Tag: thor in thor ragnarok

juliabohemian:

kaori04:

latent-thoughts:

philosopherking1887:

Have the people calling Thor the biggest Loki stan/apologist actually seen “Ragnarok”? Because Thor basically spends the entire movie calling Loki a horrible person except for when he does exactly what Thor wants him to because he gave him an ultimatum and electrocuted him.

This baffles me too. Because, in order to be his stan or even apologize on Loki’s behalf, Thor must, on some level, sympathize with him?

Which is not the case in Ragnarok, as you pointet out. It’s completely the opposite way. Thor not only can’t understand Loki at all, he doesn’t even try to.

I sometimes wonder if it’s an instance of projection, where these people project their own thoughts and emotions on to Thor or Loki and try to normalise their relationship in their head so much that it digresses from what actually happened in the movie.

I sometimes wonder if it’s an instance of projection, where these people project their own thoughts and emotions on to Thor or Loki and try to normalise their relationship in their head so much that it digresses from what actually happened in the movie.

The movie exuses Thor in his behaviour (or probably “encourages" is a better word), plus the movie is highly enjoyable and therefore appealing to the majority of an audience, plus no one watches Marvel movies to think deeply into it => people are likely to embrace what film frames as “normal”/”healthy” as

normal/healthy.

It’s very hard to doubt something that you liked that much and what brought you a joy. (That’s why I wish TW would use his talent more thoughtfully, it’s a very powerful tool in influencing people’s minds)

I feel like Thor started roasting Loki in the first Thor movie and hasn’t stopped since. “I must apologize for my brother. He’s a fucking idiot. Also he’s a adopted. And a terrible person…go team Avengers though, amirite???”

Obviously it’s fine for people to add their own opinions once I’ve put this post out in the Tumblr ether, but I want to make clear that I make a categorical distinction between the Thor of the first 4 movies we see him in (Thor 1, The Avengers, TDW, and AOU) and the Thor of Thor: Ragnarok. Following a philosophical convention, let us call these, respectively, Thor and Thor* (because I don’t really want to acknowledge that the person they call “Thor” in TR is even the same character).

I do not hate Thor. I am not comfortable saying that Thor was “abusive” to Loki. He was often insensitive and neglected Loki’s feelings, but the early movies acknowledged this as a flaw, connected with the immaturity and arrogance that he was working on getting over in Thor 1 and The Avengers. (I don’t completely buy the criticism that Thor was supposed to have miraculously become perfect in 3 days; I think The Avengers was deliberately showing that he still had some growing up to do.) In TDW and AOU, he still has some anger issues, and often has the impulse to take out his anger physically, but he’s generally more level-headed and is working on being sensitive to other people’s feelings. He obviously loves and cares about Loki, even if he doesn’t understand him and his very complicated emotions and isn’t always great about showing his love in the ways Loki needs.

If I took Thor* to be the same person as Thor, I might have to rethink my opinion of Thor’s character and I might hate him. I definitely hate Thor* and the fact that he has replaced Thor in the minds of much of the fandom, including the people who claim to be his biggest fans. I think Thor* is a dimwitted bully and buffoon who can lay claim to a kind of low cunning, but not much else. Thor* does not appear to care about Loki at all, certainly not about his inner life and motivations. He simply wants Loki to behave in the way Thor* considers virtuous and resorts to emotional manipulation and physical punishment to get his way. He is also manipulative and insensitive to Bruce and Hulk, despite his claim to be their friend.

I could certainly see Thor circa AOU being a Loki “stan”/apologist and defending Loki to the other Avengers after his heroic death. The phenomenon I was objecting to in the original post is people saying it specifically about Thor* post-Ragnarok. I’ve even seen people saying that the “I think everything is going to work out fine” line was his promise that he would protect Loki from the other Avengers and from any human attempts to hold Loki to account for his attack on Earth. I think it was pretty clear from the context – i.e., when Loki expresses concern, Thor* gives the obtuse, self-absorbed response “Earth loves me” – that he just hasn’t given much thought to what might happen to Loki on Earth.

shine-of-asgard:

kitty-hulk:

I hate how Ragnarok made Bruce

Yeah, he’s funny and all. And that was the point of the movie. But look at his past movies. He isn’t frantic, he isn’t the cause of all jokes, he isn’t comfortable around his friends most of the time. Bruce was stern, an incredibly intelligent physicist. He didn’t have this cute little worried attitude. And that bothers me. They made him stupid. They made his intelligence a joke in the movie. And maybe it’s good that he’s “happier” but it’s an incredibly polar change considering Ragnarok Bruce is picking up rsactly where Ultron Bruce left, so there’s no time for any character development. See the gifs for comparison. It just doesn’t seem like the same character.

They made everyone stupid. Ragnarok is either stupid or dickish and everyone suffers for it. Thor lying to Hulk and to Bruce about their alter egos, using Bruce without a second glance is such a dick move. Not funny, just… Ew.

@fuckyeahrichardiii also pointed out that this Bruce didn’t seem to care that he had spent 2 years killing people for fun as the Hulk. A major part of Bruce’s character in the two Avengers movies—and presumably also in The Incredible Hulk, though I haven’t seen it—is his guilt over the damage he does when he’s in Hulk form. In AOU, when Thor does his “report on the Hulk” and talks about the gates of Hel being filled with the screams of his enemies (which is how you do Thor humor, btw), Bruce groans and covers his face because he hates the idea of killing people. (And then Thor picks up on his discomfort and starts backtracking, because pre-Ragnarok Thor, while he may be a little obtuse about other people’s feelings, actually cares about them.) In fact, the reason Bruce/Hulk leaves Earth at the end of AOU is because he’s so distraught over the damage he did and the danger he put people in when Wanda messed with him in Johannesburg.

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was talking to someone in person about…”

I’ve gotten madder and madder about Ragnarok the farther out from it I get. My sense now is that TW didn’t really have much affection, if any, for ANY of the characters (except for the GM, which I can’t even talk about without flying into a rage). They were all at best caricatures of what they were in earlier movies. But this is especially true with Loki. He became a kind of joke. Ugh.

THANK YOU, @fuckyeahrichardiii. And to be clear, I don’t mind the slapstick humor involving Loki (though as noted elsewhere, I’m uneasy about the electrocution scene), and I recognize that everyone undergoes similar physical treatment. The problem is that his motivations are completely dismissed; he gets turned into some kind of Trumpian narcissist, retroactively erasing all the humanizing characterization he was given in the first two movies (and even The Avengers!).

And then there’s Thor, who bore virtually no resemblance to his character in any of the earlier movies. Neither TW nor CH seemed to care about the integrity of the character; they were just indulging their own sense of humor at the expense of the coherence of the character and his arc through the franchise. Ironically, I don’t think they made him any more interesting or likable than he had been before. They turned him into an inarticulate, mostly bumbling but occasionally cunning buffoon.

Yeah, there were parts of the movie I enjoyed. Valkyrie was great. Heimdall was badass. Hela was kind of cool, Skurge kind of endearing. Some of the bonding moments between Thor and Loki were nice; as a fan/shipper, I cling to those. But on the whole, the movie was a betrayal of everything that came before it.