MCU entirely… but I’m definitely going to make an effort to watch the things I want to watch without paying. And I’m definitely not going to see Avengers 4 until I know what they end up doing with Loki, why there’s that flashback, etc.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but in regards to the opening scene, They emphasized the “no resurrection this time” line and Josh said “that was a very important line” and they said “YES”. Means to me that all of these theories that Loki is alive are a waste.
They also said basically they killed Heimdall and Loki to take everything away from Thor and give him motivation to be the hero, but then also to make it personal so he made the mistake of wanting revenge on Thanos and not to just kill him- to have that moment to say that “I told you I’d get you” which was Thor’s mistake and allowed Thanos to do the snap. Both Thor and Quill allowed their personal feelings of anger and revenge overtake them and ruin their actual chance to defeat Thanos.
So basically they tossed Loki away in a way that was totally out of character just to make Thor more sympathetic. I love Thor and all but that is horseshit.
So the black and queer coded characters are used for the white, male power fantasy’s development. Yeah, fuck them. I ain’t seeing 4.
Black, queer coded and female characters. Yup.
Loki, Heimdall, and Gamora all got fridged. Real original, guys. Such revolutionary filmmaking.
At least Frigga died being badass. Loki died being an idiot. They just wanted to get him out of the way as quickly as possible, character consistency be damned.
Loki is the Philosopher King 