in defense of thor ragnarok

taranoire:

This is a poorly thought-out rant post with no cohesive structure, because I couldn’t be bothered. It was inspired by criticisms I’ve seen levied at Thor: Ragnarok lately, both by people I don’t know and people I respect and consider friends. The intention isn’t to say “you’re wrong for not liking this thing,” but to explain why I happen to think this is one of the best films in the MCU to date and how it pulled me into the fandom where none of the other movies could.

I’m going to start with a personal anecdote.

Before November 2017, I’d seen a handful of Marvel movies–bits and pieces of Captain America, Iron Man 2 & 3, and Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2. What I knew of the rest of the franchise I’d gleaned from Tumblr since about 2011. I was not impressed with it. I didn’t get it, and that made me frustrated, because I felt like I was left out of this huge thing that I couldn’t possibly catch up on.

So I saw Ragnarok on a whim–it looked accessible, and it was. I didn’t need to know a lot about the universe, because its intention was to deconstruct it and wipe the slate clean. It was funny, but it was also more brutally honest about topics like Odin’s campaign of terror and imperialism than the past films; it fully embraced Asgard and Thor’s presence in the MCU as a sci-fi/fantasy spectacle; it poked fun at everyone but never punched down and respected the journeys that led them to that point.

Most importantly, Ragnarok is the film that did the impossible, though I didn’t realize it on my first-time viewing: it deliberately set out to repair Thor and Loki’s relationship. That is the core of this film, the key takeaway, and it wouldn’t have worked if the tone, setting, and narrative were any different.

I went back and watched Thor 1 & 2 and the Avengers. It became painfully clear to me that after all of the heartbreak, betrayal, attempted murder, hate and mistrust, Ragnarok was the only solution.(And how fitting–Ragnarok is, in mythology, the culmination of a cycle of destruction and rebirth.)

To be content with one another again, Thor and Loki needed to be broken down, hit rock bottom, and make the decision to move forward together. Their relationship in Ragnarok is the metaphorical equivalent of the Japanese art of kintsugi: breaking pottery and repairing it with molten gold.

It achieves this in two key ways.

1) Villain decay. Loki’s deeds and their consequences had to be put in a different perspective–and more importantly, he needed to show some semblance of having learned the error of his ways by teaming up with Thor against a new, darker, more unambiguously evil threat.

2) Sakaar. I could write fucking essays about Sakaar. Sakaar is Thor and Loki’s purgatory. Their Hotel California. Their Pleasure Island. Their Garden of Eden. It’s a place that is tangibly and emotionally far removed from the real world, where no one knows who they are and no one cares.

Loki jumps at that–and it makes complete sense why. He’s not a villain or a hero here; not a prince or a usurper; he’s not the brother of Thor, he’s not Thanos’ puppet. He’s just Loki, and he can carve out a fresh start. Thor, on the other hand, fights it; he needs to get back to Asgard, needs to return to his duties and responsibilities.

To further this rather convoluted metaphor, they’re both tempted to stay here in this almost-paradise where they can forget everything bad that has ever happened to them and live out their days in relative happiness. And they both choose to leave.

Loki was tempted by the Grandmaster into remaining; Thor was probably at least a little tempted by Loki’s offer in that prison cell. “You, me, taking over.” That was everything he wanted but shouldn’t want; to forget the pain, to abandon a hopeless mission, to be with Loki and rule together, safe and happy and ignorant.

So at the climax, when they both have lost everything–their home, most of their people, their family, their body parts, in Thor’s case, and their freedom in Loki’s–it’s still a victory. They’ve learned that Sakaar was a lie, that that dream to forget and abandon reality to save themselves from more pain was an illusion.

As Tom Hiddleston said (and I’m paraphrasing): “They only have each other, and maybe that’s enough.”

“it poked fun at everyone but never punched down and respected the journeys that led them to that point”: that’s where we massively disagree. If you’re actually interested in knowing why many of us disagree, you’re welcome to search “thor ragnarok meta” or “thor ragnarok criticism” on my blog; many of my detailed explanations are from months ago, so you may not have seen them, and may have the impression that all any of us have are snarky throwaway comments. I’m not invested in changing your mind, and if you want to continue enjoying the movie you might make the conscious choice NOT to read the critical analysis, which is fine. But I do want you to be aware that those of us who don’t like it have very well-thought-out reasons for not liking it. It’s not that we’re not aware of the virtues people claim for it – most of Tumblr has been citing them at us for months – it’s that we have reasons for thinking those purported virtues aren’t so virtuous and/or that they’re outweighed by much more important vices.

There are things I thought Ragnarok did well – I kind of liked the psychedelic 80′s aesthetic of Sakaar, Valkyrie was cool, Heimdall’s role was fantastic, and the half-baked critique of imperialism was heading in the right direction. And maybe someone who saw Ragnarok *before* seeing the other movies just wouldn’t have the same sense of dissonance between the characters as they had been established in the other movies and as they were retconned in TR. But I don’t think there was anything Ragnarok did well that couldn’t have been done better by someone who genuinely respected the previous movies and the characters, as Taika Waititi – and Chris Hemsworth! – showed plainly in all their interviews as well as in the film that they did not. What’s more, all the “breaking down to nothing” had already been done in the previous films. That was the whole point of Thor 1; both Thor and Loki lost everything they thought they’d had. “Villain decay” had already been done in TDW: Thor and Loki had to team up to face a villain more evil and destructive than Loki had been.

What Thor and Loki really needed was to fucking talk to each other, and that’s exactly what TR *didn’t* have them do. It lampshaded the lack of communication (which “has never been our family’s forte”), but that doesn’t excuse the continued lack of it. No one ever asked Loki for an explanation of his actions. In fact, as I’ve argued on a number of occasions, Ragnarok makes a point of implying that Loki doesn’t even have much in the way of motivation for anything he does beyond “I’m a trickster/ the God of Mischief, it’s in my nature,” i.e., “I did it for the lulz,” or childish self-aggrandizing narcissism. In previous movies Loki always had complex, psychologically compelling motivations for the things he did. But Thor never acknowledges that Loki might have some legitimate reasons for resenting him, never asks why Loki invaded Earth; and they never talk about Loki’s Jotun heritage or the internalized racism and self-hatred that was such a huge part of his breakdown in Thor 1. As I have remarked, if TR really wanted to explore the impact of Asgard’s racist imperialism, that would have been a really good avenue to go down; but apparently it didn’t want to take Loki’s problems that seriously.

I also disagree (thanks in large part to @illwynd‘s insightful comments) that TR constituted a “repair” of Thor and Loki’s relationship. Here’s some commentary from @foundlingmother and me in response to someone who accepted the movie’s intended interpretation of Thor’s actions (that he was taking the healthy move of “stepping back from an unhealthy relationship” to reestablish it on healthier ground); here’s a discussion involving me and some other people on both sides of the issue in direct response to Taika’s claim that the film sees Thor and Loki reach “understanding and resolution,” which also goes into the issue of TR’s reduction of Loki’s motivations to “mischief/lulz.”

van-dyne:

the fact that people only see Jane’s (potential) return will ‘ruin’ Thor’s character is hilarious and offending at the same time. Girl is an astrophysicist, girl is an expert in quantum physics and space, girl had been a host for an infinity stone and survived. She has knowledge and experience to bring to the table, she is HER OWN CHARACTER and she is NOT defined by Thor or anyone. You all fake feminists praising Thor for being a feminist, for supporting women, and then you turn around and reduce Jane Foster, the world’s foremost astronomer, to Thor’s ex who will ruin his character. I see you there.

Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth were the people who ruined Thor’s character. He was just fine when Jane was around.

I’m honestly kind of stunned by the people saying that Ragnarok!Thor is a feminist. We have absolutely no good evidence of that, and a lot of circumstantial evidence (i.e., the fact that he’s a complete douchebro) that he probably isn’t. But then, I’m stunned by people saying Ragnarok!Thor is a great interpretation of Thor’s character, or a “ray of sunshine,” or anything other than a self-absorbed tool. So why does this surprise me?

To all the people saying “the Russo brothers and Markus & McFeely are smart, they wouldn’t kill Loki in such a stupid way and leave all these hints that he might still be alive”:

They’re not that smart. Civil War was terrible; The Winter Soldier wasn’t as great as everyone says it was; and hello, have you seen what they did with Infinity War? Even aside from Loki’s stupid death, I mean. Thanos’s “sympathetic” Malthusian worldview? Fridging Gamora for Quill’s AND Thanos’s Manpain™? Our heroes deciding that a whole bunch of Wakandans can die so that Vision doesn’t have to because “we don’t trade lives” (right…)?
Markus & McFeely wrote Thor: The Dark World, which had a really weak main plot and not that much involvement from Loki until Joss Whedon was brought in as a script doctor and added more for reshoots.
Markus & McFeely originally intended to kill Loki permanently in TDW but Feige made an executive decision to bring him back because of his popularity with fans at the time. His mainstream popularity has (I think) waned since then (partly due to the deliberate diminution and demeaning of his character in Ragnarok).
I wouldn’t be surprised if M&M wanted to finish the job they started in TDW. They fridged Frigga to bring Thor and Loki together through Manpain; they had every intention of fridging Loki permanently for the sake of Thor’s Manpain.

Tom Hiddleston said that he doesn’t want the role anymore

loptrlaufey:

Tom would not throw away the years of work he put in his character? With such a simple death …. the God of Mischief thrown away like that?……. ;_;

I have never heard Tom say that… although after what Ragnarok did to his character and all the work he put into developing it, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. Tom’s good work in The Avengers was a major part of what got the MCU off the ground, but they’ve made clear recently how little value they place on the character and on Tom’s acting ability.

I’m starting to think that Loki (before TR) was a literary character who got misplaced in a popular action film franchise.

lokisinsurrection:

mastreworld:

lasimo74allmyworld:

whitedaydream:

yume-no-fantasy:

whitedaydream:

glitteryfoggy:

2oo-ugly:

note-a-bear:

afro-elf:

whitedaydream:

vocifersaurus:

gaysunfire:

njadakas-grills:

afro-elf:

lasimo74allmyworld:

shine-of-asgard:

whitedaydream:

whitedaydream:

Avengers Infinity War BBC Interview:
Tom Hiddleston Talks about “The Tragedy of Loki” Scene

Int: And then Matt Damon, surely that must have been a pinch yourself…

Tom: It was very weird, yeah, very peculiar. Taika and I were both feeding him lines of things that I have said over the course of… And I was of course trying to give Matt really witty lines, like, “It would be fun if you said this because I said this in Avengers,” and Taika would just be like, “Nah,” and giving him much funnier things to say.

I don’t want to bring Loki back and let him fall into the wrong hands again. I wish that beautiful death scene in The Dark World was true with his last words “I didn’t do it for him.”

Translation: “I was trying to keep the character consistent and Waititi shat all over that again and again”.

THIS.

Also I’d like to know WHY the heck Marvel and TW hate this amazing character so much. And why they try in every possible way to put him in bad light, demeanor him and cut him off so blatantly from plots.

They should be grateful to him and Tom for brought them fans and money.

TAIKA WAITITI IS FUNNIER THAN TOM HIDDLESTON JUST IN GENERAL AND THERE’S REALLY NOTHING Y’ALL CAN DO ABOUT IT

The comments on this is so fucking funny. Taika breathed new life into Loki. Y’all boring asses should be grateful.

Tom: Taika is funnier than me and all the other writers and directors I’ve played this character for.

Loki Stan’s: buhbuh he wasn’t a bland pretentious baddie for us to wet ourselves overrrrrrr.

I forgot about the smile after the snake story! You’re totally right, @sleepynegress. Best Loki scene.

This movie is the only time he actually seemed like an interesting, conflicted trickster instead of a greasy asshole.

@afro-elf

@njadakas-grills @gaysunfire @vocifersaurus @sleepynegress @bana05 Sorry to break all your delusions. 😉👇

is this graph supposed to mean something to me?

The only thing I see is that a majority of Loki stans are only interested in seeing him reduced to a genocidal fascist Christian Gray wannabe

i think taika did a good job at writing canon loki.

no, not marvel.

i mean, Canon Loki

@note-a-bear @blad-the-inhaler I beg your pardon? In Avengers Loki’s goal was to rule the earth. How could he rule people if he killed them all? And you know what is genocide? Here is a living case: In the first Thor movie, angel baby Thor invaded another planet and slaughtered local residents only because they gave him a nickname, and he wouldn’t stop the massacre until Odin arrived and shouted him down.

And in TDW Loki was not a villain anymore. He was an anti-hero there, by saving Thor’s girlfriend almost at the cost of his own life, saving Thor at the cost of being impaled and revenging his mother’s death. Even Kevin Feige admitted Loki acquired the throne without betraying Thor, because Thor renounced it on his own account first.

Now I believe waititi stans have never watched the previous Marvel films but they pretend they have.

Hiddleston:

-“I feel so lucky with the writing, the way he’s been written. In Kenneth Branagh’s film the writing was very poignant, and you can see the vulnerability in him. Rather like Killmonger in a way, he doesn’t start out as an antagonist; he becomes an antagonist through the revelations. And then Joss Whedon wrote him as a very witty, very charming, very charismatic, and… So I’ve been quite fortunate with some beautifully complex writing of the character.”

-“The best thing about Loki is that if he is afraid he won’t show it. He’s been highly trained through the experience of his slightly traumatic life to shield his fear.”

-“Loki’s death on Svartalfheim was written as a death, and I would say Chris and I played that scene for real. That was meant to be that he redeemed himself, he helped save his brother, he helped save Jane Foster but that he, in the process, sacrificed himself.”

–SDCC 2013

-When Loki stabbed Thor in the Avengers:

GAGNAROK and Waititi:

Waititi grossly misinterpreted and shat on the character that Hiddleston had painstakingly built; it’s a fact. If you need more evidence I have them. Some people need to learn the difference between character development and retcon. Other than the role of comic relief what did Gagnarok and Waititi give Loki?

To quote this article:

Waititi’s solution was a story in which Loki is mocked and emasculated in almost every scene. It’s very funny, and Hiddleston plays it without visible qualms, but it leaves the character nowhere else to go.

image credits: @whitedaydream

@yume-no-fantasy Thanks for these details! I’m just losing patience with these irrational waititi stans.

And speaking of misinterpretation, I happened to find one of waititi’s tweets:

source

Never doubt he’d always surprise us more.

The more I read his tweets/words, the more Taika Waititi seems the bully at my school who made my life a nightmare…

Which may be exactly why he appeals to bullies so much. He speaks their language.

So like, of all the things Waititi could pick on Loki for, he chooses to shit on him for being an orphan? What the fuck? That is EXACTLY what a bully would do. It isn’t funny, it’s incredibly mean-spirited. Kinda like making him joke about his attempted suicide.

What is hilarious to me, however, is Waititi trying to say that Loki only talks about himself and it’s annoying. Like… You do that more than anyone else, Taika. I’ve read interviews from you before, lmao. Don’t be a hypocrite.

I know it’s not worth trying to engage with the people who stan Ragnarok, Waititi, and Thor* (i.e., the version of Thor shown in Ragnarok, who is NOT the same person as the Thor of the previous movies he was in, and was definitely not the kind, goodhearted ray of sunshine that the Thor* stans want to pretend he is), so I’m not going to tag them. But note how simplistic and ill-informed their rebuttals are.

Yes, Tom recognizes that Taika is funnier than he is. But “funny” isn’t the only virtue in a character or a writer. The writers he praises, as @yume-no-fantasy points out, are the ones who gave him complexity to work with: Miller & Stentz (the writers of Thor 1) and Joss Whedon. And the way Whedon wrote Loki often was funny: “I’m listening”; “Are you ever not going to fall for that?”; “This usually works”; “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.” But it’s a subtle humor (which I guess goes over some people’s heads?) and Loki is as often in on the joke as it is at his expense. Which is as it should be: he’s intelligent and mischievous and doesn’t always take himself seriously. If all the Waititi/TR/Thor* stans see is “a bland pretentious baddie” or “a greasy asshole” that’s their problem.

Similarly, if they didn’t see “an interesting, conflicted trickster” in the previous movies, all I can conclude is that they didn’t understand (or watch) the previous movies. In Thor 1, Loki secretly disrupts Thor’s coronation and subtly goads him into charging into Jotunheim (trickster) – not only “to ruin my brother’s big day,” but because he recognizes that Thor isn’t ready to rule (interesting). He finds out that he’s a member of a people that has historically been Asgard’s enemies (interesting, conflicted). He makes overtures to the ruler of that people, his biological father, offering to let them into Asgard to murder Odin so that Loki can take the throne permanently (trickster, conflicted); but then he turns around and kills his biological father to protect his adoptive father to prove his loyalty to Asgard and enmity toward Jotunheim (double trickster, double conflicted). He lies to Thor to keep him from returning to prevent him from going through with this plan (trickster), but on his way out tries to lift Mjolnir, desperate to be found worthy (conflicted); he obviously hesitates before he has the Destroyer strike Thor, and he does it in a way that isn’t guaranteed to kill him the way blasting him with fire would (conflicted). He tries to destroy the planet where he was born because he so deeply hates what he now knows he is; he begs Thor to fight him while fucking crying (have I given enough proof that he’s interesting and conflicted?).

I could keep doing this with The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World, but I have better things to do than write Reader’s Digest summaries of Marvel movies for people who didn’t understand them the first time around. (I didn’t exactly think they were intellectually taxing, but people continue to surprise me.)

I know interpreting graphs is hard and American schools (at least) don’t teach statistics very well, but here’s a hint: the spikes in interest in the search term “loki” indicate that The Avengers and TDW *generated* interest in Loki. These are searches from people who were not previously “Loki stans”; the loyal fans are the ones who sustain the lower levels of interest in between the spikes. No, Ragnarok did not “breathe new life” into Loki; very few new people became interested in Loki after it came out. And that was deliberate on the part of the filmmakers.

Also, what the hell is “Canon Loki” if it isn’t Marvel canon? Did Taika do a good job at writing myth Loki? Most of my myth expert friends don’t think so. Did he do a good job writing comics Loki? MCU Loki was never supposed to be identical with the Loki of the comics, for one thing; but for another, most of the people I know who are familiar with Loki comics (though there is one exception I know of) don’t think that Ragnarok Loki is a good representation of the Loki of recent comics, who is much smarter and more complex than Ragnarok Loki (not that that would be hard…).

Finally… if Taika is so into sympathetic representations of outsiders, he should have been thrilled with the opportunity Loki presented him. Instead, he decided Loki was to be dismissed as a spoiled, whiny little bitch and ridiculed for exactly the characteristics that make him an outsider: his mental illness, his (implicit) queerness, and his history as an adoptee from another race who spent most of his life ignorant of his heritage. As I’ve discussed before, you’d think that last part would present a great opportunity in a movie that supposedly wanted to make a point about imperialism and the victims of war, but I guess not. As for the other issues, the conclusion I’m forced to draw from Taika’s handling of them is that he’s a mental ableist who thinks Loki just needs to “grow up and get over” his problems (or maybe was faking them?) and quite possibly also homophobic.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

What are you even talking about? Respect? All i see in the fandom is twink this and twink that? Who respecks him anymore? He had to be killed.

lucianalight:

Maybe you need to update the list of the blogs that you’re following and see that not everyone disrespect Loki. for example: @lokiloveforever @lasimo74allmyworld @shine-of-asgard @yume-no-fantasy @whitedaydream @philosopherking1887 @foundlingmother and there are many others. You can check the posts I reblog from others.

Many of Loki fans are the ones who identify with him exactly because they were disrespected, mocked, left alone, rejected and never been understood. For many of us what we feel about Loki is very real, it’s like what we would feel for a real person. Is it alright to reject and erase someone if they are being disrespected and belittled by others? Is it ok to disrespect them more? Surely not. We should stand up for them and defend them, no matter what. And frankly I don’t give a damn if the whole fandom disrespect Loki or see him differently or generally disagree with me. This is my opinion and I stand by it. So let’s agree to disagree.

I strongly suspect that Anon has been following the blogs of people who accepted the characterization of Loki in Thor: Ragnarok and seem to think, mysteriously, that his presentation in previous MCU films was some kind of “mischaracterization.” (Relative to what, I’m not sure – Norse myths? Comics? Which comics?) In response to @foundlingmother‘s comment: there need not be anything inherently disrespectful in calling Loki a twink, but much of what I’ve seen in the Thor/Loki fandom and adjacent subcommunities is people reducing Loki to “the Grandmaster’s trophy twink” or “a day-drinking bottom,” saying that’s all he ever was and that the depth and complexity that fans and/or Tom Hiddleston had previously attributed to him was somehow an illusion.

The fact that Anon thinks no one in the MCU or Thor franchise fandom respects Loki anymore indicates that to a great extent, Thor: Ragnarok achieved what it and those responsible for it (Taika Waititi, Chris Hemsworth, screenwriter Eric Pearson) set out to achieve: it reduced Loki in the minds of (casual) fans to a figure of ridicule, subservient to Thor and of no emotional or psychological interest in his own right.

Many of the people who hate what Ragnarok did to Loki – and to Thor! – have been silent because there seemed to be no place for them in the Thorki fandom or the mainstream MCU fandom, so it would not be difficult to get the impression that everyone simply accepts Ragnarok’s retcon of Loki’s character.

Given the way his character was reduced in TR, I can see why it might seem that he needed to be killed – that he had no more character development left in him and the only worthwhile thing he could do was to die for Thor. It has even occurred to me that I’d rather see Loki die than let Hemsworth and Waititi get their hands on him again – though I’d certainly rather that he died well, which he did in TDW but not in IW (his death was incredibly stupid and eminently avoidable).

I know how you’ve analyzed Hiddlesworth and wanted your opinion. Remember that Ragnarok clip with them holding hands as Chris took his place on stage? Did you notice that while Chris was the one to initiate the hand holding, Tom was the one who ended it? Looking closely, you’ll see that Chris closed his hand around Tom’s as he did the little spin move but Tom kind of snatched his hand away once Chris was next to him. I find that Tom has been more aloof towards Chris lately. Your thoughts?

What clip was this? Where were they?

It’s actually kind of reassuring to hear that you thought Tom was the one being more aloof toward Chris; I sort of thought Chris was turning the cold shoulder toward Tom. I don’t really know why, but I kind of wonder if it had anything to do with Tom not being completely on board with the “reinvention” of Thor and Loki’s characters in Thor: Ragnarok. Pretty obviously Chris Hemsworth was the driving force; he recommended bringing on Taika Waititi, he wanted to do more “comedy,” he was tired of speaking in archaic language and basically just wanted to get paid to be himself on film. In interviews, Taika kept talking about how he wanted to make Thor the most interesting character in his own film; the unspoken implication was that Loki had always been the most interesting character (which many of us know is true). So in order to steal Thor’s thunder back, Taika and (to some unknown extent, given how much was improvised) the screenwriter, Eric Pearson, reduced Loki to an effete, narcissistic, incompetent caricature of himself, mocked and minimized the traumas he had experienced, and eliminated all of the psychological and motivational complexity he had shown in previous movies, leaving him with only two features/motivations: (1) he’s essentially “the god of mischief,” and therefore he likes to betray people just for shits and giggles; and (2) he really wants Thor to love him.

Tom Hiddleston is a very smart man and a consummate actor. He really sank his teeth into the role of Shakespearean tragic hero that Kenneth Branagh and the screenwriters of Thor 1 (Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz) gave him. He had one hell of a good time as the twisty, theatrical, not-so-secretly tortured villain Joss Whedon wrote for The Avengers. He threw himself into the pathos and the desperate mania of the conflicted antihero in Thor: The Dark World (some credit to Markus & McFeely, even though I think they’re dimwitted hacks; some credit to Joss Whedon, whose main prescription as script doctor was “more Loki”). I don’t know if you’ve seen him in The Hollow Crown or Coriolanus, but it’s hard to tell he’s even speaking Elizabethan English because the words flow off his tongue as if he was born speaking them, and he makes the meaning and the feeling in the language so lucid that I feel like I was born hearing it. He disappears into his roles; there’s almost nothing of Tom in Loki, or in Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager, or in Freddie Page in The Deep Blue Sea.

And then they gave him this pathetic caricature in Ragnarok and wanted him to play second fiddle to a version of Thor who wasn’t even really a character anymore, just Chris Hemsworth dressed in space armor. They stripped away all the depth and complexity that Tom had been bringing to Loki over the years; they gave him almost no psychology to work with. For an actor who pours his heart and soul into his roles, who was trained in Shakespeare and swims around in it like a fish, can it have been anything other than disappointing and humiliating? But Tom is so good-natured and obliging, it seemed like he couldn’t blame Taika or Chris – his “brother” of 8 years, who had betrayed him for the sake of his own vanity; he just seemed dejected and unenthusiastic about the whole thing. It seemed to me like Chris was shunning Tom, and the only explanation I could offer (aside from other interpersonal things I couldn’t possibly speculate on, or like… judging him for the Taylor Swift business) was that Chris was mad that Tom wasn’t wholly on board with the thoughtless, petulant destruction of the character he had been building for years, the character dynamic he’d thought they had been building together. If Tom is being aloof toward Chris, good for him. Chris fucking deserves it.

I just want to ask if your ask-page title is a Nietzsche quote (I’m pretty sure it is, but I can’t remember from where). Also, currently I am rereading the Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil, and I really miss your philosophy-centric works in the past. They are amazing, and I say this after reading countless fan fiction. (p.s. After reading the plot of Thor Ragnarok, I feel so upset that I didn’t see the movie even though I have been waiting for it for a long time. Should I see it?)

I had to check to see what the title of my ask page was, because I set it a while ago… and it was exactly what I suspected it might be. (“What questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions!”) Yes, it is a Nietzsche quote, from section 1 of Beyond Good and Evil. Are/were you a philosophy student yourself?

When you say you “miss” my philosophical fanfiction, do you mean you wish I would write more of it? Yeah, I kind of wish I would too; I’ve just been really depressed about the fact that I’ve applied for more than 60 jobs over the past 6 months but I still don’t know where I’m going to be next year or how I will be making money, and my creativity seems to have fizzled out. Maybe it’ll get better if I actually get a job? Or maybe Infinity War will inspire me? (I’m seeing it in 2.5 hours… AAAAHHHH!!!) I guess if you’re missing the philosophy porn, you can always reread what’s already posted…

Should you see Ragnarok…? Interesting question. It might be worthwhile to form your own opinion about it. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I am extremely critical of it, not so much because of the plot (though of course there are some plot elements that infuriate me) as because of the way it botched the characterization of Thor, Loki, and Bruce Banner. The way I (and a community of like-minded folks) understand it, it maliciously mocks the elements of pathos and character depth in the previous movies and the fans who love them. There are, of course, fans who disagree, and you might understand it differently if you watched it. But if you were that pissed off just reading the plot summary, I suspect you’ll come to the same conclusion I did.

My ranking of MCU movies

Maybe I’ll add more commentary later, but for now here’s the numbered ranking, best to worst:

The Avengers (2012)
Black Panther (2018)
Thor (2011)
Iron Man (2008)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Ant-Man (2015)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Doctor Strange (2016)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Pretty standard, with a few notable exceptions: everyone else hates AOU, but I really like it; everyone loves CA: TWS, CA: CW, and TR (except a few of my friends), but I thought the first was meh and the latter two were characterization disasters. Maybe considered on its own (if that were even possible) TR isn’t the worst MCU movie; I’m judging it as a sequel, which it was supposed to be.

Any thoughts, @fuckyeahrichardiii? Or any rearrangements you want to try to talk me into?

juliabohemian:

whitedaydream:

juliabohemian:

whitedaydream:

lokiloveforever:

yume-no-fantasy:

Keyword: COMPLEXITY

@lokiloveforever @kaori04 @lucianalight @whitedaydream @latent-thoughts @mastreworld @shine-of-asgard @lasimo74allmyworld and everyone who hates the oversimplification of Loki’s character in Gagnarok.

This sounds positive, maybe, I hope? I don’t think they’re going to achieve the same level of depth and complexity with Thanos that Loki has reached, but maybe this is a good sign they’ll let Loki’s true colors fly?

This is good, right? Or promising, at least.

“What appeals to my brother and me about movies in general, characters in general, is the complexity that you can find within them. People aren’t simply this or simply that. Loki is a great example — somebody who is torn in two directions.”

It’s a big middle finger to Waititi’s “Loki is just a rich kid from outer space and we shouldn’t give a shit about his own problems”. 😏

Isn’t anything that constitutes decent writing and character development going to be a big middle finger to Ragnarok, though?

Here’s what I imagined happened…

MCU: “Just, you know, do whatever you want…as long as it ends with Thor and Loki on good terms, right before Thanos’ ship shows up.”

TAIKA: “Okay then.” (Makes Ragnarok)

MCU: “Oh wow, yeah…okay. Maybe we should have been more specific.”