#and started writing a ‘what if Loki went to Earth - not Infinity War compliant’ fic

[k1ranishf4]

I’m neck-deep into Loki hyperfixation again there’s no escaping him

[omnicat]

I did not enjoy the third Thor movie much

It's a good thing my investment in the MCU was at an all-time low going in, or I probably would have come out of this movie really, really upset.

There were parts I quite liked. The story was fine. I'm cool with most of what happened, and where the movie leaves most of the characters. But the execution was everything I've been hoping against hope for almost two years it WOULDN'T be.

If you were always embarassed that the Thor movies were what they were and thought they would be better as GOTG movies with slightly nicer characters, you're gonna love this movie. If you wanted a Thor trilogy-closer that jives in tone and spirit with the previous two installments, better start lowering your expectations now. You know how some people complain that the first two Avengers movies had too many "Whedonisms"? This was so, so, SO much worse.

The jokes they shoehorned into the very end of the climax and the denouement are like a crash course on how to completely destroy any emotional impact you might have gotten out of what could have been the most poignant ending of an MCU movie to date. What happened in that one scene in the Bifrost chamber earlier on was so insultingly flippant I could only sit there with my jaw slack for the next couple of minutes, unable to believe that I'd really seen what I'd just seen and they were just going to leave it at that. Hela was only allowed to be intimidating half of the time; the other half, she was the worst kind of bumbling, rambling loser (a trait shared by practically everyone in this movie).

It was supposed to be funny. I did not find it funny.

(Hela could have been so fucking magnificent. Even her inability to string two sentences together without falling all over herself could have been a fascinating point of characterisation that only made her more terrifying. But no, instead of an unstoppable force of nature whose mental and emotional faculties were twisted and crippled by millennia of solitary confinement, who was aware of her newfound communicative incompetence and very clearly could or did take out her frustration with that on anyone who looked at her funny for it, she was just a pathetic weirdo who made a lot of pointy things happen. I DO NOT ENJOY HAVING TO REWRITE CANON TO THIS EXTENT JUST TO FIND SOMETHING ENJOYABLE IN IT.)

His fight scenes were fine for the most part, but outside of it Hulk and Bruce were as boring as ever. Doctor Strange was annoying and his gloves looked ridiculous, and the only part of his segment I enjoyed was when Thor got his umbrella back at the end.

Valkyrie was a consistent highlight, thank fuck, though she benefited hugely from being new to the MCU and thus having no previous appearances to live up to. And the way her history unfolds makes me so, so pissed off that Sif didn't get so much as a split-second cameo or a two-word namedrop. I understand that Sif's actress was busy starring in a tv show and didn't have time to film an in-depth exploration of the mind-bogglingly vast array of potential storylines that could have come from Sif + Valkyrie interaction, but that still doesn't excuse how this movie "solves" that problem by simply treating Sif like she never fucking existed. With an ending like this movie had, YOU CANNOT FUCKING DO THAT. HOW COULD YOU BE SO FUCKING LAZY. DID YOU EVEN TRY?!

I think anyone who's followed me long enough to remember the Thor glory days can guess that I was never even all that interested in Sif, but like Yin in the Darker Than Black sequels, I AM SO OUTRAGED ON HER BEHALF I CAN'T EVEN.

The way Sif went up into thin air almost bothers me more than the way they wrote Jane out, and that was bullshit of the highest order. Spoiler that's not worth keeping mum about: Jane dumped Thor. No, we don't get a single word explaining why. She just dumped him. End of.

I said this when there were rumors about it going around before The Dark World came out and I'll say it again: breaking up a couple off-screen after they've spent two and a half movies just trying to be able to properly hook up in the first place and haven't gotten to do anything else yet is SHITTY FUCKING WRITING. Pepperony sort-of broke up off-screen before Civil War, and it didn't bother me! Because we were told why, and it was a logical extension of all the issues they'd been having as an established couple for the past two movies, and even then the "break-up" was explicitly a work-in-progress!

But Thor and Jane don't get any of that. Every rando on the planet apparently knows that Jane dumped Thor, because some nameless extra asking for a selfie in the middle of the street is a totally logical and not at all forced source of this not at all pointless revelation, but telling us how or why? LOLOLOLNO, let's just "funnily" have Thor get defensively cagey about who dumped who.

Thor and Jane's break-up doesn't even get to serve any fucking purpose. There's no new love interest to make room for. Thor doesn't die. There's only one movie between this and Infinity War, so even while trying to avoid giving anything away about the ending, I think it's safe to say that Thor will make his way back to Earth in little more than six months time.

I really don't want to give away the ending here, but AAARRRRGGGHHHHH WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT re: Jane and Thor breaking up in that light. >:|

And no, for the millionth time, Jane's actress did not refuse to work with Marvel again. She was never invited back in the first place.

The only good thing about this development is that it makes it easier to write canon-compliant Loki/Jane fic, but I never expected that shit to be canon-compliant in the first place, so that's a sorry consolation prize.

...I mean, FUCKING SERIOUSLY. Thor spent two years moping and pining about Jane and the entire last movie fretting over her, but now the only thing they show him feeling at the break-up is that Jane dumping him was a blow to his ego?! WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS OKAY.

I just... I can't believe I'm going to have to put up with this movie being the way it is forever. That, going off of their business model so far, this is how my first favorite branch of the MCU has ended, and there's no do-over. I keep thinking to myself "I hope someone makes a fanedit that cuts away all the cringy, out-of-place attempts at humor that bothered me so much", but even if they did, in a lot of cases that probably still wouldn't magically create the impact I did want all those ruined and interrupted scenes to have. They'd just fall flat in a different way.

I've never actually come out of an MCU movie disliking more than maybe one or two small, isolated, easily ignored parts of it before. I am not enjoying the fact that of all the movies it could have been, it had to be this one.