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.

Okay, I really hope I’m not bothering you too much, but what about Alan Taylor director of The Dark World? Idk how much it leans towards Christianity versus Norse mythology, but that was the film that really made me fall in love with Loki. Hiddleston’s portrayal was heartbreaking and the whole narrative with his mom?? Why are people not talking about Alan Taylor?

Nope, not bothering me, and I will get to your other question eventually…

The reason I don’t talk much about Alan Taylor is because I don’t really think of him as an artist with a distinctive voice or vision, the way Kenneth Branagh, Joss Whedon, and Taika Waititi are. That might be unfair to him, but I only really know him as one of a rotating cast of directors on Game of Thrones, where the writer and the director are almost always different people, and the “voice” of the series, if there is one, belongs either to George R.R. Martin or to Benioff & Weiss (especially in the last season… what a mess of disappointing clichés).

Now, it’s also true that the writer and the director of Thor 1 and Thor: Ragnarok were separate people: Thor 1 was written by Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz; Ragnarok was, in theory, written by Eric Pearson. However, by all accounts TR was about 80% “improvised,” which is to say, Taika Waititi suggested/shouted things to say instead of what was in the script… and Jeff Goldblum came up with his own shit. One of the more egregious examples of directorial departure from the original screenplay appears to be the infamous bit where Loki plans to betray Thor to the Grandmaster and then Thor outsmarts him by putting the obedience disk on him, gives him a smug little lecture about growth and change while he’s convulsing in pain, and then leaves him there incapacitated and defenseless (which I still think is unbelievably cruel, negligent of Loki’s safety, and OOC). According to people who have read the novel version (which I haven’t but maybe should) – @whitedaydream might be the person I got this from, or @lucianalight – that entire sequence was completely absent from the novelization. And we seem to have some evidence that they filmed a version without it: in some of the trailers: Loki shows up on the Bifrost with the rest of the Revengers rather than arriving later with the big ship. So even if the outlines of the plot were provided by Eric Pearson’s screenplay, the tone and character of the movie – its “humor,” if you liked it, or its soulless flippancy and cruelty (to both characters and fans), if you didn’t – indubitably came from Taika Waititi.

Thor 1 adhered more closely to the screenplay – which is available on IMSDb, if you’re interested – so I consider Miller & Stentz to have more of a role in its creative vision than Pearson did with TR. Stentz has even commented on Twitter about the theme of internalized racism; and that writing team also did X-Men: First Class, in which you can see some of the same themes and also the (totally unintentional…?) homoerotic tension between the two main male characters. That said, you can definitely see Kenneth Branagh’s distinctively Shakespearean sensibility in the way some of the important confrontations are presented – and that’s a major part of what gives that movie its overall tone and emotional power. (Also, as this post notes, Branagh & Hiddleston made some notable departures from the acting instructions in the screenplay that contributed to its tragic and also gay-incestuous vibe.)

The Dark World, as much as I loved it for its Thorki fic realness and ANGST, was kind of a creative mess. Patty Jenkins was supposed to direct it, but then backed out for reasons I’m not completely clear on, and Alan Taylor was brought in kind of last-minute. The screenplay was mostly written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, who wrote the Captain America movies, Infinity War, and Avengers 4, and whom I am fond of calling dimwitted hacks because that’s what they are. (The First Avenger was fine; The Winter Soldier is massively overrated and frankly kind of boring and confusing IMO; Civil War was a disaster of muddled, unsympathetic characterization and missed opportunities for interesting philosophical exploration; Infinity War was similarly disastrous, and showed us exactly why dimwitted hacks should not be attempting to explore philosophical issues.) I say “mostly” because Joss Whedon was brought in as a script doctor (one of his original jobs in Hollywood) to rewrite some scenes that weren’t working, including an “emotional” scene between Thor and Jane (not sure which one), the notorious Thorki bro-boat scene (and you can definitely see the hallmarks of his writing in that one), and Loki’s shapeshifting scene. Loki’s trial scene at the beginning was also a late addition, inspired by a TDW prelude comic; I honestly don’t know who wrote that scene, but the comic seems to have been written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost. The upshot is that TDW was most definitely a horse designed by committee, so it’s hard to identify whose creative vision it was expressing. I can identify Alan Taylor’s influence in the dark, grungy Game of Thrones-esque aesthetic, but I’m not sure where else to find him.

Also, on a separate note, I know you’re not a fan of Ragnarok, but do these feelings extend towards Valkyrie? I was wondering where the heck she was and if you had any theories

Answering your previous question(s) will involve digging up some old posts where I’ve addressed/ranted about what I think was going on with Loki’s death in Infinity War, so I’ll deal with that tomorrow (I hope). This one’s a little more straightforward.

To set the record straight: disliking Ragnarok on the whole does not mean that I dislike every single thing about it; it’s just that I don’t feel like I need to add a disclaimer specifying what I didn’t hate every time I want to make an argument regarding what I thought was bad. I do like Valkyrie (or Brunnhilde, rather, since that’s her name). The things I like about her are probably the usual things that are cited when people talk about how awesome she was: a woman of color was allowed to inhabit an archetype that’s usually reserved for men; she wasn’t over-sexualized; the possibility of romance with Thor was allowed to remain a mere suggestion. She’s a morally flawed badass, which is great.

However, I do have some issues with the way her story was handled. The film seemed remarkably blasé about the time she spent as a slave-trader, in much the way that it (and Bruce!) was inappropriately blasé about the fact that the Hulk had spent the last 2 years killing gladiator slaves for sport. And also the fact that she nonchalantly pulverized some of her fellow scrappers… I mean, I guess they were about to kill Thor, but that was a lot of casual death that never got put on her moral tab. To reiterate, I like the fact that she’s morally flawed; I like heroes who are morally flawed. But it also needs to be acknowledged. As a Loki fan in the first instance, I’m tired of people insisting at me that I need to acknowledge all the terrible things Loki has done before I’m allowed to like him, while out of the other side of their mouths telling me that I should stop insisting that Thor fans acknowledge his moral failings. There is a clear double standard, in fandom as in the films themselves, between the characters who are designated “heroes” and those who are designated “villains”: once you’ve played the villain role, you can sacrifice yourself to save the universe but still never live down your crimes; but if you’ve been put in the hero role, your crimes are automatically expunged, even if they’re comparable in extent to the so-called villain’s. (Well, except that the Team Cap people are constantly going on about Tony’s crimes… but that’s because they’ve cast him as a villain.)

I’m also not thrilled that Valkyrie has been presented both by Marvel and by the fandom as a “replacement” for Jane Foster – nay, as an upgrade, who’s “more equal” to Thor (per Kevin Feige) and also better in social justice terms because she’s not white (according to Tumblr). That, however, is not a mark against Valkyrie as a character. I just don’t like the way she’s been implicitly or explicitly opposed to Jane, as if you’re only allowed to like one. They have different strengths; Jane’s strength is her intellect, and as a 5′1″ academic who most certainly cannot beat people up, that appeals to me. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with Thor being attracted to a woman for her intelligence and creativity rather than her warrior’s prowess. I wish the two characters had been allowed to coexist. With Jane and Darcy unceremoniously booted, I’m pretty sure Ragnarok, unlike the previous two Thor films, does not pass the Bechdel test.

As to where Brunnhilde is now… I think IW didn’t address it because the writers didn’t totally know what was going on with Ragnarok and also were lazy/didn’t care. My headcanon is that Thor ordered her to lead the Asgardian civilians who couldn’t fight due to age or disability onto whatever lifeboats/escape pods were on the Ark and then protect them wherever they ended up.