I think it would have been cute, but I don’t know that it would make a difference.
It’s not like Thor doesn’t already have scenes that are meant to show Loki being mocked or in Thor’s shadow (admittedly some of the best examples were cut, but I know people who believe Loki’s got no legit problems who’ve seen those scenes). People will write anything off to fit their idea of what a character’s about.
Some hate for Loki comes as a reaction to people who don’t acknowledge his faults. It puts a lot of thoughtful people in the middle of a big fight over the character. We expect him to be held accountable, so we hate him, and we ask people to recognize the motivations for his crimes as something more then “he’s just evil”, so we’re stanning for him or woobifying him.
Part of why so many people have decided Loki’s a shallow, lazy, power hungry narcissist is Thor: Ragnarok being deemed the best Thor movie (I know this because I’ve followed the same people, and I know that pre-Ragnarok’s release they saw Loki’s character slightly more sympathetically). I take issue with this because it’s the third Thor movie, and it completely reboots both Loki and Thor’s character arcs. The characterization just doesn’t flow well with the other movie in the MCU. People will continue to hold it up as the pinnacle of Thor and Loki, and retroactively apply the character traits they present in Ragnarok to the other movies, despite that not being how time and story structure works.
What I’m saying is that people who overlook Loki’s motivations aren’t concerned about logic or canon. They may say they are, but they’re really not. They just want a simple heroes and villains narrative, and that’s not what Thor is. It’s not even what Ragnarok is, truth be told, but somehow the movie successfully convinced people that a mean Thor was a hero (maybe because he keeps saying he is–people seem to believe everything that comes out of Thor’s mouth even when he’s demonstrably wrong and/or overreacting because he’s upset).
Hi Anon, are you here to join the club of racists (apparently) who don’t understand why we’re supposed to like Taika Waititi’s interpretation of Thor? Welcome!
Honestly, I think the best thing you can do is to watch the other movies if you haven’t. In the first movie, Thor starts out as an arrogant warrior who loves to fight and thinks violence is the solution to every problem, but his father strips him of his powers and banishes him to Earth to learn humility. Aside from the arrogance and eagerness to fight, he’s very loyal to his friends and he has a gallantry about him… well, he’s representative of an ancient warrior culture, really. He loves to fight and feast and flirt; he’s a bit bombastic, but has a sense of chivalry; he picks on little bro Loki sometimes, he can be a bit of a jock/bully, but he loves and trusts Loki (more than he should) and isn’t willing to give up on him even when he’s descended into madness and is doing horrible things.
Thor tells the story of Thor’s maturation into a more patient and self-sacrificing person, and he continues that process of maturation through the other movies we see him in: The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. He’s still a little too ready to solve problems by hitting things in The Avengers, still a little arrogant and Homeric-warrior-bro (he’s Achilles, basically), but he’s getting better, learning how to be more of a team player. In TDW and AOU he becomes progressively more serious and thoughtful, largely because terrible things keep happening in his life… he still has a sly sense of humor, and he spends much of AOU subtly trolling the human Avengers, but he’s also become very canny and perceptive.
Ragnarok just gave him a complete personality makeover with almost no regard for the way he’d been portrayed before. He was never that inarticulate – the Asgardians used to speak in an elevated, slightly archaic register, the way they do in the comics – and he was never as… mean as he is in Ragnarok. I mean, he’s a bit of a douche in Thor, but the point was that he got better.
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.
This took much longer to finish than I intended but I got a message from @teenystarprince that had me inspired lmao
And right! I was wondering how they were going to go about it in the movie since I knew the relations from the comics and the Eddas before? And it was a fun variation. Fancy that conversation though (…which I’m pretty sure they had in Journey Into Mystery I think at one point but YOU KNOW)
Loki is the Philosopher King 