#but tl;dr loki would absolutely want to be with thor again in this timeline

[uhthor]

Idk how to feel. I prefer the loki who died in infinity war who DIDN'T hate thor

totally agree! ragnarok/iw loki is one of my favourite characters of all time

i think with the way he developed in season 1 and 2, that if he were faced with thor now he would never hate him. it’s all just a ruse, much like a lot of things loki does, because of his insecurity and his coping mechanism of pushing everyone away.

look how he was with sylvie in the end (minus the incest) - he just wanted her to be okay because he could see she was hurting, much like he had been for so many years of his life.

odin was shitty to loki AND thor, and i think they were both just trying to co-exist with each other while they were hurting and ended up taking things out on each other, which one of the reasons loki “resents” him. but even from ep 1 of loki when he’s watching his life back, we can see how much he loves thor.

i think that s2 loki, someone who admitted he wants his friends back and doesn’t want to be alone, would kill to see thor again and get back all of the time they lost because of what other people’s abuse did to them… and when that day comes i WILL pass away

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

[aceofthorns]

Why "THOR: RAGNAROK" Disappointed Me

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***

***Go ahead and scroll right to the end for the TL;DR version, but I would appreciate it if you read the whole piece, and gave your response in the comments. I will do my best to respond.***

First, a disclosure: Yes, I am currently experiencing a difficult time with a sick relative, which has been extremely stressful at times, but presently, things are "back to (something approaching) normal". I would like to make it clear that I am in no way lashing out at this movie as a result. Looking forward to this movie has certainly helped recently.

Second: this is not a trolling exercise. I am not a DC fan looking to prick holes in the ultra-successful Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm a fan of both (cue gasps of amazement), and I want BOTH to succeed - I fully intend to be there on Opening Day for JUSTICE LEAGUE, and I already really like what I've seen (and the same was definitely true for THOR: RAGNAROK).

Third: I am the most forgiving soul in the audience. There are many movies that others have been very scathing about, yet I am always there to give a production the benefit of the doubt. I really enjoyed AVATAR, but I can see why people have drawn parallels with DANCES WITH WOLVES - even so, I love a movie/book/whatever that creates a vibrant world, and lets you immerse yourself in it. That's partly why I prefer THE DARK CRYSTAL to LABYRINTH (painting another target on my back in the process)...

I have never - NEVER - walked out on a movie.

That said, there are two movies that really bugged me in recent years: STAR TREK - THE FINAL FRONTIER, and ALIEN 3. I'm sure there are others who will agree with me on those, and some still who will argue otherwise. More on the reasons for the latter choice later...

Okay, on to the "review". But before that, a bit of explanation.

I have been a Marvel fan from my earliest recollections. I remember the original SPIDER-MAN cartoon series, and the weekly British black-and-white reprints of classic Marvel stories (yeah, I'm THAT old). I remember being SO disappointed by THE INCREDIBLE HULK TV series... I remember crying out "YES!" in the cinema when that Phoenix-shape appeared under the waters of Alkali Lake  at the end of X-MEN 2... I will never forget that encounter between Tony Stark and Nick Fury at the end of IRON MAN - and I will always cherish the memory of sitting down in my seat in a packed local cinema to watch AVENGERS, a movie I genuinely never, NEVER imagined I would EVER see.

There's one other moment - again from an end-credits scene - that hit me the hardest. Coulson out in the desert, reporting in that he'd "found it", and the camera panning down to the crater, and Mjolnir.

They were making a THOR movie. A THOR MOVIE. That was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone try - to start building a down-to-earth superhero universe, and then, so early on, bring in some of the most outlandish elements in the comic-book world. The Thunder God - a favourite character of mine - Asgard, Loki, The Warriors Three...

...and, to my delight, IT WORKED. The THOR movies may not be the most fondly regarded in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but they're still a good deal better than the worst others have tried to make - like, say, X-MEN - LAST STAND, or SPIDER-MAN 3. It fitted together, it felt RIGHT. Yes, Josh Whedon gave Thor some funny lines in AVENGERS, and there was "The Punch", but it was well-executed light relief - not almost wall-to-wall comedy. That, dear reader, was what dragged THOR: RAGNAROK down.

THOR: RAGNAROK is a very entertaining movie. That we can, hopefully, agree on. It's visually very potent, with some eye-popping moments... but no sense, in the end, of any gravity. The events that transpire are quite literally cataclysmic - but they all end in a joke from a character who is, to be honest, wasted. Yes, Korg, I'm looking at you.

The MCU has been regularly criticised for weak villains - sometimes unfairly - but Hela stood a great chance of righting that balance. When she was dark, she was SERIOUSLY dark; when she was menacing, she was SERIOUSLY menacing... SHE DESTROYED MJOLNIR - and then she sat on the throne and started cracking jokes like Joanna Lumley's character in ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. She animated the dead, woke the Fenris Wolf, had that cool scene where she tore down the gates of the Asgardian sanctuary.... WHY did she NEED those bloody funny bits?

Skurge was wasted, too, and that's an even greater crime when you consider that's Karl Urban in the armour. He's AWESOME as McCoy in the Kelvin Timeline STAR TREK movies, and he absolutely NAILED IT as DREDD, but here, he comes across as a bargain-basement Johnny Depp character. His final change of heart, and ultimate sacrifice, should have been a stunning moment, classic in the comics, but it ended up blunted somewhat.

The deaths... oh, those bloody deaths. That's what pissed me off about ALIEN 3; the wholesale slaughter of characters you'd come to know and care about in ALIENS. Hicks. Newt. Bishop, sort of... but NEWT. Goddammit, THOR: RAGNAROK slaughtered The Warriors Three like they were NOTHING - and maybe, compared to Hela, they were, but THEY DESERVED BETTER. If you wanted to do a comedy Thor movie, well, there's your team... oh, wait, they're all DEAD now. Nice one.

"They're DEAD, okay? Can we go now...?"

Sorry, Newt, not just yet.

There's also the matter of Odin's passing, which also felt very empty - like a lot of deaths in comic books these days, I guess. Never mind, we can just "Force Ghost" him, right?

Right...?

(cue echoes)

The best parts of the movie were the heavy action. The battles in Muspelheim, realm of Surtur - including the brilliant end of the chase sequence; the first encounter between our heroes (!) and Hela; pretty much everything on Sakaar, especially the battle between The Lord of Thunder and The Green Scar (yeah, they kinda hollowed out PLANET HULK for that part of the movie, but at least they tried); and of course, the return to Asgard, and all that entailed. There isn't much time for comedy there, but when it comes, that's when it DOESN'T feel out of place. Paging Dr Banner, paging Dr Banner...

I'm not against there being ANY comedy in these movies. I LOVED GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and the second one - although I felt the soundtrack wasn't anything like as strong as the first - and I was greatly impressed by ANT-MAN, which managed to be light-hearted AND slot firmly into the MCU ongoing narrative. The previous two Thor movies were played pretty straight-faced, with the comedy coming from other, Earth-born characters, softening the edges just enough. THOR: RAGNAROK came across as a bit TOO much of a departure from what had been set out before, and all in a story which is guaranteed to have repercussions that will rock the rest of the Nine Realms.

Pity it just didn't FEEL that way.

Oh, and this is a Marvel Studios movie that you can walk out on as the credits roll, 'cause you won't miss anything. Any foreshadowing is right there in the middile of the movie: Hela knocks over the Infinity Gauntlet, declaring it "fake", and Loki gives The Tesseract a longing look - hey, we all know where that's going, don't we...?

Three months to BLACK PANTHER, six to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. I remain a dedicated MCU fan, and look forward to both these movies - and a return to form. This is a ship I have no intention of abandoning, but I still reserve the right to be disappointed, when it is, I feel, justified.

The TL;DR version: This was the wrong movie to take along the comedy route. It went against the tone of the previous Thor movies, and felt false as a result, with an underwhelming ending.

7/10

[smartbumblebees]

Did Endgame actually happen?

So I was talking to my dad about Endgame and I’ve had Some Thoughts™ that are gonna melt your brain like it did ours. The main points I’m gonna ask are:

The 2-Steve, 3-Steve problem

Nat and the soul stone

All of the movies leading up to Endgame ultimately don’t matter

How many snaps happened?

As is probably pretty obvious, this is gonna be full of spoilers and too much galaxy braining, and it will primarily talk about Steve going back to take the stones from where they came. I very much want opinions on this, so absolutely interact with this post or message me your thoughts!

This is gonna be long, so strap in! (There’s a tl;dr at the bottom.)

1. The 2-Steve, 3-Steve problem.

So Steve (who we’ll call Steve 2)goes back in time to take the mind stone from Sitwell and Rumlow. Fine, whatever. But then he runs into Steve (who we’ll call Steve 1), and the two fight. So what we have here is the 2-Steve problem. The first rule of time travel is don’t interact with yourself but obviously that didn’t happen. If we assume that these are the exact same Steves with the same atoms (I know they wouldn’t be, but my argument stands either way), then would they not basically explode/create a black hole? They shouldn’t want to be touching each other, but here we are with that issue.

Steve 2 takes the mind stone from Steve 1 and continues on to get the space stone. Steve 1, though, now has the information that there is another Steve out there? And you mean to tell me that he didn’t tell anyone??? He didn’t think to mention to anyone “hey, you know who stole Loki’s scepter? STEVE ROGERS.” Something tells me that wouldn’t have happened. That isn’t exactly something you keep to yourself.

Now comes the 3-Steve problem. When Steve (Steve 3) goes back to return the mind stone, how does he do it? Does he leave it with the downed Steve 1 after Steve 2 left? Or did he do the more logical option of stopping Steve 2 from acting? In the first case, he runs the risk of Steve 1 waking up before he can get away, or running into Steve 2. In the second, Steve 3 has to stop Steve 2 from attempting to take the stone in general, running the risk of anyone seeing that there’s two Steves, neither of which belong in this time period. In either option, we have 3 Steves from 3 different time frames in the same building at the same time! How??? There’s so much risk there that it’s disgusting. It also gives us so many paradoxes and this set of problems is enough to cause anyone to want to stop here. I am not most people.

2. Nat and the soul stone

Nat sacrifices herself on Vormir and Clint wakes up in the water with the soul stone. How the hell does Steve give the stone back? Does he walk up to Red Skull after Clint has left with the stone and give it back? Or does he stop Nat and Clint from going to get it in the first place? Does this mean that Nat is still alive, and took off to clear her ledger? Ultimately, the question here is how is the stone returned to Vormir.

3. All of the movies leading up to Endgame ultimately don’t matter

So here’s the thing. Many of the decisions made in the previous 21(!) movies were completely ignored or turned around in Endgame. Steve leaving Bucky for Peggy (he should have stayed to be with him and you cannot change my mind about that). This move ignores the two films he spent trying to save and protect Bucky. It also nullifies the Agent Carter tv series, because I doubt Steve waited long before going to find her. All of Thor’s character development in Ragnarok, thrown out with getting him his eyes back and stormbreaker (even if it is hella badass and I know he gets it in infinity war but still). Clint offering up himself for the soul stone despite turning into Ronin after his family got dusted. Going back to the 2- and 3-Steve problems, Steve has seen and interacted with himself and says nothing. Because of what happens in this movie, most decisions or events that took place either don’t matter or occur far differently because of the Time Heist and returning the stones.

4. How many snaps happened?

This is when the galaxy brain really kicks in. It’s a lot, so stick with me on this.

In Infinity War, Thanos collects all the stones and snaps, erasing half the universe. In Endgame, they get all the stones, challenge Thanos again, Hulk snaps to bring everyone back, and Tony staps to kill Thanos and his army. Steve then either takes the stones back, or stops them from being taken in the first place. We all agree that this is the timeline.

BUT.

If time travel works the way it should (so not the way they show it working) the only snap that happened is the one at the end of Infinity War, meaning Endgame never happened. On all technicalities, the stones didn’t leave their original locations. They were always exactly where they should have been, meaning they weren’t part of the re-snapping. They couldn't have been. Everyone that was lost after the first snap wasn’t going to, or shouldn’t have, come back.

Had they done what Rhodey suggested and gone back to kill baby Thanos, the first snap obviously wouldn’t have happened, but also neither would Gamora and Nebula been trained, the Chitauri attack wouldn’t have happened, and I’m sure other things that I’m forgetting. Arguably, we wouldn’t have the Avengers at all.

TL;DR

The Russo brother’s did so many magic tricks that they more or less broke Endgame. We have the problem of too many Steves in a single location which shouldn’t have been possible and doesn’t carry through to the rest of the movies. We have the mystery of how the soul stone was returned and whether or not Nat is alive. We have the devaluing of most pre-Endgame movies and tv shows. And we have the potential for Endgame to have not happened. Think what you will, but it was a mess of a movie that wasn’t in any way wrapped up, and leaves more questions than answers, which isn’t agood end for the series.