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.

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

Wow, thank you, you are proving my point entirely. None of the traits you mentioned in your paragraphs had anything to do with canon MCU Loki and you even acknowledged that. Remember the OOC fan fiction Loki I mentioned earlier? Yeah. I haven’t read any of your writing but I guess I don’t need to. Also, I didn’t know if you were intentionally racist but I guess I don’t have to ask that either LMAO. Have a nice day.

Next time, please keep your racism and fan fiction head canons to yourself when you’re trying to criticize a film maker. Otherwise you just look ridiculous.

Hey, @foundlingmother, @fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @kaori04, @princess-ikol, @rynfinity, and anyone else who’s been following this saga – @raven-brings-light, you might find this entertaining – I’ve been called a racist by someone who doesn’t understand sarcasm or intertextuality! (Or Hegel jokes either, probably, but that wasn’t terribly important.) Thanks for the laughs,

@wafflediaries, and now I can check off some more squares on my Tumblr veteran bingo card. How many points is this one worth?

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.

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

Reading this has me practically crying in relief — I’ve felt like an oddball because it seems like the movie was universally loved and I couldn’t understand why.

I thought I was alone, too, @fuckyeahrichardiii – at least among MCU fans other than the “Loki apologists” who have been annoying the rest of the fandom since 2012. But being the contrarian I am, when I think I’m alone in an opinion (including thinking there’s nothing wrong with 1st person POV, or that Joss Whedon is still a good writer in many respects), I don’t keep my mouth shut for fear of alienating people or starting controversy. I make posts bitching about it, either hoping to call allies out of the woodwork, or to force people to reconsider the opinions that they formed “for no reasons worthy of the name” (as William James puts it in “The Will to Believe”), merely “out of habit” and/or to go along with the rest of their community, as Nietzsche says of the “fettered spirit” in Human, All Too Human (I, 226). “Later… [they] may perhaps have also devised a couple of reasons favorable to [their] habits” (as one sees in posts people make presenting their Tumblr-approved opinions); but typically, alas, “if one refutes those reasons one does not refute [them] in their general position.”

(Yeah, I judge people who don’t think for themselves. Fucking deal with it.)

It seems that, on this issue, I have actually been finding allies who were too scared to say anything because they thought they were alone (among non-Loki-justifiers) – and possibly even getting people to reconsider the high opinion of the movie they assumed they must have because everyone else seemed to…

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.

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.

oelfinessend:

foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

You know, it wasn’t until I was talking to someone in person about Thor: Ragnarok that I realized how pissed I am that Taika Waititi clearly does not like Loki. This is evident to me in all his interviews about the movie, as well as in his approach to Loki in the film. (He also seems not to appreciate Tom Hiddleston’s acting ability, but that’s another story. At least Jeff Goldblum knows where the real talent in the cast is.) I don’t know what it is – maybe he’s one of those people who’s just incapable of sympathizing with (sometime) villains. In any case, he seems to have misinterpreted Loki’s character and simplified him into a cartoon version of himself: self-absorbed and narcissistic, with nothing but “poor me, I’m misunderstood,” “rich kid” problems that he just needs to “grow up” and get over.

I might be wrong, but I get the sense that people of many different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds find Loki compelling and sympathetic. Maybe Taika is just too mentally healthy? Most of the Loki fans on here seem to have some mental illness or another. I’m reminded of when my former roommate started reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, on my recommendation, and said she couldn’t sympathize with the protagonist, Quentin, because he just couldn’t appreciate all the good things he had and was always whining about still being unhappy. And I’m like, yeah, that’s called depression. Everything in your life can be going great on the surface and you’re still miserable for no apparent reason. So yeah, Loki’s reactions to the (legitimately shitty) things that happen to him are irrational. Because he’s pretty clearly mentally unwell. I mean, he canonically – onscreen, FFS – attempts suicide. “Rich kid problems,” huh?

Or maybe the deflation of Loki’s character was deliberate. Taika kept saying in interviews that he wanted to make sure Thor was the best, most interesting character in his own movie. The implication, of course, is that in previous movies he wasn’t – which means that someone else was, and the obvious candidate is Loki (Jane Foster may have been a more interesting character than Thor in the first movie, but they gave her basically nothing to do for most of the second one). The difficult thing to do would be to make Thor at least as interesting as Loki. The easy thing to do is to portray Loki as less interesting than he is/was/could be so that Thor can outshine him.

If you need to talk about this in detail with someone, I’m your woman.

For me personally, one standout moment comes right at the beginning, when we see the statue and the play. I’ve seen the meta that connects Loki’s mental health with his contributions to Asgard’s art and culture, and I like the interpretation that these are methods for Loki to help himself heal. I don’t believe it was what we were intended to take from that scene, however. I think we’re just supposed to say, “Oh that Loki! Of course the silly rich boy would make a golden statue of himself and write a play glorifying his life and death. He’s such a narcissist.” Right… did you miss the part where he’s dealing with internalized racism against his own kind? That was a pretty big part of the first Thor movie’s plot and conflict. Oh right, we’re disregarding those.

It also annoys me that Thor treats fucking Hela’s grievances with Odin with more sympathy than Loki’s. Loki says something along the lines of “It hurts being lied to,” (for I a second I thought we might actually get to talk about one of the big issues) and Thor just does not give a shit. It’s all on Loki. Meanwhile, Thor relates to Hela during their conversation. Odin told them both they were worthy and then cast them out the instant they did something he found objectionable, despite the fact that he’d done the very same shit. Am I honestly supposed to feel more sympathy for Hela?

Oh goodness, I’m ranting now…

I completely agree with you about the play and the statue. I felt called out, and honestly kind of offended, by the way they were making a mockery of what was actually a very moving scene in Thor: The Dark World. Yeah, OK, Loki didn’t die, but it’s not totally clear whether or not he thought he was going to die at the time; and there was a moment of genuine affection and honesty between him and Thor. They even made fun of the emotional background music by having that little angelic choir sing it. Yeah, thanks, I knew it was calculated to tug at my heart. Guess what? It worked. So fuck you very much.

Right… did you miss the part where he’s dealing with internalized racism against his own kind? That was a pretty big part of the first Thor movie’s plot and conflict. Oh right, we’re disregarding those.

^ This is the part of your comment that really stood out to me. We see, briefly, in the play that Loki-as-Odin has revealed his Jotun origin to all of Asgard. That’s a HUGE DEAL. I had imagined that Loki would keep trying to hide it forever – unless real-Odin had already made it public either after Loki’s fall (unlikely) or after his return and imprisonment (more likely; an excellent way to “explain” why he went bad and distance the rest of the royal family from the “bad apple”). But it’s slipped in there not only with no follow-up, but without seriousness. “A little blue baby icicle who melted this foolish old man’s heart”? Hahaha, WTF Loki just outed himself as a Jotun adoptee.

[This got really long so I’m putting the rest under a cut. Warning: it’s about race.]

Keep reading

Yes! All this!

Loki’s story could have been used to flesh out the narrative about colonialism. Recall Hela’s dismissive remark about bogus “peace treaties” commemorated on the redecorated walls of the throne room: that might have been an allusion to the one-sided “treaties” that Britain and the U.S. signed with American Indian nations and then trampled all over. Loki could have been one of those stolen indigenous children raised among the colonists and taught to scorn the people to whom he was born.

^ I especially like this summary of how his story could have fleshed out the narrative. Ragnarok is funny, and actions happen in a logical order, but even the most obvious message of the movie, the anti-imperialism, is muddied because it’s not fully addressed.

Or maybe the deflation of Loki’s character was deliberate. Taika kept saying in interviews that he wanted to make sure Thor was the best, most interesting character in his own movie.

This may seem a little tangential, but while I was looking out for this I got to thinking about this part of your post. Loki is the only victim of imperialism in the entire main cast. Disregarding Loki’s connection to the critique of imperialism doesn’t just do a disservice to his character and the story, it also does a disservice to Thor’s character.

(I’m aware of how long this post is getting, so here’s a cut.)

Keep reading

Please, please, can I join? I’m stranded to my mobile but I’m so furious half of the time, so it doesn’t matter. I don’t really like Ragnarok as much as a lot of people I asked do. The problem is quite obvious, I think. Even a brief Wikipedia glance reveals that all three films have different story writers, screenwriters and directors, a bit telling, isn’t it? I’m not really familiar with Alan Taylor’s style but can say that Branagh and Waititi are really different in their vision. I mean, I LOVE What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople but in in these cases Waititi didn’t have two previous films to base on and in the former case he was the screenwriter along with his friend. It just shows, Waititi has a very strong vision and I sure got the impression that he didn’t really care for Thor 1 and 2, instead following his own ideas, which I can get as a writer but let’s be honest, at this point, TtDW and Ragnarok look more like au-ish fanfiction than serious follow ups. So Taika created his own movie in his own style. I’m glad for him? I only wish it wasn’t at the expense of a dramatic and thought out premise of the first movie. Although to be fair Joss did a great job at destroying Asgardian credibility.

Sorry for rambling, pain to edit w/o laptop.

As for his rich kids line… Idk, that’s just shallow and really crossing the line. I get that Taika likes to flirt with the audience in interviews and call himself fabulous, but sometimes one just needs to, idk, be more self aware? Yea, they’re rich kids so their problems don’t count, because money. They don’t have problems, maybe, because MONEY. Suicide and self loathing are fine and dandy as soon as you have money!

Also, it’s extremely disrespectful to the audience to treat one of the most beloved and relatable characters like shit. Doesn’t Marvel do research? They sometimes pander so hard my teeth ache, but what the hell, Loki fans are just wet for Hiddleston, so screw them!

Nothing new here, why I even bother

I’m not sure what you mean by saying “Joss did a great job at destroying Asgardian credibility.” Do you mean that he started establishing the hollowness of the Asgardian empire, or that he somehow messed up with the writing of the Asgardian characters? If the latter, I would certainly dispute that assessment. Thor and Loki’s interactions in The Avengers are some of the most emotionally fraught and powerful between them. Joss Whedon also wrote both Loki’s shapeshifting scene in The Dark World and what I have seen fondly referred to as “the bro-boat scene,” i.e., the scene on the skiff flying through Svartalfheim with the “Satisfaction’s not in my nature”/ “Surrender’s not in mine” exchange. I would say that Whedon kept up the Shakespearean tone that had been established by Branagh and the writers of the first Thor. The failings of TDW were pretty much entirely due to the primary script writers, Markus and McFeely, who made melodramatic hash of Captain America: Civil War and are now responsible for Avengers: Infinity War, God help us.

You are entirely correct that Thor: Ragnarok is a Taika Waititi movie, not a Thor movie. It’s full of little references to previous movies, but many of them are distancing rather than unifying – the play essentially making fun of Loki’s “death” scene in TDW being a prime example. The musical evocation at the end of Thor’s coronation scene from the first movie was actually a nice unifying touch, but there wasn’t enough of that. Tonally, the “trilogy” is just a hot mess.

The remark about rich kids seems to imply that we shouldn’t read most classic works of literature, because they’re about royalty and nobility and other obnoxious rich kids. We should just throw out everything written before the late 19th century, apparently. If it’s not about the heroic proletarian, it’s counter-revolutionary. Barf. Cut it out with the cheap populism, Taika; it’s not cute.

Loki fans are just wet for Hiddleston, so screw them!

Honestly, I do wonder if that’s Taika’s attitude toward Loki’s fans. It seems not to be Marvel’s attitude more generally, considering that basically all the Dark World reshoots were to give Loki more screen time (including the scenes that Joss added/rewrote). For whatever reason (whether mental health or wrong oppressed perspective, as speculated above), Taika doesn’t understand what makes Loki interesting and sympathetic, and he wasn’t motivated to try to figure it out.

To be clear about the perspective I’m coming from (for the benefit of certain sectors of the fandom): yes, I am primarily a Loki fan, and I do find Tom Hiddleston attractive, especially in his role as Loki. But I do not ship either of them with myself (that would be weird). Nor do I “stan” for Loki (or anyone), inasmuch as that involves refusing to recognize any faults. I do not attempt to defend or excuse all of his actions; I think he bears guilt for a great many of them. I do not hate Thor; I do not claim that he “abuses” Loki after the bullying portrayed early in the first movie – anyway, not any more than Loki abuses him in return. I do find Thor a somewhat boring character (possibly because I don’t think Chris Hemsworth is a very good actor), but I try to remedy that in my own fic. My complaint about Loki’s treatment in Thor: Ragnarok has much more to do with the way that his character depth is thinned out than the way he personally is treated.

foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

You know, it wasn’t until I was talking to someone in person about Thor: Ragnarok that I realized how pissed I am that Taika Waititi clearly does not like Loki. This is evident to me in all his interviews about the movie, as well as in his approach to Loki in the film. (He also seems not to appreciate Tom Hiddleston’s acting ability, but that’s another story. At least Jeff Goldblum knows where the real talent in the cast is.) I don’t know what it is – maybe he’s one of those people who’s just incapable of sympathizing with (sometime) villains. In any case, he seems to have misinterpreted Loki’s character and simplified him into a cartoon version of himself: self-absorbed and narcissistic, with nothing but “poor me, I’m misunderstood,” “rich kid” problems that he just needs to “grow up” and get over.

I might be wrong, but I get the sense that people of many different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds find Loki compelling and sympathetic. Maybe Taika is just too mentally healthy? Most of the Loki fans on here seem to have some mental illness or another. I’m reminded of when my former roommate started reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, on my recommendation, and said she couldn’t sympathize with the protagonist, Quentin, because he just couldn’t appreciate all the good things he had and was always whining about still being unhappy. And I’m like, yeah, that’s called depression. Everything in your life can be going great on the surface and you’re still miserable for no apparent reason. So yeah, Loki’s reactions to the (legitimately shitty) things that happen to him are irrational. Because he’s pretty clearly mentally unwell. I mean, he canonically – onscreen, FFS – attempts suicide. “Rich kid problems,” huh?

Or maybe the deflation of Loki’s character was deliberate. Taika kept saying in interviews that he wanted to make sure Thor was the best, most interesting character in his own movie. The implication, of course, is that in previous movies he wasn’t – which means that someone else was, and the obvious candidate is Loki (Jane Foster may have been a more interesting character than Thor in the first movie, but they gave her basically nothing to do for most of the second one). The difficult thing to do would be to make Thor at least as interesting as Loki. The easy thing to do is to portray Loki as less interesting than he is/was/could be so that Thor can outshine him.

If you need to talk about this in detail with someone, I’m your woman.

For me personally, one standout moment comes right at the beginning, when we see the statue and the play. I’ve seen the meta that connects Loki’s mental health with his contributions to Asgard’s art and culture, and I like the interpretation that these are methods for Loki to help himself heal. I don’t believe it was what we were intended to take from that scene, however. I think we’re just supposed to say, “Oh that Loki! Of course the silly rich boy would make a golden statue of himself and write a play glorifying his life and death. He’s such a narcissist.” Right… did you miss the part where he’s dealing with internalized racism against his own kind? That was a pretty big part of the first Thor movie’s plot and conflict. Oh right, we’re disregarding those.

It also annoys me that Thor treats fucking Hela’s grievances with Odin with more sympathy than Loki’s. Loki says something along the lines of “It hurts being lied to,” (for I a second I thought we might actually get to talk about one of the big issues) and Thor just does not give a shit. It’s all on Loki. Meanwhile, Thor relates to Hela during their conversation. Odin told them both they were worthy and then cast them out the instant they did something he found objectionable, despite the fact that he’d done the very same shit. Am I honestly supposed to feel more sympathy for Hela?

Oh goodness, I’m ranting now…

I completely agree with you about the play and the statue. I felt called out, and honestly kind of offended, by the way they were making a mockery of what was actually a very moving scene in Thor: The Dark World. Yeah, OK, Loki didn’t die, but it’s not totally clear whether or not he thought he was going to die at the time; and there was a moment of genuine affection and honesty between him and Thor. They even made fun of the emotional background music by having that little angelic choir sing it. Yeah, thanks, I knew it was calculated to tug at my heart. Guess what? It worked. So fuck you very much.

Right… did you miss the part where he’s dealing with internalized racism against his own kind? That was a pretty big part of the first Thor movie’s plot and conflict. Oh right, we’re disregarding those.

^ This is the part of your comment that really stood out to me. We see, briefly, in the play that Loki-as-Odin has revealed his Jotun origin to all of Asgard. That’s a HUGE DEAL. I had imagined that Loki would keep trying to hide it forever – unless real-Odin had already made it public either after Loki’s fall (unlikely) or after his return and imprisonment (more likely; an excellent way to “explain” why he went bad and distance the rest of the royal family from the “bad apple”). But it’s slipped in there not only with no follow-up, but without seriousness. “A little blue baby icicle who melted this foolish old man’s heart”? Hahaha, WTF Loki just outed himself as a Jotun adoptee.

[This got really long so I’m putting the rest under a cut. Warning: it’s about race.]

I’ve been reading all this stuff about the distinctively Maori/indigenous perspective that Taika Waititi brought to Ragnarok, and of course the glaring allegory about imperialism and its fruits. If TW is approaching the issue of race and oppression from a distinctively Maori/indigenous standpoint, then he’s also looking at it from the standpoint of a group whose subjugation has typically taken the form of conquest from outside and relegation to the outskirts of society – but usually maintaining a distinct group identity. There are, of course, exceptions: attempts at forced assimilation of Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, e.g., by taking children away from their parents and placing them in boarding schools or white families where they would be indoctrinated with English/European culture and religion and forbidden to speak the language or engage in the cultural practices of their community of origin. But the stereotypical experience of indigenous people (those that have survived), especially under British/American colonialism, is the reservation: theft of land and resources, then semi-isolated existence in enforced poverty with traditional language and culture slowly bleeding away due to outside influence and economic pressure. We are invited to infer from Thor: Ragnarok that the fate of the other Realms that Asgard brought under its sway was much like this.

Loki’s experience and the story of internalized racism being told in Thor is somewhat different. One could draw a comparison with the forcible adoption of indigenous children by white families: Loki, too, grows up in complete ignorance of the culture of his blood kin, indoctrinated with Asgard’s imperialist ideology and contemptuous attitudes toward the “backward” races of other Realms. But his is also, importantly, a story about “passing” – a phenomenon connected either with racial/ethnic groups that live in the midst of the dominant group (for part of the time, anyway; they might be relegated to ghettos at night), or with stigmatized sexual or gender identities (which crop up in the midst of the dominant group all the time). Why do I bring up sexual orientations and gender identities in a discussion of internalized racism, you ask? Loki’s canonical queerness (now in the MCU as well as the comics!) is one reason; another is the well-documented fact that some of the most vicious homophobes are gay people in deep, deep denial. And, of course, the fact that gay and trans folks can often “pass” as straight or as the gender assigned at birth, and often must, either in a hostile community or (more relevantly here) before they realize and/or acknowledge the meaning of feelings and experiences that they didn’t know how or weren’t willing to interpret.

The most obvious examples of the first kind of case – racial passing – are Black Americans and Jews (naturally, because it’s me talking; and consult this post for more on the Jewish coding, whether intentional or un-, of MCU/Marvel Loki). As I have discussed before (in the linked post), Loki’s story is very similar to that of Moses in The Prince of Egypt: the offspring of a conquered people adopted and raised by the conquerors in ignorance of his heritage, until it is abruptly and traumatically revealed to him by someone other than his adoptive family, who then confirm it. But it’s also a scenario you could imagine happening in 19th- or 20th-century America or Europe: a white-/gentile-passing orphan adopted out to a white family, either out of ignorance or in order to improve the child’s prospects, who grows up surrounded by racist ideas and, understandably, absorbs them. Then he finds out his true origin, perhaps when identified by someone who is especially sensitive to distinguishing physical characteristics (and let me tell you, it is creepy af when you’re blonde and mostly shiksa-looking and a random goy in a bar or a public bathroom asks you if you’re Jewish), or when he has a kid who doesn’t pass (and maternal infidelity can be ruled out). Or maybe he’s from a family of Sephardi conversos who still light candles in the basement every Friday night but have no idea why, just that they’re not supposed to tell anyone. This is actually a thing in Spain and Portugal and their former colonies; there are people who have found out only in the last few decades that their ancestors were Jewish. And many of them, I’m sure, have some of the same casually antisemitic attitudes that are still common in Europe and Latin America. (A Spanish village called Castrillo Matajudios, which means “Camp Kill Jews,” only just changed its name in 2015.)

Loki’s story could have been used to flesh out the narrative about colonialism. Recall Hela’s dismissive remark about bogus “peace treaties” commemorated on the redecorated walls of the throne room: that might have been an allusion to the one-sided “treaties” that Britain and the U.S. signed with American Indian nations and then trampled all over. Loki could have been one of those stolen indigenous children raised among the colonists and taught to scorn the people to whom he was born. But for some reason Waititi and the writers didn’t make the connection, or didn’t want to tie Loki in to that aspect of the story. Maybe it was because of the element of passing, which doesn’t quite fit the narrative and opens up other associations, as I’ve sketched above. Or maybe it was just because Loki has been a villain and they didn’t want to draw a connection between a (part-time) villain – or anyway, a character they just don’t like – and the oppressed of colonialism (though making him queer is OK, I guess). For whatever reason, they wanted to keep Loki firmly coded as White (which makes him easier to ridicule!) and gloss over the part where he’s only white-passing (literally; he’s actually blue).

It feels obnoxious even to me to make this all about social justice issues… but much of the adulation of Ragnarok HAS made it all about social justice issues, so I sort of feel like the only way to make criticism stick is to show its limitations in the same domain. It’s not, despite the way people have been talking about it, the first Thor movie to address issues of race and oppression; and it doesn’t get to insist on its own radicalism by sweeping the issues raised by its predecessor under the rug.