illwynd:

foundlingmother:

illwynd:

foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

talxns:

i think about this a lot but how much better would thor 1 be if we got to see thor react to the fact that his beloved brother was a race that he grew up wanting to slaughter?? like was that not an important plot point?? THAT’S a better way for thor to realize that killing just to conquer is wrong, that’s how he should have realized the error of his ways, not just meeting mortals and wanting to protect them, but by hurting someone that he loved because of his arrogant ignorance and prejudice

@foundlingmother, I thought this might speak to you…

I love this for a couple reasons:

1. It makes Thor and Loki’s relationship the most important in the movie since it’s the relationship impacting Thor’s character arc, and that’s how it should be in a Thor movie.
2. The people Thor wants to conquer are Frost Giants, not humans. Asgard’s opinion of Midgard is in no way comparable to its opinion of Jotunheim. Learning how nice and cool humans are shouldn’t impact how he feels about Jotunheim. This is why I explain his change of heart in other ways.

The trouble is, I think a small change like, for instance, Thor noticing Loki turning blue when the Frost Giant touches him would change the plot entirely. If Thor had noticed that, he’d have grabbed Loki and noped the fuck out of the battle on Jotunheim. The conversation between him and Odin would have been entirely different. He probably wouldn’t have been banished, which means Loki wouldn’t have been regent.

There’s an interesting fanfic in that idea. (Obviously there are already works that have Thor find out Loki’s a Frost Giant and never get banished, but most of the ones I’ve read are pro-Odin, pro-Asgard, and anti-Jotunheim, and that’s just not my cup of tea.)

Oddly enough, I strongly disagree, because that change would make the movie *less* about their relationship and less compelling as a narrative. This isn’t to say I don’t want it to be addressed (wow, do I ever want a scene where they actually confront that particular revelation between them), but having that take place in Thor 1 would have dramatically weakened the story as a whole.

First, it wouldn’t make sense in terms of Thor’s character as it had been portrayed up till that point (and forward as well). This a character who is extremely kind and generous and good-hearted but also prone to taking too much for granted when things seem fine and whose arrogant streak makes him a bit blind to the perspectives of others. The growth that needs to occur in the first movie is not “learning that killing to conquer is wrong,” even though it takes place in that context. The way Thor needs to grow is to have his perspective get a shaking. He gets knocked down a peg, has to accept help from people he would have considered weaker, finds himself in a situation where all the things he counted on–his own position, his expected trajectory in life, the people he loved and trusted–are gone and he has to figure out who he is in this new situation and reevaluate the choices that got him there. He would not learn those lessons from finding out that Loki was an abandoned Jotun baby that Odin took in after the war. But moreover, the person Thor is at the beginning of the movie has not yet had the growth necessary to respond in any useful way to that revelation. The Thor who yells back at Odin that he’s a old fool for not waging preemptive war on Jotunheim for the vault incident would not have come quickly enough to the right understanding if he had seen Loki’s hand turn blue. He’d have suspected a trick or a curse (as Loki did also), and if those were disproved and he actually learned the truth at that point? Does anyone actually believe this would not have been disastrous? He’d have handled it so badly, and while there could certainly have been an interesting story there (quite a few fics’ worth), it would have very likely been an uglier one and one less focused on their brotherly relationship.

The reason the actual movie was in fact entirely focused on their relationship even though they spent half the movie not even on the same realm is that everything that happens to Thor–from deciding to go to Jotunheim to being banished to (nearly) dying at the hand of the Destroyer–was brought into motion by Loki, and we as the audience are aware of this but, crucially, Thor is not. It is their relationship playing out in shadows and reflections. We can see and understand Loki’s conflict and Loki’s resentment and Loki’s turmoil and the context for it. And at the same time we can see Thor’s growth as he deals with the shock of his changed circumstances. We can see Thor’s better traits shining through in his own trials. And we can see Thor’s blindness to what’s happening with Loki (and Loki’s awareness of Thor’s blindness) and how that mirrors the things that grew Loki’s resentment over the years. We’re able to see both of their stories unfolding at the same time and how completely connected these are even though they are not taking place in the same physical space. And then when they are in the same space–first, Loki visiting Thor on Midgard to lie to him, and then after Thor regains Mjolnir and returns to Asgard–we can watch as their relationship evolves as Thor grows and Loki cracks. Thor pleading with Loki, looking to him as a lifeline, as the most trusted person in Thor’s old life, and Loki turning him away because he can’t, things can’t go back to how they were, and Loki doesn’t trust Thor with this knowledge. And then Thor’s return, grown and changed and having to deal with knowing that something has gone very wrong with Loki but he lacks an understanding of what; in this he is still having to face the ripples of his old arrogance and ignorance, the problems that he had not even been aware of in his relationship with his brother. 

And this conflict unfolding at this point, after Thor has had the shakeup of being banished, and after Loki has had time to dig himself well into a violent breakdown–Thor has had the necessary growth to deal with this situation better, but the stakes have gotten higher and the situation has gotten worse and all our hearts break because their goals are fundamentally in conflict so someone has to lose–and we have seen through both their eyes and we know how important their relationship is to both of them, so that means there can be no real winning, either. 

I don’t think you’d get that same effect if you formulated the story so that it dealt with that relationship and Loki’s origins head-on.

If the story had been centered on Thor learning a lesson about not killing Jotnar because Loki was one, it would have been very likely to become an after-school special on prejudice.

Dealing with it obliquely, with their relationship reflected in and infused through everything that happens–that makes the story so much more.

I happen to agree with a lot of what you said @illwynd, which is why I specified that I think it would make for an interesting fic. I love the idea of Loki’s heritage being dealt with head-on, but I prefer for the sake of the overall relationship arc between Thor and Loki in the MCU that Thor retain its structure (not least because we have the option to explore these canon divergent AUs, but also diverge from canon in completely different ways at completely different points). That said, I’d still have preferred if they left in the scenes that hinted at Thor’s vulnerability. I think it helps to explain why three days in an insecure position is enough to sober Thor up sufficiently.

Yeah, I guessed that we were at least somewhat on the same page! I was mainly disagreeing with the idea expressed in the OP that Thor 1 would have been a better movie by dealing with that aspect explicitly, and I wanted to go into why I thought so, because there is a bit of a trend lately to discuss Thor 1 (and Avengers and TDW) in what are actually pretty inaccurate ways and I wanted to make sure to give adequate context.

If you mean the deleted scenes, yes, at least most of those I wish they had kept in as well! One of my favorite scenes in the whole damn thing is the deleted/extended version of Loki goading Thor into going to Jotunheim. There’s just so much going on in it, so much hinted history between them. 😀

After reading @illwynd‘s lovely essay above, I completely agree; I didn’t think it all the way through before sharing the original post. The fact that so much of the plot turns on incomplete information and misunderstandings can make it infuriating to watch but also very Shakespearean. Or Attic-tragedian, even. And I absolutely know what you mean about people discussing the previous movies in inaccurate ways: they’ve been reading the Ragnarok retconning of their characters back into previous movies – most notably, by portraying all of Loki’s actions as completely unmotivated and unintelligible, the way they’re framed in Ragnarok; claiming that everything he does, from letting the Jotnar in to disrupt Thor’s coronation to attempting to destroy Jotunheim, was done just because he’s “the god of mischief” and likes to fuck shit up for no reason.

The important thing about Thor’s banishment to Earth is that it represents the “high brought low” trope (an expression that my English prof pal @fuckyeahrichardiii taught me; a literary education is never complete). I came across a strange reblog chain once where people were describing Thor 1 as a case of “meeting the savages,” where Thor’s sojourn on Earth, among people he considered his racial inferiors, was supposed to teach him to respect the Jotnar… I think in general (sorry, @foundlingmother) that there’s been a bit too much reading present concerns about racism and colonialism into the Thor movies; Asgard is a premodern pagan society, and I suspect they really don’t think about other races and cultures the way we do now. It used to be completely normal to utterly crush your enemies (hence the thing in the Old Testament about eradicating the Amalekites, down to their sheep and cattle) and even make their land uninhabitable so they wouldn’t be able to rise up and pose a threat any time soon (hence the custom of sowing fields with salt, as the Romans did to the Carthaginians). Not that any of this is good, just that it seems a little strange to me to approach Asgard with modern critiques of colonialism, which presuppose that the conquerors themselves espouse a basically Christian, post-Enlightenment moral worldview.

The point of Thor’s banishment, from Odin’s POV as well as that of the film, was to humble him by making him helpless and forcing him to rely on the hospitality of others (and so much the better if they’re weaker and beneath him in station!), not to teach him respect for other cultures (clearly, as we see in TDW, Odin doesn’t care about that). Thor’s practical humility, so to speak, does come along with a measure of epistemic humility: he learns to question the things he used to take for granted, to question his own perspective, and therefore to give more consideration to the perspectives of others. Importantly, he learns to question what he’d always believed (indeed, been taught by Odin to believe) about his own worth relative to others, including Midgardians, Loki, and (to some degree) Frost Giants.

I thought this part of illwynd’s commentary was especially insightful (and heartbreaking):

And then when they are in the same space – first, Loki visiting Thor on Midgard to lie to him, and then after Thor regains Mjolnir and returns to Asgard – we can watch as their relationship evolves as Thor grows and Loki cracks. Thor pleading with Loki, looking to him as a lifeline, as the most trusted person in Thor’s old life, and Loki turning him away because he can’t, things can’t go back to how they were, and Loki doesn’t trust Thor with this knowledge. And then Thor’s return, grown and changed and having to deal with knowing that something has gone very wrong with Loki but he lacks an understanding of what; in this he is still having to face the ripples of his old arrogance and ignorance, the problems that he had not even been aware of in his relationship with his brother.

What’s so heartbreaking is that Loki, at this point, has no reason to trust Thor with the terrible secret of his birth, no reason to trust that he’s changed and become more open-minded and sensitive to Loki’s feelings and perspective. I’ve remarked before on how Thor’s apology to Loki after he sends the Destroyer to Midgard – “Brother, whatever I have done to wrong you, whatever I have done to lead you to do this, I am truly sorry” – is kind of a non-apology, because it’s hard to truly repent (which is to say, rethink, reevaluate) something you don’t know you did. So you can’t entirely blame Loki for not trusting that apology or taking it seriously; but at this point you also can’t entirely blame newly matured Thor for not knowing what immature arrogant Thor did, because immature Thor was too blind and self-centered to really be aware of the ways he was neglecting and belittling Loki and how much it hurt him, and mature Thor doesn’t really have any more information, just a new willingness to listen. So their confrontation has the kind of inevitability you want from a good Shakespearean tragedy: just one little bit of information shared at the right time could avert the whole thing (I’ve even written some little AU vignettes along those lines), but the urgency of the situation and the heightened emotions means there’s no real opportunity for that information to be exchanged.

Definitely planning to write fic where Thor and Loki actually discuss the Jotun heritage thing… but set after Thor’s long trajectory of maturation (and ignoring TR’s reversal of that trajectory, while accepting the broad outlines of the plot as canon).