the ending of Thor 2 is even better with the knowledge that Loki was evil-smiling at the end over his diabolical plan to force Asgard……… into community theater
I refuse to acknowledge any canon other than: Loki has been planning the great community theater takeover ever since he realized conquering other planets required working with the sort of unsavory people that make you stop your skincare routine and every single action he takes in Thor 2 should be read with this end goal in mind
EVERY TIME he has a plotty face in Thor 2 it’s because he’s mentally updating his casting list or making shopping lists with things like: green silk, posterboard, acrylic paint, glitter (craft and cosmetic), grapes
I’m the freak who watched Thor, the first Avengers movie, and Thor 2 and remembered that this is a trickster god, he has his reasons and those reasons aren’t “I’m a villain, whoo!” and therefore those reasons being community theatre and various supplies are totally valid.
thor, dragging loki out of the ark by the hood of their coat: come on loki, lighten up! meeting the avengers won’t be so bad! you might even make some friends!
loki: lies. i don’t make friends, especially not with superheroes.
thor: what am i then?
loki: an inconvenience.
thor: you’re so mean. fine, be that way.
loki, standing in the corner while everyone else is catching up: *sulking*
peter parker, approaching cautiously: hi
loki, sighing, but smiling a little too: hello small child.
peter: i’m peter. and you’re loki, right?
loki: yes
peter: what are your pronouns?
loki: … what?
peter: i, uh, read some books on norse mythology, because i think thor is kinda cute, oh, no i just said that, oh no, i don’t mean it in a i want to date him way, he’s way too old for me, i just think he’s- uh, not relevant. anyways some of the books said that you weren’t always a guy, and i mean, that’s cool, awesome, i’m trans, it’s actually kind of cool to meet someone else who isn’t cis, oh, oh boy i’m rambling again anyways i just wanted to um. ask for your pronouns
loki: *tearing up* you… wanted to…
peter: SHIT! oh, fuck, i didn’t mean to swear. oh no. oh no. oh no i’m so sorry it probably wasn’t okay to ask you that it’s super personal and obviously you are very different from the mythology books i found i just thought that-
Winston Duke often wears a combination of a colored suit with a black print dress shirt and I love it. Like he dresses so well and takes risks that are fashionable.
so i saw some people discussing how loki in ragnarok shouldn’t have been at all phased or subverted by dr. strange – which i agree with, but also, hey, it’s comedic and you can argue that he was taken off-guard, but upon re-watch, something stuck out to me –
there’s this moment when they appear at the bottom of the stairs and thor rolls down the last couple and stands up and he says
we could’ve just walked.
and it made me think of how magic works in terry pratchett’s novels, how (to paraphrase) the hard part wasn’t turning someone into a frog, it was not turning someone into a frog when you knew how easy it was.
like, the whole scene with dr. strange is just. all magic. all pointless magic. unnecessary magic, when, well. they could have just walked.
whereas loki doesn’t really rely on magic overmuch in the movie – he uses it as a tool, when he needs it, but if the job can be done with plain old non-magical trickery or a knife, he just uses those. he resorts to magic when he’s cornered by valkyrie, he uses it when his goals are most directly accomplished by using magic rather than by other means.
whereas dr. strange is using magic all over his scene, just to use it. just because he can. magic was unnecessary for ninety percent of what he did in that scene, the only time he needed magic was to whisk them away to norway. but he teleported all over the place even when he only needed to move a few feet, gave thor an ever-refilling beer that just spilled everywhere, floated around to make a show of how ~magical~ he was, when…
he could have just walked.
i mean, i’m very sure that the filmmakers intended it for comedic effect, but there’s also a layer there of dr. strange being much less comfortable with magic than loki is – loki doesn’t need to bust out the magic at every opportunity, it’s simply a skill, a tool that is completely under his control and at his disposal. whereas dr. strange (at least in his scene in ragnarok) is showing off, which reeks of insecurity.
i guess i’m thinking… if you take the magic away, loki is still a deadly, formidable opponent with many tricks up his sleeve, but dr. strange is just a guy in a cape.
this is good and true because in the comics loki and dr strange got in a fight in a parking lot and then both of them had their magic taken away so loki just punched stephen through a wall and called it a gay ass day
in fairness most days for Loki are gay ass days regardless of how many wizards he punches
joss whedon: loki tortures and murders people for fun, and, despite being the god of CHAOS, is a fascist who says things like “it’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation”
taika waititi: loki is an annoying little shit who day-drinks, puts on theater about himself, and fucks his way to the top
joss whedon: loki and thor are gods, so they always talk proper and posh and in cryptic riddles so for no reason. it makes them seem more powerful and mystical.
taiki waititi: one time when they were kids loki turned into a snake because he knows thor loves snakes and then thor went to pick up the snake and then loki turned back into himself and screamed “yueagh, it’s me!” and then he stabbed thor
Taika Waititi has a deeper understanding of Norse mythological accuracy than Joss lol
It’s because Joss Whedon looks at all mythology and religion through a Christian-atheist lens. You can see it in Buffy and even a little in Firefly too. Even when he writes about other religions and their deities and practices, it still comes back to Christianity.
He wrote Thor and Loki as modern Western Christianity would portray Jesus and the Devil as opposed to how they actually are in mythology or the comics
In Infinity War, when the army in Wakanda is charging forward to meet Thanos’s army, you see Steve and T’challa fly past everyone because they both run super fast. But Bucky is just as fast. And Bucky was not with them. Bucky looked at the army of weird alien monsters and thought to himself “I’m not in any hurry to get to that. I’ll jog it.”
Possibly the start of something, definitely not what I set out to write. Zero spoilers for Infinity War – I could have written this after seeing Black Panther.
Once Bucky’s able to walk around without needing a nap, they move him out of Central Wakanda to a rural part of the Merchant Tribe’s lands. For his recovery and safety, they tell him. If there are going to be spies in Wakanda, they will be in the capital. And the pastoral life will help him heal, although he is not so sure about that. Before he was a weapon he was a fireman’s kid from the part of Brooklyn that didn’t have much nature still left standing. He doesn’t know anything about livestock apart from what was on view at the butcher’s, but now he’s bunking down in a place where the animals outnumber the people. Which is apparently the point of the exercise – to separate him from all that has come before so that he can figure out who he will be now.
He’s pretty sure he’s not gonna be a farmer, but for the time being he is.
Steel Phoenix Studios 