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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years ago

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'Loki' takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

Credit: Charlie Gray for EW

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Owen Wilson as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in 'Loki.'| Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."

#Tom Hiddleston #Loki #Disney+#interview

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thesaltofcarthage · 3 years ago

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Loki takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

from Entertainment Weekly

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

By Chancellor Agard May 20, 2021

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

Additional reporting by Jessica Derschowitz

#loki #loki series #tom hiddleston #entertainment weekly

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years ago

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

The DC films have been a mixed bag, to put it lightly. As of 2020, for every fun and enjoyable superhero film like Wonder Woman, Shazam, Aquaman, and Birds of Prey, there has been a film that was reviled or polarizing. Dawn of Justice and Justice League are both common punching bags, but there is one movie that stands out as the single most despised film in the DC cinematic universe so far:

Suicide Squad.

A lot of this comes from just how unashamedly blatant the film is at being a rushed cash in on the type of quirky superhero movie that Guardians of the Galaxy helped popularize: a bunch of wild and wacky antiheroes team up, fight a big problem, make one liners, and become a family, all while an awesome soundtrack blares in the background. It seems like the easiest thing in the world to rip off, but there’s a lot of heart and charm in Guardians that it’s not easy to replicate. And if you ask most critics… this movie did not.

Opinions on the film tend to range from lukewarm to outright hating, with IHE and the [REDACTED] Critic all throwing in their two cents. Perhaps the most damning review of all came from Mick LaSalle, who wrote:

“If you know someone you really can’t stand — not someone you dislike, not someone who rubs you the wrong way, but someone you really loathe and detest — send that person a ticket for “Suicide Squad.” It’s the kind of torment you can wish on your worst enemy without feeling too guilty: not something to inflict permanent damage, just two hours of soul-sickening confusion and sensory torment.”

There’s not much love for this, is what should be abundantly clear. And it’s really a shame, because there is stuff this film has going for it, but it wasn’t really enough to stop DC from basically hitting the soft reboot button and snagging the actual James Gunn to make a sequel while also doing their best to downplay that the events of this film actually happened. But now with a few years of hindsight, I have to go back and wonder like the heathen I am…

Is Suicide Squad REALLY that bad?

THE GOOD

Yes, amazingly, there is some good stuff here, mostly to do with the casting. At least half the cast is just pitch perfect for their roles. Famous rapper and YouTube Rewind star Will Smith as Deadshot is, of course, one of the standout examples; he brings a lot of charm and charisma to his role of an assassin who really loves his daughter, but then again, this is Will Smith. It’s hard not to love the guy in anything he does. Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is another inspired bit of casting, and she truly owns the role, and Jai Courtney is perhaps the most consistently enjoyable member of the Squad, Captain Boomerang, the exact sort of stupid D-list villain who SHOULD be getting screentime in a movie like this.

Of course, the very best bit of casting is Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, in Harley’s big screen debut. Robbie has such an enthusiasm for the role that shines through even with the clunky script, and while she would definitely improve her craft for her outing in Birds of Prey, her performance here still has that spark of zany fun that Harley needs, cementing Robbie as the perfect star for the role. Frankly, that’s the feeling that can be gathered from a lot of these really good performances; they’re good, but they lack proper refinement, and so are stuck spouting the stupidest, corniest, clunkiest lines imaginable. But yes, really the worst thing you can say about Harley in this film is that her outfit is absolutely atrocious and demeaning.

While we’re on the subject of Harley Quinn, tough… while the whole situation with the Joker is something I’ll get to shortly, I think their relationship in this film is actually done well in many aspects. I’ve always preferred the original idea of “Mad Love” over the glorified domestic abuse that Joker x Harley has often devolved into, and while there is a bit of the latter, the fact that Joker literally goes out of his way to save Harley at every opportunity to the point he’s a definition satellite love interest is really good. Of course, this was thrown out for Birds of Prey, but I do think it worked in the context of this film.

Of course, we all know that the greatest aspect of this film is REALLY Slipknot, the single most powerful member of the Squad. I’ve already written an entire Psycho Analysis on why he’s the greatest villain in the history of cinema, so just read that for the rundown on how our man Slipknot climbs his way into your heart and mind.

THE BAD

So there is just a lot to go over here.

First, there’s the soundtrack’s implementation. As a blatant Guardians ripoff, everything the characters do needs to be punctuated by some sort of awesome music to tie the scene together. The difference is that where in the Guardian movies the soundtrack is used as a storytelling tool to help subtly emphasize points that the narrative doesn’t want to spell out for you, Suicide Squad just has these songs because they’re cool and because Guardians did it. Why is “Black Skinhead” playing while Deadshot tests his weapon skills? Why is “House of the Rising Sun” playing during Waller talking about the Squad? What exactly do these songs add besides background music? The opening montage of everyone in the Squad is particularly bad because the songs are just switching up really quickly as the montage goes along, which echoes a complaint I had about Little Nicky, of all films: “One of the more noticeable problems is the usage of music; in the course of one single scene, they play four different songs, and all of this is in a span of about one or two minutes. Just pick a song and stick to it for fuck’s sake!” About the only song that is really properly utilized is “Heathens,” which plays over the (admittedly cool) credit sequence.

Now let’s get into the characters, because for every awesome character in this film, there’s two that just absolutely suck or are so underutilized it’s laughable. Probably the worst case of this is Killer Croc, who despite being a stunning practical effect and probably the reason this film scored an Oscar, does pretty much nothing for the entire film, save for a short bit in the ending where he swims. You’d be entirely forgiven for forgetting he’s in the film, which is not something you should be saying about a Batman villain of this caliber.

Katana and Diablo are both characters who should be awesome, but the story givers them nothing to do and rushes their character arcs, respectively. Katana is yet another character you’d probably forget is there, even though she has a lot of fascinating elements to her character (some of which are detailed in her infamous introduction, which don’t worry, I’m working towards it), but nothing is really done with her. Diablo is actually one of the best and most fleshed-out characters in the film, but the narrative just completely fails to justify him or his ultimate heroic sacrifice; by the end, he claims the Squad is like family, but they’ve never really done anything to earn this. Like, think to the ending of Guardians of the Galaxy, where we have moments like Drax standing up for Gamora and Groot sacrificing himself. These moments only work because the characters had their relationships built up over the course of the movie so that there is a punch when these things happen. Suicide Squad really just throws it in just to have it.

Then we come to our villain. Enchantress is yet another villain I once detailed on Psycho Analysis, and my opinion on her remains unchanged. While she most certainly has a cool design, she is absolutely not the sort of world-ending supernatural threat a team of snarky jackasses should be fighting on their first mission together. The Squad should have had a mission more grounded in reality, and that can’t happen when you have an ancient interdimensional witch causing a Luddite zombie apocalypse through the power of interpretive dance. There’s also the fact that there’s never really any reason given to care about the character of June Moon, the host of the Enchantress, so the desperation of Rick Flag (a character so boring and pointless I didn’t even waste time mentioning him before) to save her comes off as hollow as most of the movie’s other emotional moments. Overall, Enchantress is just a boring generic doomsday villain who feels wildly out of place in the story and just doesn’t do anything to make herself stand out.

Then we have Joker.

I’m not really going to get into Jared Leto’s obnoxious behind-the-scenes antics, because that has little bearing on his performance, kind of like how his performance has little bearing on the film. As I mentioned before, this Joker is nothing more than a satellite for Harley. This is probably a good thing, because despite being called Joker he’s pretty divorced from most other interpretations; while he plays up the thuggish, brutish elements the Joker does typically have, everything else about him is just so jarringly non-Joker as to be laughable, from his ridiculous grill to the absolutely cringeworthy “Damaged” tattoo on his forehead. I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say he’s the worst villain in a superhero movie ever as some have, mostly because he’s not even in the film long enough to leave much of an impact. I will, however, say that so far he is the absolute worst onscreen depiction of Joker in film. Once again, if you’d like to hear more of my in-depth thoughts on Leto’s portrayal, I did make a Psycho Analysis on him a while back.

But all that aside, the worst aspect of this film is the writing. The writing is just utterly abysmal throughout, and while there are a few good lines sprinkled here and there, a lot of the dialogue is cringeworthy and the story itself is a convoluted mess. The story takes so many nonsensical turns from the get-go, starting with how Amanda Waller thinks a bunch of non-superpowered criminals could take down a metahuman threat; what the hell is Killer Croc, whose only power is “being an ugly cannibal,” going to do against Superman? That’s like if you put Leatherface up against a Predator, who would be stupid en-

...Oh. Right. Well, if nothing else, Amanda Waller has a very bright future as a designer for Mortal Kombat games. Beyond that, as mentioned above, a lot of the characters simply exist and serve little purpose in the narrative, and the ones that do serve a purpose are underplayed unless they’re Deadshot or Harley. You’d think Diablo’s tragic backstory and desire to have a family or Flag’s desire to save June from her curse would be more major elements, but nah. We don’t get much, if any, development on these fronts. And for the dialogue… well, I think this one speaks for itself:

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

So I’ve been pretty hard on this film overall, I think, but here’s the shocking twist: I don’t think this is the worst DC movie. Frankly, I find the claims that this is the bottom of the barrel in terms of superhero films a gross overexaggeration. F4ntastic and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are far and away worse films with little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever in them. At the very least, Suicide Squad is a fun kind of stupid, whereas those movies are bleak, miserable slogs that fail to even try and engage the viewer on any level.

And then, even within the DC movie lineup, I would not say this is worse than Dawn of Justice. Dawn of Justice has a more coherent story, and it in a general sense has better writing, dialogue, and so on… but it isn’t fun, it’s overly long, it’s incredibly pretentious, and it absolutely squanders the coolest concept for a crossover fight that there ever could be, all while giving us a Lex Luthor who is an obnoxious, whiny, sniveling brat who is utterly unbelievable as a threat. Suicide Squad almost seems within the ballpark of being self aware that it’s stupid schlock, and I find that infinitely more respectable than a film that, regardless of its artistic merit, thinks it’s deep and meaningful when it is anything but.

Suicide Squad is firmly on the side of “So bad it’s good,” and even within that category it’s somewhat underrated. I don’t necessarily think this film needs more respect per se, but I feel like it falls into the same category as movies like The Emoji Movie, where it isn’t good by any means but people will rant and rave about how it’s destroying cinema by being apocaliptically bad instead of just saying it’s crappy and moving on with their lives. Like this isn’t a great movie, but at least there’s a couple of enjoyable things, and superhero movies have been through far worse. Its current score of 6 on IMDB is honestly pretty fair. Is it spectacular? No. Could you be watching something way better. Definitely. But is it a trashy, idiotic romp with some good actors and some fun performances in a story so mind-bogglingly dumb that it needs to be seen to be believed? Hell yes.

#Is it really that bad?#IIRTB #movie #movie review #Suicide Squad #DC #DCEU #DC movie #superhero movie #so bad it's good

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phoebehalliwell · 4 years ago

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I don't really like Phole as a ship but I think Cole as a character had a lot of potential and I'm mad that it was never, at any point, handled well. so I'm curious, how would you have rewritten Cole's story so that he might still be redeemable and a character you can root for? granted, you would probably have to rewrite it from the very beginning but I'd love to hear your thoughts if you're up for it

yeah cole is like a very difficult character to work with bc in charmed evil isn’t a thing you do it’s a thing you are, and if you’re a demon, congratulations! you’re evil. But we did get brendan rowe in season one who was like a warlock but was trying to not be a warlock and again it’s this human half that is a loophole in the black and white morality clause and he got to be a good person in the end. the difference between brendan and cole was that brendan refused to take anothers life (extending this to bugs too??) and moved to become a man of the cloth to escape evil’s hold on him. cole on the other hand actively worked to surpress his human half and spent like over a hundred years being undeniably evil. so like. have you even given us a character worth redeeming? the countless lives he’s stolen and evil he’s brought to the world..... it’s a lot to undo. and that’s always really been the main source of my beef with cole is that he was undeniably a horrible person for OVER A HUNDRED YEARS. like the body count man. it’s really difficult to make him a good person. it’s really difficult. it’s not not doable, but it has to be a grueling processes and really explore who he was who he is and who he’s trying to become. when never really got much acknowledgement of any of that (who he was: belthazor. who he is: cole. there’s a difference (?) he’s in love with phoebe. who he’s trying to be: a good person so phoebe stays in love with him. it’s so surface level man it’s i don’t i don’t like it)

and like i’ve been think about demon redemption arcs a fair amount bc i definitely want to throw a demon character into my fic i’ve got my ideas and lil plans and all that but like it’s still like. really difficult to justify the taking of a human life to those sworn above all to protect it. i’m not objectively against characters who have killed people. but if you want to integrate a character who has killed people into charmed?? honey you’ve got a big storm coming. and honestly? the easiest strategy is to ignore it. chris killed a valkyrie in the s6 premiere (three valkyries??) and rather than attempt to justify the cold blooded murder of good beings, the show just ignored it. which, imo, was the best strategy for that situation (and then went on to sprinkle in him being disgusted/scared/horrified of bianca shanking a demon in chris crossed to show him sorta as this morally good figure, in hopes that we had forgotten that he had done worse. and uhh i think we all did!! i did at least). phoebe & paige are technically responsible for the death of rick the criminal, turning him into chris knowing Full Well he would be killed by demons, when they could have easily just orbed his ass back to prison. how to we deal with this? we don’t. so like, quick fix on cole’s redemption arc? cut black as cole. turn a blind eye to his past. leave it in the shadows. pretend like he’s never killed anybody. if they wanted to redeem cole this is the easiest way and in no manner stands against the moralities they have already set up. but if you wanna do it proper

cut the age gap. having cole already over 100 just leaves to much murky area. it’s also like never used in any interesting way like he never is like oh yeah [cool/important event] i was there he’s just sorta. old. for no reason. so get rid of it. just make him thirty. don’t make him an upper level demon. you can make him the son of an upper level demon so he has upper level demon qualities / powers, but having him essentially the source’s right hand man, a legendary demon and all that,, it’s just. there’s no way you hold that position without being cruel beyond words. evil in ways you can imagine. getting incredibly creative with how horrible you can truly be. you’ll never get a character like that as a “good guy”. they can be sick as fuck antiheroes or morally neutral/dubious characters, but if they’ve already committed that much evil, you can’t get them to be good. especially not charmed ones good. so like, you can have him half demon, but don’t make him a good demon. have him be raised by his human father until he’s captured and taken in by demons. he has a strong survival instinct and works to blend in with other demons, but he’s always secretly working for an escape. he’s charismatic and clever so demons like him, but they do sort of regard him as a bit of a coward, because he’s never actually killed anybody. so when he volunteers to kill the charmed ones, everyone considers it a bit of a joke. but he comes to them with a strategy. he’s human, and while that might be a weakness, it can also be a strength. he knows how to act human, he knows how they work. he can blend in, and work his way into the lives of the charmed ones like no demon ever could. so the demons are like okay. i’ll bite. but first you need to prove your mettle. kill somebody and we’ll approve your mission. and cole’s like okay bet bc he’s like i bet i can find somebody shitty and then, once i’m approved for the mission, i can actively work my way into the lives of the charmed ones and then get protection from them. and the demons are like oh lit bc we have the perfect person for you to kill and cole’s like oh uh i thought i’d just go out and kill somebody and the demons are like no need : ) we already grabbed the guy you can kill him right now : ) and cole turns around and his father is dragged in. so now we have this moral complexity because cole only wants to do this so he can be safe, so he can be human, but at the expense of his father’s life? and it’s this moral conflict and it seems like he will and then it seems like he won’t and then he looks into his father’s eyes and he seems not fear or desperation, but acceptance. and cole does it.

and now it’s more important than ever that his mission succeeds, because if he can’t gain the charmed ones favor, if he can’t gain their protection, then his father died for nothing. he killed his father for nothing. so he poses as a da, bc that’s obviously a good guy, right? he can work with the charmed ones, as a good guy, until they trust him and work with him and then he can come to them begging protection, after he’s already established himself as a someone who’s good. and he doesn’t actively seek a relationship with phoebe bc he’s worried that if he enters a relationship with a charmed one and then reveals himself as a demon, it won’t go over well. so he’s still at war with himself with his relationship with phoebe, but in the end, he caves, because he loves her.

after he reveals himself as a demon, begging himself for the charmed ones protection, prue is ready to kick his ass, because he’s a demon, and demons are intrinsically evil. they’ll to whatever it takes to achieve their goal, kill whoever they need to to get what they want. and cole sours at this because he can’t help but remember his father. he killed him to get what he wants. is prue right? but phoebe’s like no, he’s good, i know him, he’s good. but now cole’s really like, am i? and phoebe’s like i love you and i believe you and i trust you but now cole’s pulling away. and we get to see proper emotional turmoil over this and his evil act and he has to grapple with the death of his father and he has to tell phoebe what he did and then she is properly horrified but she loves him and he loves her and they commune with his father’s spirit blah blah blah his dad forgives him tells him he’s proud he made it out and he wants what’s best for him so on and so forth and then he uses his insider info on the demon world to help the charmed ones everyone lives happily ever after

#it's not like proper enemies to lovers #but it does basically redeem him in a charmed morality way #so #like pick your poison yknow #💌#phoebe x cole #cole turner #margaretanswers

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thefudge · 5 years ago

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i'm sure you *loved* this episode lol amirite

oh you know it lol

i’ve seen two very dumb takes so far:

1. “guess you haven’t been paying attention sweatie ;) ;) dany’s *evilness* was set up all the way in season 1…but some of yall stan a white lady too hard”

i would like to disabuse some folks of the notion that the rest of us were blind to dany’s evolution. we weren’t. the problem with this evolution was that it was handled poorly. very poorly. dany always “failed up” on the show, meaning that the show runners never let her dip her toe too much in being unlikable during her adventures in Essos. that moment when she comes out of a burning dothraki hut like some ethereal goddess? i remember rolling my eyes hard at the imagery back then but in the context of the show it was framed as absolutely awe-inspiring and heroic, while the dothraki men in question were portrayed as backward hicks who couldn’t appreciate Female Power™. was there a frisson of “uh-oh” in it? sure, but always back-pedaled by dany’s overall “good intentions”.

this has been the show’s agenda with dany since day one: little accountability, big wins, sweeping mythology. instead of letting this grandeur really get to dany’s head (as it kind of does in the books), they’ve always made her hyperaware of her power and have emphasized her “mercy” and “good heart”. hell, back in S7 this is one of the reasons jon “falls” for her. she seems much more than another conqueror. and she is. but the internal conflict between “targaryen and yet not like my ancestors” is/was never properly addressed. remember those couple of scenes in S5 where barristan tries to talk to her about her family? yeah…me too.

SO. let’s recap. in order to get to 8x05, the writers needed WAY more build-up than “she burns the tarlys”. as late as 8x03 dany was charging into battle trying to save people. remember their initial plan was to wait for the NK. jon wants to “stop” her from going to save the fighters. let me repeat that: dany is the one who decides enough is enough, she is going to try and save the northerners even if the NK never shows up. jon is content to watch ppl die. to go from this to what we saw in 8x05 is deeply flawed, amateurish writing. these putzes (d&d) were offered 10 episodes by HBO, at the very least, but they are clearly so fed up with this project they decided to streamline it.

again, the problem was never dark!dany but d&d not being comfortable or competent enough to explore it believably. earlier seasons indulge in her triumphalism and bank on her unquestioned “humanity” to the detriment of her nosedive in season 8. in other words, d&d wanted to stretch her heroic status for as long as possible. the folks who are claiming “women can be villains too! uwu! this is feminism!” ignore the fact that d&d couldnt be arsed to build dany’s descent because they never really thought about her as a true female villain/antihero to be reckoned with. ALSO they really put their foot in it with missandei and rhaegal, because it painted dany as a woman who is lashing out out of pain, and the audience responded to that. like, they made it easy to root for her when we are supposed to see her hubris. she is supposed to tragically echo her father and viserys, but instead she resembles rhaegar fighting for the woman he loves (in this case missandei, and by extension all the ppl dany lost). i do think they’re still sticking with “dany’s story is a tragedy” from grrm’s outline but it’s just….a mess. i wouldn’t have minded an episode like this with proper build-up and with more interesting stakes. that moment where dany tells tyrion that the ppl of KL are to blame for “standing with cersei” does not gel with her attitude in the north. there should’ve been more time between her arc in the north and the one in KL. they should’ve cared more about this character. and i am a person who was never terribly invested in dany, though i followed her journey with interest, but am going to be no. 1 stan out of spite lol

second take that’s very VERY dumb

2. “this isn’t misogyny. other female characters on the show had a tough life too! and didn’t lose their mind! look at sansa!”

have yall really forgotten that in 8x04 sansa literally told sandor that rape made her strong and that welp, i guess women need that shit in their life, otherwise they’ll never grow? Hardened Woman! Sansa Stark has managed to fool ppl into thinking she has been given dimension when in fact, a lot of her attitudes and goals from season 6 onward make little sense.

other ppl gave yara as an example. yara who is so emotionally stunted on the show she has to treat theon with disgust and contempt because he doesn’t have the “balls”. yara/asha in the books is a tough cookie, sure, but she is allowed to show emotion and be a human being instead of a walking stereotype.

other ppl gave lyanna mormont as an example. the “cute” no nonsense little girl who is tough as balls! what a badass! died like a bamf! what did we know about her? every single one of her scenes was her spouting some watered down version of “Grrrl Power” straight from d&d’s unread copy of “the female eunuch”. i distinctly recall her being part of a discussion where she scoffs at knitting socks as a war effort. she wants to fight! making sure ppl are clothed in winter is a joke!! girlie girls have cooties and any kind of “feminine” pursuit must be discredited. yes, what a feminist hero.

let’s not even talk about arya-bot-9000. or brienne of tarth telling jaime he complains “like a woman” and on and on.

all these women are Strong because they are basically Robots.

the minor female characters who shine on this show do so because d&d haven’t bothered to give them any Cool Dudebro Lines. basically, they have been ignored, which was their saving grace.

what i’m trying to say is ppl have to stop drinking the kool aid.

you enjoyed the episode? fine. it’s a visual feast (although i think that so many panoramic set pieces drain the show and cheapen it, and also hide a lot of bad writing because hey, pretty spectacle!). you want to convince others this was masterful storytelling? or worse, you want to condescend and tell us we did not watch this show “right” and you know better?

(also, istg i saw a “hot” take on quora about how viewers who don’t accept this piss-poor writing for dany are like “season 1!sansa” clinging naively to joffrey, unable to see the cracks below the surface. whew chille, people are really unleashing their inner dumbass.)

#daenerys targaryen #anti got #anti d&d #got meta #got spoilers #replies #8x05 #sorry lol i went on a rant but i was gonna anyway

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i-just-like-commenting · 8 years ago

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Expanse season 1 rewatch episodes 1-4

Advertising for seasons two of The Expanse keeps referring to it as “Battlestar Galactica meets Game of Thrones,” and while that’s not entirely off as a descriptor of the aesthetic and the high preference to politics over action that the series gives, on at least one level I deeply resent this comparison. And that is that, unlike Game of Thrones, The Expanse actually improves on its source material rather than dumbing it down. I’m only taking about Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the series, of which The Expanse covers about half in its first season (so if you wondered why it ended on a cliffhanger, there ya go), because that is all I’ve read so far. Now, I’ve already written a fairly detailed review of why I found Leviathan Wakes enormously disappointing, but I thought having now read it and now rewatching the show, I would go through and catalog things I love about the show vs the book (and a few things I’m not as crazy about):

Things I love about the show vs the book

Miller as a traitor to the Belt. Yes, it’s out of character from the book for him to be this corrupt and Earther-friendly at the outset, but it sets up for a great character arc, as Anderson Dawes is proven right: he really is a Belter underneath it all, and that realization comes along with him becoming increasingly violent and unhinged, which will continue on presumably in this coming season.

Also, Thomas Jane = perfect casting. He is basically space!Punisher by the end of this season, and even now earlier on he’s the right mix of intriguing hardboiled cop and total asshole on the verge of a breakdown. They’re also clearly using his torch-holding for Muss as a stand-in for the ex-wife he’s not over in the book (who we never meet there, of course, because why have character scenes when you can just have plot? fine fine it’s not that bad but still not as good as the show).

Chrisjen being introduced right away, giving us a POV on Earth. Chrisjen is also just kind of a fantastic character in every way and I am really looking forward to reading Caliban’s War after this seasons is over to meet her in the books. I like that she’s not...good. She’s not truly evil, but she has an ambitious need to win and a willingness to bend moral codes for what she sees as the greater good. She walks this fine line between being an antihero and an antivillain, and she knows this. It’s...kind of fantastic. And knowing things that happen later, her conversation with her grandson about rocks falling from the sky... *shudder* (ep 4)

Adopting a more floating POV in general, so that you can have Holden be on the main deck of the Donnager (ep 3-4) and see the action going on there afterwards rather than having everyone trapped in the holding cell, only hearing about things secondhand. When Yao has to scuttle the ship...that moment. Ouch.

Oh, and having Holden by a newly-appointed and reluctant XO (ep 1), and watching him earn the respect of his crew and discover his own leadership skills over the course of the series. That is also good drama.

The scenes involving water rationing should become a classic example of how to do proper “show” rather than simply “tell.” (ep 2) In the book we are told there are frequent water shortages, in the show we see Miller lose his shower halfway through and then rejoice when he finds out Julie’s ration is still at 97%. It’s a great moment, totally non-plot essential, but adds to much for world-building.

Speaking of world building, just a ton of extra dialog to establish stereotypes different zones have about each other, what daily life is like, how radically advanced technology has become, etc. SyFy had a run-down of the real science behind a lot of these, and it turns out that the show’s adjustment to have most Belters be more normal looking than described in the books is a valid extrapolation of already-existing bone density hormones - it becomes a marker of class whether you can afford them or not, which cleverly allows them to have a range of Belter physiques.

Making Havelock Hispanic and Muss Middle-Eastern. The books have this annoying habit of only ever describing someone’s race if they are not white, which still assumes white as a default, and who knows? maybe 200 years from now white supremacy will still be ubiquitous, but I sure hope not. So the show took two characters whose race was unspecified and cast them with a Mexican-American and a Canadian of Greek and Egyptian ancestry because why not. The show still has a ways to go to get to global racial parity, plus one major case of whitewashing (see below), but it’s doing good relative to most TV for reasons like this.

Havelock in general, but especially his relationship with Gia (ep 3). Havelock is a completely flat character who shows up, hangs around to be a sounding board for Miller, then he leaves as soon as OPA sentiment rises. In the series, he’s invested in wanting to be a good cop for Belters, forming a friendship with a sex worker named Gia as he pays her to tutor him in Belter creole. It is quite sweet, and he’s very affable, a good foil for the cynical, antisocial Miller.

Things I am not that crazy about the show vs the book

The whitewashing of Ade (ep1-2). Usually I’d be 100% enraged by this, but for once I actually kind of sympathize with the decision. Basically the showrunners were faced with having a dark-skinned black woman as a prominent character - the love interest of one of the main POVs! - who is immediately killed off. End of the first episode, fridged. And while I’m a white women, I’ve read enough responses to similar things happening in other shows to know how much that could feel like a sucker-punch to many dark-skinned black women coming into this without having read the books, who want lasting representation for themselves. Which is all my way of saying that while I get why they did this, they owe their audience one race-lifted dark-skinned black woman who doesn’t die at some point, and they’d better come through on that.

The way Fred Johnson is introduced out of nowhere (ep 4). We just suddenly cut to Tycho and the Nauvoo construction site, and we don’t know who he is or why he’s relevant, we just know he’s turning his radar in towards the Donnager. While obviously I know who he is now, this entire scene was confusing the first time I watched it, and it might have been better to save it as part of the next episode, where Fred becomes a prominent character.

#the expanse #mini-review #spoilers through episode 4 #racelifts #whitewashing #show vs tell

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