Tag: thor ragnarok hate

foundlingmother replied to your post “Still unfollowing people who post/reblog ill-informed kneejerk Whedon…”

It reminds me how desensitized people are to ableism in films and every day life. Ragnarok has a lot of ableism. I don’t think it’s meant to be hurtful, but then neither is any sexism in the Avengers movies. It’s just two different filmmakers with two different failings in social justice/morality. But Whedon gets rampant hate, while TW gets called a literal god. Tumblr culture is fucking scary…

Let’s not forget the homophobia in Thor: Ragnarok that has somehow been converted, by some strange Tumblrian alchemy, to groundbreakingly wonderful LGBT representation.

pedeka:

obsessedwithloki:

It’s been months and I still can’t believe there’s a deleted scene with Loki in a porta-potty.

Let’s humiliate Loki. It’s been fun since the first “Know your place, brother.” In the first movie!

More to the point, it’s revenge for the humiliation Loki (Tom) has imposed upon Thor (Chris) by daring to be more popular, especially among women.

acebakes:

philosopherking1887:

Not gonna reblog the post that inspired this thought, but… the Loki stans who claim that Thor’s behavior toward Loki early in “Thor 1” and before was abusive annoyed me a lot more before “Ragnarok” came out. People who fail to make a sharp distinction between Thor in T1, Avengers, TDW, AOU and Thor* in TR irritate me in either case; but frankly, I’m a lot less worried about the people who say Thor’s treatment of Loki was abusive than about the people who say that Thor*’s treatment of Loki (or Loki*) is love.

What’s with the astrick?

*just Chris Hemsworth?

I’ve been using the asterisk, following a convention in academic philosophy, to indicate that the character referred to as ‘Thor’ in Thor: Ragnarok is not the same character as the one in the previous movies. It’s a shorthand for not-really-Thor or fake-Thor. (The other way people notate that in philosophy is by replacing the first consonant of a word with shm-, a convention borrowed from Yiddish, but “Shmor” is just weird.)

Not gonna reblog the post that inspired this thought, but… the Loki stans who claim that Thor’s behavior toward Loki early in “Thor 1” and before was abusive annoyed me a lot more before “Ragnarok” came out. People who fail to make a sharp distinction between Thor in T1, Avengers, TDW, AOU and Thor* in TR irritate me in either case; but frankly, I’m a lot less worried about the people who say Thor’s treatment of Loki was abusive than about the people who say that Thor*’s treatment of Loki (or Loki*) is love.

foundlingmother:

imaginetrilobites:

stealing this image from angst-wizard’s reply to thorduna because i don’t wanna invoke the wrath of the majority of this fandom and write unsolicited criticism on other people’s posts

image

b) THOR LITERALLY LEAVES LOKI ALONE AND INCAPACITATED IN THE HANGAR WHERE LOKI CAN BE FOUND AND EXECUTED oh my god!!!!

it was punishment. not a cute brotherly therapy session. 

“People I can’t understand.” Ha!

People you have decided are wrong and do not want to understand, so you make dismissive memes.

If you want to understand, I will explain it. Again. This is not merely a tough love moment, and even if it were, it’s deeply troubling that Loki, a character coded to be mentally, is fixed by that. By being abandoned, in pain (or mild discomfort, if you prefer), unable to move. Because that would not fix a mentally ill person. It solves none of Loki’s fundamental issues and grievances. Because Loki’s problem wasn’t that people were giving him too much attention and he needed to be shown that the world didn’t revolve around him. It wasn’t that he just needed to grow up and get over himself. That interpretation of Loki’s issues is deeply upsetting, because it’s exactly the sort of bullshit I’ve heard growing up neurodivergent and mentally ill. 

It makes me wonder whether certain persons have read or seen this post or this informative reblog thereof, both by writer-bloggers that certain persons supposedly like and respect (at least to my knowledge). Perhaps those opinions are just dismissed as an eccentricity of otherwise good writers whose long tenure in the fandom grants them immunity from excommunication.

How Ragnarok Took Everything From Loki and Its Consequences

lucianalight:

I wanted to write this post since I
watched TR but I wasn’t calm enough for it until now. Even writing so little
about how TR unfairly treated Loki’s character and disrespected him and his
fans in my TR reviews made me angry enough to start shouting in my head and
rendered me unable to write it the way I wanted. Then IW happened and it was
the cause for another wave of rage in me. So it took me a long time.

We always talk about how TR
disrespected Loki and took away a lot of his canon characterizations and
motives and his arc from him. I noticed we never explained it in details and it
caused a lot of misunderstandings about why we hate TR and what we mean. So
this is a detailed explanation of how TR took everything from Loki.

Keep reading

Again, great analysis, and I just have to highlight the conclusion:

“By dismissing Loki’s pain, the narrative paints Loki as someone who is always in the wrong and Thor as blameless in everything. It leads to Thor dismissing Loki’s pain and it leads to disguising Thor and Loki’s imbalanced relationship (Thor as superior and Loki as inferior the way they started in the first Thor movie) as reconciliation and healing.

“You know what all of this led to right? A Loki robbed of his sacrifice, bravery, intelligence and planning skills, his magic and power had no place in IW. He was useless in the authors’ minds. He was healed after all! What else could Loki do except failing at tricking Thanos when he could be outsmarted by Thor and Dr. Strange. What else could Loki do except attacking Thanos with a tiny dagger when that was all the weapons he was left with? At least they gave him his bravery back so his stupid attack makes some sense. In their minds the only way his story could end, and he could completely be redeemed was a true sacrifice (which was pointless since Thanos could still kill Thor) in which he actually dies with no resurrection. This is how they took away Loki from us, by taking away everything from his character first and then when he had nothing left they killed him.”

This is why I’m still so pissed about Loki’s death in IW. Not just because he died – not just because it was unnecessarily brutal and graphic – but because it made him into a plot device rather than a character; because it passed the judgment that he had outlived his interest and usefulness and could only serve as a functionary in someone else’s story. It wasted the potential for a payoff of the connection to Thanos established in The Avengers; it showed that the creators (writers, producers, and directors) did not care enough about Loki’s character to give us that payoff or even tell us what the hell happened with Loki and Thanos. But Loki’s treatment in Ragnarok should have shown us that it was inevitable. Of course Markus & McFeely couldn’t know how thoroughly Taika Waititi was planning to ridicule and emasculate Loki, but if they saw the basic script, they might have had some idea of how his power, intelligence, and complexity were going to be minimized, and how the narrative was going to tie a neat little bow on his “redemption” and “reconciliation” with Thor. And of course these movies have no time for recovery from trauma, except maybe if your name is Tony Stark (and he has RDJ going to bat for him).

I was glad that Loki turned out not to be dead at the end of TDW because I thought he was going to have more time to develop his relationship with Thor and achieve genuine reconciliation, that we might find out what happened with Thanos, that Thor might finally ask what happened, that they might confront the prejudice against Frost Giants that led both of them to kill so many in Thor 1. But now I agree with @lucianalight: I would rather that he had died being noble and clever (turning on the grenade while impaled!!) than live to have everything that made him a magnificent character negated and shat on.

A Different Story

lucianalight:

I think you know me by now. This is a long post.

*Major Spoilers for Avengers Infinity War and AoA*

Keep reading

I can’t believe I hadn’t read and reblogged this before… so much of it is so perfect, I kind of want to highlight the whole thing, but I’ll keep myself to a few paragraphs:

“Why do we care so much? Because we see ourselves in Loki. We, who felt different, were different, and were alone because of it. We, who knew how it felt to be ridiculed, rejected, vilified and despite all our efforts, never accepted, never loved for who we are. We, who hide all our hurt and pain under a mask but at some point we just couldn’t take it anymore and exploded. So we identified with Loki. …

“To a number of fans and audience, especially male audience with beliefs from a toxic masculinity culture this seemed threatening that a queer coded and/or feminine coded villain gets more female fans than heavily masculine coded heroes. They hated him. And they started to belittle his fans, by implying that Loki was only popular because of Tom or because he is pretty! That Loki’s fans are a bunch of fools that only lust after him for his looks. It seems they deliberately don’t want to understand. Still, it doesn’t really matter, right? Marvel won’t force the ideas of toxic masculinity on us, right? Wrong!

“Ragnarok happened.

“Ragnarok happened and it stepped on everything that was Loki. His characterization, his arc, his powers, his goals, his fans. Ragnarok ridiculed Loki in every possible way. It insulted us, made fun of us, told us that we were a bunch of fools for caring for Loki because he is just a stupid troublemaker. Ragnarok was a disaster of toxic masculinity.

“We saw it. We saw everything that was wrong with Ragnarok and pointed it out. But what were [I amend to: ARE] we called? Stans, apologists, haters, antis. …

“He didn’t deserve to die as a plot device to give Thor sth to avenge. We didn’t deserve this. We deserved to see the god of mischief in all his trickster glory. ‘No resurrection this time’ was directed to us, not Thor. They were telling us that you can rage and try to fight, but at the end, you are nothing, you will be broken like a ragdoll so the real hero can be heroic. The story is not about you, it was never about you. You are just a tragedy, you don’t deserve happiness, you can only be redeemed by sacrificing yourself. …

“The fate of Gamora and Nebula is also angers me.  One gets killed in a disguise of love and the other gets tortured. The two characters that deserved to avenge themselves more than anyone, to get a chance for a proper fight, was used as plot devices. It’s disgusting! Gamora, Nebula and Loki, all feminine coded and/or queer coded characters were crushed by their masculine coded abuser. Toxic masculinity.”

Ragnarok and Infinity War were the triumph of toxic masculinity. For the people who will no doubt reply, “But Ragnarok was so great for queer representation!”… many people, some of whom are queer (I’m bi myself), strongly disagree. At the same time that Loki was more overtly coded as gay, he was made to look ridiculous, shallow, and incompetent. The other gay-coded character, the Grandmaster, was also depicted as ridiculous, and morally repugnant besides. This is not revolutionary; this is perfectly standard villainous queer-coding (thanks again, @fuckyeahrichardiii). The implied relationship between Loki and the Grandmaster cannot be anything other than predatory and opportunistic, which further reinforces negative stereotypes. Valkyrie’s bisexuality was not made explicit, unless you count the flashback scene with her presumed lover dying for her, which, again, is not revolutionary in any way (tragic dead lesbians, yay!).

Contrary to what a lot of Tumblr seems to think, white men do not have a monopoly on toxic masculinity. I’ve been seeing people make a point of adding “white” when talking about men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and attention – probably with the (admirable) aim to counter the *equally false* notion that non-white cultures are uniformly more misogynistic than white culture. Toxic masculinity manifests differently in different cultures, but the basic phenomenon crosses lines of race. We cannot assume that Ragnarok must be exempt from it because Taika Waititi is not white (or wears pineapple rompers); and a careful consideration of its characterization and tone – as well as the decision to replace Jane Foster, a woman whose strength is her intellect, with a woman who is “more Thor’s equal” because she can beat people up (adding Valkyrie would have been a much better decision, but we can’t have more than two central female characters, can we?) – yields the diagnosis that it drips with toxic masculinity.

toomanylokifeels:

philosopherking1887:

Unpopular opinion: the movie with the best characterization of a mature Thor is Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The opinions on quality of Thor’s maturity and growth across films will always be subjective, I believe, but Thor in Age of Ultron is underrated in this regard. I think it’s the first movie where we see Thor not necessarily in the process of becoming more mature, but being mature. It’s the first film where Thor isn’t just actively trying to overcome the mistakes of his youth, trying to find his own way in the universe, and/or fighting with sentimental emotions to do what’s right. 

I don’t think this opinion is unpopular simply because many people think that it is completely not true, but rather because this film is unpopular. It’s easy not to pay attention to Thor’s characterization when it’s not a fan favorite for a lot of people. From what I can remember, parts of the fandom were fizzling out and the excitement of the first Avengers film was wearing off. However, what I also remember was the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Thor despite it all. 

I believe that was in part because Thor was the mature one. Thor was the wise one. Thor was the patient one. Thor was willing to face many unknowns in order to make the right decisions. Thor embodied qualities that people wished were present amongst all the other heroes. Of course, this was all made possible by Thor’s growth over the previous films. Thor was relatively sheltered from consequence for a long time as a prince, but was forced to mature.  

Thor was more somber in Age of Ultron, due to the loss of his mother and his brother. While this could have made him self-destruct and I would not blame him for it, he chose to turn his mourning into something productive. He was shaken by the visions he was given, and chose to go out to find answers despite how frightening those answers may be. Furthermore, while his anger often gets the best of him, he only lost control on Tony Stark.

Why? …because he actually understood the gravity of Stark’s choices. Thor wasn’t having a tantrum. He wasn’t aggravated because he was prevented from doing something he wanted or needed to do. He wasn’t being impatient. He was angry because no one seems to be taking the situation as seriously as they should and if they are they’re wallowing in despair, while Thor has been working tirelessly to find solutions to a situation that could have been prevented. 

Thor was the mature one in that film, because he had to be. To me, that doesn’t mean that Thor needs to maintain a serious outlook and attitude across the films moving forward. Thor continues to make difficult decisions despite the amount of pain and loss it brings him, and he’s been able to do so with a serious attitude and with a sunny optimistic disposition as well. Age of Ultron Thor embodies maturity in a lot of ways, though, in a manner that stands out.

It’s just unfortunate that the movie does not equally stand out. 

Unpopular opinion #2: AOU is underrated, largely because people have the knee-jerk impulse to demonstrate their moral purity by hating on Joss Whedon for everything he does – not just his characterization of women, which does have some issues, but also his storytelling and characterization abilities more broadly. Plot-wise, AOU is no messier than Civil War; in terms of character arcs and philosophical depth, it’s in a different league entirely.

Unpopular opinion #3: Ragnarok does not show a mature Thor but “with a sunny optimistic disposition” instead of a serious one; it does not depict Thor at all. Infinity War attempts to get back to mature Thor, but is hampered by the need for some kind of continuity with Ragnarok (which showed no such consideration for its predecessors) and the fact that character was taking a backseat to a contrived plot throughout IW.

Unpopular opinion #1b: Thor in AOU is exactly what “funny Thor” should look like. His sense of humor is subtle and deadpan; he occasionally veers into the undignified, but never comes off as a buffoon.

juliabohemian:

loki-god-of-menace:

I know the collective fandom likes to pretend like Ragnarok was the ‘pièce de résistance’, of the Thor movies, especially in regards to Loki’s characterization and Loki and Thor’s relationship, but aside from my numerous grievances with that movie….

None of Loki’s ‘heroics’ or loyalty or anything being praised as ‘amazing character development from Ragnarok’ is new, and it was NOT Ragnarok that brought it about or first proved its existence.

It was Thor: The Dark World

Yes. Does anyone remember the movie where:

– Loki agreed to help Thor attempt to save the world with no other reward than a supposed ‘revenge’ for their mother’s death (which Thor did not intend on giving him; see “You fool, you fool, you didn’t listen.” when Loki interfered with Kurse/Thor) and return to eternal imprisonment? (”Vengeance… then afterward this cell.”)

– Loki saved Jane from a void bomb and almost got himself killed in the process. Something he was not beholden to do, and could have passed off easily as inevitable or unavoidable if he was evul.

– Loki saved Thor’s life, and almost ‘died’ in the process (which cannot be disproved, since if we want to hold Ragnarok up as the gold standard, it went out of the way to prove that Loki’s illusions cannot be touch/can have things thrown through them, so no. Kurse could only have stabbed Loki and Loki alone).

– Loki did not betray Thor (You might say, “He took the throne!!! And deposed Odin!!!”. Oh. You mean the throne Thor was avoiding and refused entirely by his own volition? And deposed Odin, who… told the guards to stop Thor ‘by any means necessary’ leading them to shoot at him i.e. stop Thor, even if you have to kill him. Odin, who would have done exactly as Thor said, “Failure will mean our deaths; success will mean exile”, and either exiled Thor again or executed him, in light of the fact Odin would have executed Loki if not for Frigga and told the guards they were ok to kill Thor?)

Yeah. That was all… Thor: TDW. That movie where Loki loved his mother, and cared enough about Odin to still be hurt by his rejection and try to show Odin the hypocrisy of the situation with, “I went down to earth as a benevolent god…. just like you.”

Yep. The movie where Loki called Thor ‘brother’ throughout the whole film, and saved his girlfriend, and saved Thor?

Ragnarok was a crack fic written by someone whose only knowledge of the franchise came from memes they found on Reddit. That’s my new headcanon.

@fuckyeahrichardiii you’re not the only one who thinks TDW was great 🙂

the-haven-of-fiction:

peoplearenotdiamonds:

hiddlememes:

free-loki:

cheese-and-craziness:

Now if that’s doesn’t spark a Loki movie, I don’t know what will.

I love you for saying this.

“Not enough Loki.” -Rolling Stone

Just casually bringing this back in 2018

^^^ in which I am reminded how much I love The Dark World and detest Ragnarok

And Taika Waititi’s response to this critical consensus – probably motivated by Chris Hemsworth, and with the blessing of Kevin Feige – was to gut Loki’s character, to ridicule and emasculate him at every turn, to deprive him of the complex interiority that all of these critics love, to reduce his motivations to “I couldn’t help myself, I’m a trickster” (an actual line from the ridiculous play in Ragnarok), a.k.a. “I did it for the lulz.”

Don’t give me that “But he foregrounded Thor and Loki’s relationship!” bullshit. He reinforced and endorsed the imbalance that was always present; he dismissed and delegitimized all of Loki’s grievances and presented his complete submission to Thor’s will as his redemption.