I think it would have been cute, but I don’t know that it would make a difference.
It’s not like Thor doesn’t already have scenes that are meant to show Loki being mocked or in Thor’s shadow (admittedly some of the best examples were cut, but I know people who believe Loki’s got no legit problems who’ve seen those scenes). People will write anything off to fit their idea of what a character’s about.
Some hate for Loki comes as a reaction to people who don’t acknowledge his faults. It puts a lot of thoughtful people in the middle of a big fight over the character. We expect him to be held accountable, so we hate him, and we ask people to recognize the motivations for his crimes as something more then “he’s just evil”, so we’re stanning for him or woobifying him.
Part of why so many people have decided Loki’s a shallow, lazy, power hungry narcissist is Thor: Ragnarok being deemed the best Thor movie (I know this because I’ve followed the same people, and I know that pre-Ragnarok’s release they saw Loki’s character slightly more sympathetically). I take issue with this because it’s the third Thor movie, and it completely reboots both Loki and Thor’s character arcs. The characterization just doesn’t flow well with the other movie in the MCU. People will continue to hold it up as the pinnacle of Thor and Loki, and retroactively apply the character traits they present in Ragnarok to the other movies, despite that not being how time and story structure works.
What I’m saying is that people who overlook Loki’s motivations aren’t concerned about logic or canon. They may say they are, but they’re really not. They just want a simple heroes and villains narrative, and that’s not what Thor is. It’s not even what Ragnarok is, truth be told, but somehow the movie successfully convinced people that a mean Thor was a hero (maybe because he keeps saying he is–people seem to believe everything that comes out of Thor’s mouth even when he’s demonstrably wrong and/or overreacting because he’s upset).
Hey, at least Selvig didn’t *call* him “Thor.” Teachers were confusing me with my sister from elementary through high school.
We have very little to go on, canonically; there’s just the one scene with Odin in the vault. From that, I think, we’re supposed to gather that child!Thor was confident, rambunctious, and belligerent, while child!Loki was more hesitant and anxious – and especially anxious to keep up with his big brother and gain his father’s approval. This is all very much in keeping with the way Thor and Loki are portrayed as young adults early in the first Thor movie; I think we’re supposed to see the seeds of their adult characteristics in their behavior as children.
I also have some headcanons about Thor and Loki as children, one of which I put into my Thor/Loki fic Starting Over (there’s nothing sexual or romantic in this passage, though, so it’s safe for non-shippers):
Loki had been sensitive as a child, prone to cry at what others might consider small hurts or slights or disappointments. When he had grown old enough to join the other noble children of the palace at play, they mocked him for it, called him weak, babyish, womanish, unmanly. Even before adolescence, Loki had learned to keep his tears—and along with them, it seemed, his genuine smiles—to himself. Thor had grown up to be free with his emotions, to weep unabashedly for fallen comrades or lost loves, even at a bard’s haunting rendition of a tragic tale. But Loki never unlearned the lesson that vulnerability was weakness, that tears were a source of shame. He wept in the presence of others only when his anguish was so great that he could not hold it back, and even then would try to hide his tears, to turn aside or cover his face or find a way to escape.
So when Thor saw Loki crying openly, he felt like a child again, watching his little brother fall and skin his knee when their mother was not there to dry his tears and kiss it better. Loki’s wounds were too deep to salve with such simple comfort, but Thor could think of nothing to do but to fold his brother in his arms and let Loki cry on his shoulder.
That’s meant to account for the fact that Loki often seems to be on the edge of tears, but only spills over in moments of real crisis/confrontation, and that he’s basically a volcano of bottled-up emotions (resentment, jealousy, self-doubt, self-loathing) that erupts into full-fledged psychosis with the disastrous revelations of the first Thor film. I mean, Thor has some anger management problems, which is only to be expected in a patriarchal warrior culture, but otherwise seems to have a reasonably healthy relationship with his emotions. Loki is a poster child for long-term untreated mental illness.
“There was one time my brother transformed himself into a snake because he knows how much I like snakes, and so I picked the snake up to admire it, but then he turned back and went “AAHH! It’s me!” And then he stabbed me. We were eight at the time.”
Thor, Loki and ‘The Warriors three’ attempt to travel to Jotunheim via the bifrost, ‘Thor’ (2011) // Loki’s face in that last gif makes me so sad. Like I love Thor, and he has developed so much as a character, but it is clear in this first film that sometimes he let his role of heir to the throne over cloud his actions towards his brother, and he probably was quite bossy.
“Even so, Loki felt no rancor at this point in his life – his stepbrother WAS perfect: beautiful, powerful, golden. He adored him. And if Thor repaid that adoration with little slights and humiliations, it was a price Loki was only too willing to pay for his company.”
i can’t believe thor wearing arm guards with loki’s helmet on them in avengers AND thor having a strand of loki’s hair braided into his own hair in age of ultron are both real things that the costume department did and loki in ragnarok still has the gall to ask poor thor “did you mourn me?” like yes loki you made your jock brother so sad that he started accessorizing
@redwoodriver @agent0hio the receipts. the hair I thought at first was jane’s but in other shots it’s 100% black and silky lookin….. like hey marvel? I just wanna talk. i just wanna talk
The thing is that unless these details are explained to the audience within the film, they might as well not have existed. Just like J.K. Rowling announcing to an audience at Carnegie Hall that Dumbledore was gay, but not mentioning it in the book that had just been published, it makes no impact on the way viewers interpret the film. And. unless the MCU makes the significance of these costume details explicit, it’s going to remain questionable as to whether Thor did these things in memory of Loki, or whether they’re immaterial as far as the films are concerned.
That’s not really the same thing. There is no textual evidence for Dumbledore’s sexuality, just Jo’s word.
The costume IS the textual evidence in Thor, it’s not announced but it is part of the text. My high school English teacher would allow me to use the armour and the braid as evidence in an essay, there is no evidence in the text for Dumbledore.
Small details are important in film, tiny things that aren’t necessary to the plot but if noticed enhance it are called World Building, your Dumbledore example is a lack of World Building
The gauntlets are indisputably a tribute to Loki; the hair thing is less clear. I saw someone speculating that it’s probably just a black ribbon, in which case it could be a sign of mourning for both Frigga and Loki. If it’s Loki’s hair… well.
“Please don’t cut my hair!”
*cries*
Oh shit, that really would give some new significance to Thor’s protectiveness of his long hair…