led-lite:

OR, How I Can’t Stop Thinking About Loki’s Grotesque End in Infinity War and Why It Doesn’t Sit Right In the Cinematic Universe

I get the WHY. But not the HOW.

Constantly thinking about this is what inspired me actually the other day to writeup this post (re: Zara in Jurassic World) because that was the last time a movie death made me feel queasy and I have seen SO MANY MOVIES in the last three years.

It’s not like characters in both JP and the MCU aren’t disposed of all the time but generally films follow a rule of the punishment fitting the crime. This BirthMoviesDeath article elaborates on this concept and the Jurassic deaths really well and aligns with how I’m going to be talking about Loki here. This isn’t a rule based in life obviously or even in all movies, but it is established in popcorn blockbusters which these indisputably are. In Zara’s case, there was exactly zero respect for the fact that she was just a flighty nanny when the movie ran her through an absolute horror show. And it stood out like a sore thumb.

In Loki’s case, it’s obvious that this film’s “reasoning” for his dying was to fuel Thor who didn’t really need it and to show off their Bigger Stronger Newer Villain.
Fine. I anticipated all of that. It’s somewhat lazy, but it is an effective shorthand for those story points.

The disturbing thing here though is Loki hasn’t been a proper villain in years. In fact, in 2017 he moved to full on hero status in the last act of Ragnarok— and even when he was at Peak Villain, he was not a torturer. 
TELL THAT TO AGENT COULSON OR THE ONE-EYED DOCTOR IN GERMANY, LAUREN!
I WILL GET TO BOTH, HUSH.
So that’s what makes his death so disproportionately upsetting. It is, for lack of a better term, overkill.

His largest scale villainy was the invasion in the first Avengers where his personal kills were instant blasts of energy, and presumably the fallout of destroyed buildings. The former isn’t in the torture range, the latter’s impact is cinematically blunted by the Marvel universe rarely showing the injuries in large scale invasions or going to great lengths to have their heroes evacuate the affected areas and that distinction matters here.

So let’s go through how it DID go down and how it could have gone without leaving the audience needlessly wincing five minutes in and weeks after.

Sorry in advance by the way, because in the end of my analysis and my suggestions for how this might have been better handled, Loki’s neck is still broken.

To date myself, I said Loki got “Jenny-Calendar’ed”. And they could have easily done this as quickly (you still get to use that gross sound effect, Russo team!) but INSTEAD we have: 
(And if you don’t feel like reliving this, go ahead and skip over the bullet points)

• Loki is picked up by the throat and begins kicking like a helpless animal
• We watch as Loki’s eyes bulge and he struggles to speak
• He does get out a final line though his face is practically blue
• Thanos cracks his neck with his thumb and a sickening sound effect
• The camera does not cut away, we see Loki’s face and frame go slack
• Thanos does not drop Loki, but instead walks the ragdoll-like body in frame, to drop him in front of his brother.

It is excessive and cringe-inducing.

Now back to the eyeball-stealing scene. One of the most intimately violent attacks Loki did in the MCU.

Loki brandishes the eye snatching device and brings it down upon the terrified doctor but the film cuts away from the victim and focuses on Loki’s grin as the onlookers scatter. The most we see of this act is an obscured shot of the German man’s body twitching (also, if I recall correctly, the blu-ray captions say “squelching sounds.” Ick).

I bring this up only because I was struggling to find an act that Loki did on screen where what he dealt out was comparably as grotesque as to what happened to him. Only the first Avengers didn’t amplify this violence by—and you could just IMAGINE the outcry that would have happened if instead—Loki pulled out the device, he rammed it into the doctor’s face, we then STAYED on the doctor and watched his eye be excised from its socket. When Loki is done in this version, he would push the body off the table and show the isolated eyeball to nearby innocents and we would hold on a closeup on the German’s corpse.

IF this had happened, I would have said watching Loki getting choked out was fair cinematic game.

Additionally, Loki’s stabbing of Agent Coulson was literally cinematically declawed. 
OUTTAKES:

FINAL FILM:

Catch the difference? The filmmakers removed the impaling scepter tip from going all the way through in the final product because it was unnecessarily violent for getting the point (harhar) across in this PG-13 comic book film.
Here, the point was to unite the Avengers against this evil and taking out Phil galvanized them on a more personal level. In the meantime, it didn’t needlessly maim Agent Coulson. You felt sorry for him, but not nauseated.
(Sidenote: Poor Thor having a front row on both of these deaths.)
(Second Sidenote: Remember when Loki could teleport away from problems as illustrated in the above scene? Huh.)

Moving on.  So going by the premise that Loki just had to die to similarly motivate Thor to vengeance on Thanos, how might have Infinity War have HONORABLY discharged Loki, so to speak?

My thoughts:

• Loki pulls his dagger on Thanos, who then grabs his wrist as we saw. 
• Thanos makes plain that he means to kill him  (you could even keep that same snarky line spitting “undying” back in Loki’s face)
• Thanos wraps his Gauntleted hand around Loki’s throat (not lifting or choking), while the space gem glows brightly indicating Loki’s teleporting means are stunted and he is truly stuck. (Like how they explained Vision’s failed phasing later)
• Loki, confidently, ANGRILY and in clear voice delivers his “You’ll never be a god”
• Thanos *maybe* gets in a quick retort or *maybe* throws some snide remark in Thor’s direction.
• (WIDE DISTANT SHOT) Thanos snaps Loki’s neck, loudly and quickly
• Loki’s body falls swiftly down before Thor

You might disagree with my specifics or have your own ideas. I’m no screenwriter. But in my scenario, Loki is not made to suffer, the audience doesn’t have to see a graphic depiction of strangulation AND Thanos is still shown to be stronger than the perceived ‘reigning’ MCU Villain. Also, by utilizing the stones or making reference to their impacting the fight against Loki, you’re not inexplicably stripping Loki of his hitherto demonstrated wide array of tricks.

Did I seriously just say hitherto demonstrated?

Agreed, with one correction: Loki’s largest-scale villainy was the attempted destruction of Jotunheim. We don’t know how many Jotnar were actually killed, but we do see the impact of the Bifrost breaking up the ground and causing structures to collapse like a massive earthquake, and we see Jotnar screaming and running from the spreading destruction. But of course no one in the MCU mentions that again – it’s all about Loki’s attack on Earth – because they don’t really want us to care about Frost Giants; if we did, we might place more weight on the wholesale slaughter that *Thor* perpetrated at the beginning of the movie. But that wouldn’t do; they need Thor to be completely absolved of previous sins so he can assume Unproblematic Hero status. Meanwhile, nothing Loki does to save various worlds can make up for his earlier crimes.

NB: I don’t hate Thor, I don’t think he’s evil, I don’t think it’s bad that he (or Tony Stark, or Wanda Maximoff) can be considered a hero after having done terrible things. I’m also quite willing to grant that Loki’s record is worse than Thor’s. But no one even mentions Thor’s unwarranted aggression again (except that “In my youth I courted war” line – that was LAST YEAR, ffs), while the “villain” label, and apparently the inevitable fate of a villain, follows Loki forever.

#it’s been over a month#i’m still angry at the meaningless brutality of his death#that is not how you dispose of one the most three-dimensional characters#that the mcu has had the privilege of portraying#but whatever#the directors don’t care one jot about loki#all they care about is their ‘sympathetic’ new baddie

Same, @saygoodbye-not-thisday​. And I still think they wanted to dispose of Loki as quickly, brutally, and humiliatingly as possible as a kind of revenge: they couldn’t stand that this morally ambiguous, unconventionally masculine character is more popular and attracts more female interest than Thor, their approved male power fantasy; and they probably think the silly Hiddleston fangirls (who are too immature to go for one of the Real Men they’re selling) are bad for Marvel’s image (though of course they’ll take our money before punching us in the gut).