I rewatched Thor last night. I hadn’t seen it in a while. I didn’t really like it before. I thought the larger than life good guys were a bit sloppily depicted, but I enjoyed it much better this time after having read your musings on Loki’s psychology during the drama. I can appreciate it now. And when Loki falls into space, we can say goodbye to that characterization. I like Joss’ flamboyant sexy bad guy characterization, but it distort the character away from his Shakespearean complexity.

Well, as many of my readers/blog followers know, I think there are ways to square the tragic Shakespearean anti-villain in Thor with the (apparently) flamboyant sexy bad guy in The Avengers, and my longest ongoing work of fanfiction is an effort to do just that. Loki’s time in the Void definitely changed him; it hardened him in certain ways, but clearly he has also fallen under Thanos’s power in some way or other and remains vulnerable. His loyalty to his family and Asgard (though not Odin) was also recoverable, apparently, so whatever happened didn’t completely turn him evil.

Whedon was deliberately leaving open a possibility for redemption by showing Loki as under threat from Thanos, and not just violent and power-mad but fearful. He also showed that Loki was conflicted, and genuinely tempted by Thor’s offers of affection and salvation. Ultimately, I think Whedon came closer than anyone else to approximating the classical tone of the first Thor, though The Avengers was more epic than tragedy.

is it just me or does taika waititi have a lot of contempt for thor and loki? he’s said that they’re rich space kids and no one should care about their problems, and it’s kind of bad when you’re making a movie and think no one should care about your two main characters.

foundlingmother:

@philosopherking1887 Another for our apparently racist group.

Don’t be concerned, dear anon. It’s not just you. It’s not a great idea to make anything when you don’t really care about your characters’ problems.

Loki he doesn’t care a fig for. He literally mentions Loki’s biggest issue, being jotun, and dismisses it in a scene where Thor’s written to be in the right. He paints Loki solidly with the narcissist brush. Lucky me I’ve found meta that explains Loki’s behavior in Ragnarok within the context of his actual character and those identity struggles.

Not having so much luck with Thor. I think he likes the idea of Thor, but found his unhappiness and thoughtfulness boring. Oh gosh, a kind and thoughtful male protagonist who wants to negotiate before hitting something… impossible! It’s so damn boring to have a man who cares about the only family he’s got left, and who keeps hoping that family will be redeemed.

(Actually, I’m cool with Thor pretending to not care about Loki’s behavior anymore. I think it’s a smart tactic given the information Thor possess, and there’s no reason he couldn’t have come up with it. However, there are points in the movie where he seems genuinely callous towards Loki, and I can’t picture Thor ever feeling that way. There’s no way that Thor doesn’t become terribly affectionate after what we get to see of the hug scene.)

Yes, welcome, Anon! And while we’re at it, here are links to the rest of my posts bitching about how Taika Waititi clearly doesn’t give a shit about the characters he was making a movie about.

rewatched the beginning of the first thor movie and i think it could have benefitted from showing us more of thor and loki’s childhood? like they’re in the vault as kids with their dad and then BAM thor’s coronation. thor’s friends say loki has “always been jealous of thor” and “always one for mischief” but it would have been better to SEE that, if only briefly, to watch these two characters grow up and become different people so maybe more people would get why loki felt he was in thors shadow?

foundlingmother:

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).

A note about intertextuality

Here is a basic interpretive principle that I think is generally agreed upon in literary scholarship: if Text A makes a reference to Text B, then you can use Text B to gain a better, fuller understanding of Text A. You do have to use your judgment to figure out which elements of Text B are relevant, but it’s just good interpretive practice – not “headcanon” or “fanfiction” – to use Text B as a lens through which to view Text A.

If you know something about Norse mythology and/or the Thor comics, you will have a better understanding of the MCU Thor films. You can understand them on one level if you don’t have the background of the texts they reference, but your understanding will be shallower (or, as my advisor prefers, narrower). You can understand the first Thor film on one level without knowing anything about Shakespeare, but you won’t appreciate all of its complexity.

People who insist that the only things relevant to the interpretation of the films are the films themselves, and you’re supposed to ignore all the other texts in the background*, might be extreme modernist formalists obsessed with the purity of the text (or maybe with the Protestant/democratic principle that any schmuck can read a text just as well as someone with a broad literary education). But it’s far more likely that they’re just bad readers.

* Except the internet commentariat’s version of Maori culture, apparently. That’s relevant; Norse mythology isn’t.

I came into the fandom because of Thor: Ragnarok, mainly because I love Valkyrie. I thought Thor’s character was sort of off-putting. How is his characterization different in the other movies?

Hi Anon, are you here to join the club of racists (apparently) who don’t understand why we’re supposed to like Taika Waititi’s interpretation of Thor? Welcome!

Honestly, I think the best thing you can do is to watch the other movies if you haven’t. In the first movie, Thor starts out as an arrogant warrior who loves to fight and thinks violence is the solution to every problem, but his father strips him of his powers and banishes him to Earth to learn humility. Aside from the arrogance and eagerness to fight, he’s very loyal to his friends and he has a gallantry about him… well, he’s representative of an ancient warrior culture, really. He loves to fight and feast and flirt; he’s a bit bombastic, but has a sense of chivalry; he picks on little bro Loki sometimes, he can be a bit of a jock/bully, but he loves and trusts Loki (more than he should) and isn’t willing to give up on him even when he’s descended into madness and is doing horrible things.

Thor tells the story of Thor’s maturation into a more patient and self-sacrificing person, and he continues that process of maturation through the other movies we see him in: The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. He’s still a little too ready to solve problems by hitting things in The Avengers, still a little arrogant and Homeric-warrior-bro (he’s Achilles, basically), but he’s getting better, learning how to be more of a team player. In TDW and AOU he becomes progressively more serious and thoughtful, largely because terrible things keep happening in his life… he still has a sly sense of humor, and he spends much of AOU subtly trolling the human Avengers, but he’s also become very canny and perceptive.

Ragnarok just gave him a complete personality makeover with almost no regard for the way he’d been portrayed before. He was never that inarticulate – the Asgardians used to speak in an elevated, slightly archaic register, the way they do in the comics – and he was never as… mean as he is in Ragnarok. I mean, he’s a bit of a douche in Thor, but the point was that he got better.

wafflediaries

replied to your post

“wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your…”

Yeah, sorry, I didn’t know you were a fic writer. If I had, I wouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to personally attack your writing or anything. However, I will address the points raised in this post. I literally have no idea where you are getting your Trump vibes from. Loki in Ragnarok is a perfectly reasonable development from Loki in Thor.

Loki wants love and admiration, which is unrelated to him being a Jotunn. He found love when he became Odin, however it was unsatisfying because the people loved him for Odin, not for Loki. He is also motivated by the love for his family (opposite of love is indifference) and was taken aback by Thor’s apparent indifference. Both of these drove him to save Asgard in a grandiose fashion, to earn Asgard’s love and prove Thor wrong. I don’t see anything Trumpish about these

Also, people in Asgard don’t like him because he’s a dick. Like, Thor was a dick (in a thoughtless/oafish way) while Loki was an even bigger dick (in a ‘I’ll trick you into doing something and punish you for it’ way). Remember how he thought it was hilarious to let Jotunn into the treasury to ruin his brother’s coronation? And when has Loki ever been a good diplomat? Ragnarok was the height of his diplomatic skills, because his situation with the Grandmaster was way better than his situation with Laufy [sic] or Thanos

It has been explained many times that his portrayal of Thor is due his culture. In Maori (and Australian) culture, the worst thing someone can do is take themselves too seriously. Allowing a character to fall on their face and learn from their mistakes is a form of respect. So yeah, I consider it racist when people ignore Taika’s culture and straight up call him disrespectful or unprofessional. Seriously, even if he disliked Loki, why would he show that in his work?

The classism thing was a response to other comments in the post, which I already noted. Like Jesus, how can one ‘rich boy’ joke be offensive, especially considering MCU Loki and Thor are the epitome of rich boys who haven’t done anything to deserve their wealth. It was stolen from other realms by their father. Also, in response to your other points, Taika is a comedian and gives funny answers. His funny answers are the more well-known ones because people like sharing funny things. However, from his non-comedic interviews, it is clear that he is familiar with the source material (Thor films, MCU, comic books) and he was passionate in creating Thor Ragnarok.

Where am I getting the Trump vibes, @wafflediaries? How about from the giant fucking Jesus statue? (Seriously, it looks like the Cristo Redentor statue in Brazil.) Or that ridiculous self-glorifying play? Or just the fact that Loki is being portrayed as a textbook narcissist, as his detractors are happy to point out, and in the present political environment it’s hard not to think of the other textbook narcissist elephant in the room. The effect of this portrayal is to make into a punchline, mere fodder for ridicule, the very traits that literally drove Loki to suicide in the first movie. Hooray, mental illness is funny…!

“Seriously, even if he disliked Loki, why would he show that in his work?” I don’t know, why don’t you ask him? Taika, why did you make Loki’s entire character into a punchline? And no, I’m NOT talking about the slapstick/physical humor; I’m talking about the fact that his character traits, his psychological and emotional problems, all the things that made him complicated and sympathetic and (in the first film) tragic (as detailed in this insightful post), are reduced to a punchline.

Um… where are you getting the “I’ll trick you into doing something and punish you for it” bit? Not the Jotnar who came to steal the Casket, surely; yes, Loki knew the Destroyer would kill them, showing a reprehensible indifference to their lives, but punishing them definitely wasn’t the point. You mean Thor? It didn’t take a lot of “tricking” to get Thor to charge into Jotunheim with guns blazing; all Loki said was “There’s nothing you can do without defying Father.” It’s really on Thor for being so predictably belligerent, which is exactly why Loki pulled the stunt in the first place: he was making a point to Odin about Thor’s unfitness for kingship; and if he was “punishing” Thor for anything, it was for the general pattern of arrogance and aggression, not for the specific action Loki prodded him into. Or do you mean Laufey? If you were paying attention, you would realize that what Loki is “punishing” him for is not the attempt on Odin’s life that he explicitly invited, but abandoning him to die as a baby. Yeah, Loki is a manipulative asshole, but at least get right the more sophisticated respect in which he is a manipulative asshole.

But I’m not the only one who got the impression from the first movie that Loki is more than just “a dick,” that we’re not supposed to think all his problems are self-made, and that when we meet him he isn’t already a villain. Thor tells the parallel stories – or should I say the perpendicular stories? – of Thor’s rise and Loki’s fall: not only his self-destruction, but his fall into villainy, precipitated (ironically) by his desperate desire to prove his worth. Yes, of course, he needed to already have some of the traits (the manipulative tendency, the willingness to sacrifice others to his ends) that would lead him into the drastically wrong actions he ended up taking. But I probably can’t say anything to convince you that we’re supposed to read other people’s mistrust and dismissiveness as not entirely earned. Maybe it’s just that I was reading so much commentary from fans familiar with Norse myth and culture about how seidr (witchcraft, effectively) was traditionally regarded as the province of women, and men who practiced it were considered effeminate, incurring a stigma called ergi, translated as “unmanliness” (associated with the assumption that they bottomed during sex with men). Or maybe it’s that I recognized the dynamic between Thor and his friends and Loki the tag-along little brother: they’re jocks, and he’s a nerd. Thor was a dick, too, but he was the right kind of dick: the brash, physical, always ready for a fistfight kind of dick. In a patriarchal warrior culture like Asgard, many of us can absolutely see how being a thoughtless, aggressive asshole is much more acceptable than being a scheming, too smart for your own good asshole.

As for Loki being a good diplomat: unfortunately, they don’t show a lot of that in Thor, but I think we’re supposed to assume it from the fact that he volunteers to sweet-talk Heimdall and Volstagg makes that “silver tongue” remark, invoking the “Silvertongue” epithet of the Loki of Norse myth. And actually, he does perfectly well with Laufey: he would have gotten them out of the situation at the beginning if Thor hadn’t had a violent reaction to being called “little princess,” and he successfully talked Laufey into doing what he wanted him to do later on. He also demonstrates the power of his words in The Avengers, not by winning people over to his side, but by sowing doubts among them, hitting them where it hurts.

Congratulations, all the people who have chimed in to say that they didn’t like the characterization of Thor, either: we’re all racists!! We’re just Too White to understand the genius of the Maori people that Taika Waititi channels, straight from the Volksgeist itself, with no admixture of his own peculiar sensibility; any objection to his work is therefore an objection to the entire Maori culture. Kenneth Branagh didn’t do the “high brought low” trope correctly in Thor, because he, too, was Too White. Screwing up and learning from your mistakes isn’t enough, making a fool of yourself in an unfamiliar environment isn’t enough if you maintain your basic poise, dignity, and decency; you have to be made into an actual, honest-to-God dumbass.

I don’t deny that TW was familiar with the Marvel comics, and he must have watched the other movies before he made Ragnarok (though maybe not before he took the job…). And yeah, I guess he was “passionate” about something (maybe creating the 80s aesthetic of Sakaar, which was pretty cool). But it wasn’t doing justice to the characters he inherited from the rest of the trilogy.

rynfinity replied to your post “fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I…”

there were definitely cool things about the movie but – even though my one irl fandom friend warned me to consider it one long crackfic – i, too, was really put off by the characterization. i applaud those who have been able to resolve the stories internally into a cohesive arc, but i cannot.

i found thor pretty unlikeable too… the part where he was basically telling the hulk and banner what they wanted to hear, rather than being a real friend, really bothered me. it was (to me) like taking “he’s adopted” thor and putting him on a huge pedestal.

and i’m so glad to hear people saying these things. for the longest time i felt very lonely in my relative disenthusiasm.

You’re not the first person who’s said that, @rynfinity – that you thought you were the only one (at least within your fan subcommunity) who wasn’t thrilled with the movie. I think it’s sad that Tumblr fandom is such that smart, thoughtful people feel afraid to express unpopular opinions because they think they’ll get angry backlash or ostracism. We should be allowed to disagree, even about major issues, and not fear losing our place in the community.

If I’ve contributed nothing else to this fandom, I’m glad I’ve been able to serve as the one who sticks their neck out and expresses the unpopular opinion first, allowing other people to realize that they’re not alone.

As to resolving the movies into a cohesive arc… I’m taking the broad events of Ragnarok as canon, but sticking with the old characterization of Thor. Including the slightly archaic speech patterns.

wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was…”

Also, I wasn’t accusing you of writing fan fiction, I was noting that fandom generally has a perception of Loki that is not congruent with any canon portrayals of him. It is canon from previous films that MCU Loki loves attention, is terrible at long term planning but can quickly adapt to new situations, and is manipulative and enjoys playing cruel tricks (which is detrimental to his love for attention). These traits were all demonstrated in Thor Ragnarok.

Erm, actually, @wafflediaries, you said (and I quote), “Please stop being bitter just because he wasn’t lifted from your OOC Loki-centric fanfic.” Perhaps (as you seem to have confirmed in your later reply) that wasn’t aimed at me specifically, but as the originator of the post I did receive an e-mail notification with that reply in it, so you can understand why I might have thought that it was aimed at me.

Yes, all the traits you mention are part of Loki’s portrayal in earlier MCU films. But his love of attention is more complicated and subtle than shown in Ragnarok. In the first Thor film, he’s shown as being soft-spoken, almost retiring; it seems that we see him discover that he enjoys power and attention once he gets it for the first time. In the deleted scene in which he’s granted the throne by Frigga and some sort of prime minister guy, he hesitates to take Gungnir, and he looks to Frigga for reassurance, but a transformation seems to come over him when he realizes that yes, this power is really his by right.

Ragnarok seemed to make Loki’s insecurity out to be that of the Trumpian narcissist who’s constantly demanding attention and praise and deeply believes that he deserves it, but also feels threatened and lashes out when it’s withheld. That’s not the Loki we saw in Thor, who had genuine doubts about his worth and felt he needed to go to extreme (indeed, genocidal) lengths to prove it. Narcissists like Trump don’t feel like they have to do anything to prove their worth; they think the adulation is simply their due and something is profoundly wrong with the world if they don’t get it. Ragnarok also gave extremely short shrift to the issue that prompted Loki’s crisis in Thor, namely, the discovery that he belongs to a people that have historically been the enemies of Asgard. And it did not really acknowledge the other reasons for Loki’s long-standing insecurity, which were demonstrated in the first film: the fact that Asgardians don’t really respect his talents as a sorcerer who uses magic on the battlefield, or as a (sometimes devious and dishonest) diplomat who’d rather talk than punch his way out of problems. I’ve seen other people dispute that this was part of his characterization (I’m not tagging them, @foundlingmother; behold my self-restraint!), but it seems pretty clear that they missed the point of the deleted scene in which Thor says “Some do battle, others just do tricks” and a servant laughs at the quip (and by extension, at Loki), as well as Vostagg’s “What happened, silver tongue turned to lead?”, which the script explicitly describes as “needling” him, not good-natured ribbing.

So no, the complaint is not that Ragnarok introduced characteristics that were not present in earlier movies; it’s that it reduced Loki to those characteristics, thereby depriving him of depth and understandable motivation.

wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was…”

Sorry, I was responding to an entire train of thoughts by various people that I was completely baffled by. It was late at night and my feathers were very ruffled because a lot of the posts were giving me uncomfortably racist and classist vibes (like seriously, people were offended that Taika joked about them as rich boys?).

@wafflediaries, I was using the “rich boys” comment as an especially flagrant representation of the low esteem in which Taika appears to hold the Thor franchise as a whole. There’s a lot of other evidence in his interviews (not to mention the film itself) that he doesn’t care about the characters or the world with which he was entrusted; that was particularly dismissive and easy to use as a symbol for the rest.

I don’t think it’s classist to be annoyed by that kind of attitude, considering that people of all classes have enjoyed literature about royalty, knights, gods, and other “rich kids” for millennia. I couldn’t find any context for the “we shouldn’t really give a shit about what their problems are” quote, but I did find a video where he claims that making Thor into “a buffoon” (his word) was the only way to make him relatable. That just seems inaccurate, considering that people have been interested in the problems of gods and heroes, and found their struggles relatable (albeit writ large), for so long; I take it that it’s the normative claim, that we shouldn’t care unless he’s brought down to ground level, that really motivates the characterization. Wonder Woman got along just fine without debasing or ridiculing its exceptional, quasi-immortal princess heroine; I don’t think it’s classist to prefer that approach.

I also hope you’re not suggesting that it’s racist to criticize any of Taika Waititi’s work. Saying that he wasn’t well-suited to contribute to the Thor series because he wasn’t invested in it, and that he ended up making a Taika Waititi movie rather than a Thor movie, doesn’t strike me as a racist attitude. (Even saying he’s a crap director – which I’m not, but some people very well might – isn’t inherently racist, though I wouldn’t be surprised if people on Tumblr claimed it was.) If you’re saying that my long discourse on the treatment of race in the Thor franchise, exploring the issue of Loki’s internalized racism in the first Thor movie and the critique of imperialism in Thor: Ragnarok, was racist… well, sorry; I tried to be as respectful to all parties as I could, but it’s a delicate issue and we can always offend people despite our best efforts.

marvel-madness-mishmash:

Ramble time (fucking shock I know)

So, Loki admits that he is jealous and planned on screwing up Thor’s big day, to get his brother to reveal his true colors. And the audience knows by the end of the movie that Loki does have power aspirations (which are exacerbated by having his fucking heart broken.)

HOWEVER

Look at the expression on his face as he talks about Thor. His face completely backs up the words he’s saying. the way he says “but” doesn’t apply the way it usually does.

It’s not “I love Thor more dearly than any of you, but *forget everything I just said*”

It’s more like “I love Thor more dearly than any of you, and because of this I feel I need to say this.”

There’s nothing insincere or ingenue about the first half of that sentence.

“I love Thor more dearly than any of you”

It’s true. He does love Thor the most, more than his parents do, more than their friends do, more than the people do, and because of this I think it does pain him to know that his brother (at the time) wasn’t fit for rule. Even though this fits well with his own power aspirations, it pains him to think of his brother as not being good enough.

After all, Loki knows more than anyone else what it’s like to not be good enough.