#we both liked the same content; og loki. and at one point they were the top ��fan” of my posts in the activity tab rankings

[unityrain24]

man i know no one cares but i honestly don't know why they blocked me and it's been bugging me and i miss their blog :( and we weren't like close mutuals but we weren't like distant either. we'd send occasional messages or asks or some other interaction :(

[storiesofwildfire]

So... Thoughts on the Marvel Phase 4, specifically Loki's movie?

Ummm, okay, I’ll be honest, I didn’t keep track of a lot of what was happening at comic con both because I was busy with life stuff and also?

I hated Endgame. I know a lot of people didn’t, but I personally really hated the way Endgame wrapped up Thanos’ story arc and closed out the first ten years of the MCU. I hated Tony’s death. I hated Cap’s choices. I hated how everyone seemed to be either slightly or severely out of character save for a few people ( like Clint and Nebula in my personal point of view ). I hated the approach they took to time travel. It seemed like they wanted to be interesting and different rather than just? Stick to time travel as we know it, but in doing so, they made it more convoluted than it needed to be. I hated that they forced Tony to endure seeing his dad again and while it was nice to see him get closure, they were definitely forcing a narrative that Howard wasn’t as bad as Tony made him out to be and honestly? No. Marvel–MCU especially–loves to give us shitty and abusive parents, fathers especially, and then backpedal on them actually being all that bad ( looking at you, Odin, looking at you ). I hated that they brought back so many heroes and we got to see all of them step out for the final battle except for a select few, like Loki, Heimdall, and Vision. I understand Natasha death having to be permanent because she gave her life for the Soul Gem and that couldn’t be undone, but everyone else? Dying pre-snap or not? The Infinity Stones, when wielded together, can do just about anything. Bringing back those few characters wouldn’t have been difficult.

After watching Loki literally die to his abuser in Infinity War in a way that made no sense? I am so sorry, but Loki, an extremely capable and intelligent magic user, who is the only person who does not work for Thanos and is not related to Thanos that actually knows anything about him. Loki would not attack him with a single dagger, expect that to work, and then die from being choked out. Loki has sustained much worse injuries in MCU canon and comic canon that were unable to kill him. Thanos choking him? Is a stupid way to die, I’m sorry. The entire vibe resonated that his death was fake ( again ) and that he had some sort of plan that would unfold once he got away, but that didn’t happen and I’m extremely bitter about how they handled Loki in general. So to not see him come back in Endgame? When basically everyone else got to have their moment of vengeance and glory and happiness of reuniting with their friends and family? And Loki did not get that because he was so close to a happy ending of his own only to be killed off by his literal abuser? Just as Gamora was killed by her abuser?

I wasn’t okay with Endgame for the story elements, for the character development, and for how they handled my favorite character. 

So, because I was so unhappy with Endgame, my enthusiasm for the MCU has died down a little as a whole? I don’t intend to stop watching the films or anything like that but I do feel less invested. I will say, from what I’ve seen of the Comic Con panels, I think there are some interesting ideas coming in Phase 4. Lots of cool television shows. I’m actually pretty excited to see the What If series and the Hawkeye one as well. They seem to be expanding the universe even more which can be both a good and bad thing in my opinion. I feel like MCU’s quality as a whole did start to dwindle when they started shoving more and more characters down our throats and while I want to see all these people and new ideas, I do question how well Marvel Studios can handle that, if that makes sense?

I also feel like they still haven’t given some existing characters enough screen time or development. They’re finally doing a Black Widow movie after she died. They really don’t do anything with Bruce and Hulk outside of Avengers movies and that one time they showed up in Thor. If they’re gonna focus on OG characters who are still around and new characters, they should focus on all the OG characters, you know what I mean?

Not really sure how I feel about Thor Love and Thunder. It’s got returning characters that I am so excited about ( like Valkyrie ), but I’m not really sure I’m entirely enthusiastic about Jane taking up the mantle of Thor. I know it happened in the comics. I genuinely understand her comic story arc of becoming Thor, but I don’t really think that it fits well into MCU, especially with how little Jane actually played a part after the first two Thor movies. Most people didn’t resonate well with Jane and that’s partly due to bad scripts and partly due to her being a character that seemed so obsessed with Thor, she’s not a character that can stand on her own two feet? And her taking up the mantle of Thor kind of still relies on her being directly connected to Thor, so? I have mixed feelings about it. I would have rather seen them focus entirely on Valkyrie.

That said, I do have hopes that they can pull it off, but I’m not convinced yet.

And if Loki doesn’t make a reappearance and show up I’m honestly not sure how I’m going to handle that. People go to see Thor movies for Loki. Not everyone, of course, but a massive amount of people do, myself included, so without Loki, I don’t know how well I will personally take to the film.

The Loki series–I believe it’s a series, not a movie–is something I’m? Interested in but also not holding my breath for. I want to see Loki get more screen time and more development. I want the MCU to explore Loki’s backstory more. I want to see Loki’s pain and trauma, but I also want to see the good aspects of their life too. I want them to not gloss over Loki being genderfluid anymore. I want to see them bring in elements of lady Loki and Loki’s seriously impressive magic ( I am so sorry but MCU robbed us of everything Loki can do and didn’t even try. I want them to fix that shit ). 

At the same time, the series is supposed to pick up after Endgame, where Loki managed to run off with the Tesseract during Tony, Scott, and Cap’s attempt to get the Tesseract and the Scepter. 

I am not terribly happy with this as they reinforced the idea at Comic Con that the series will at the very least start out with Loki as the “villain” he was in The Avengers. They are basically undoing all of Loki’s character development over the span of years to boil him back down to a villain again. And a villain who was a villain because he was working for and under the influence of Thanos, not because he went to Earth of his own free will. 

Plus, the Loki they’re going to be discussing in the show is technically an alternate timeline Loki, which? Is a cool concept, but at the same time, not the character we’ve all invested our time and energy into caring about.

I do genuinely want the show to be good. I’m tentatively excited for it, but the MCU’s handling of Loki over the last couple of years has me worried. They’ve treated him like an absolute idiot in Ragnarök, they also took characters that are canonly Loki’s children in both Norse mythology and the comics and completely ripped Loki out of their backstory all together which I really hated, treated him like a throwaway character in Infinity War, and let his abuser murder him right before he had a chance to find true peace. They have not been kind to Loki’s character. They have not respected Loki’s character. Their handling of Loki in his last couple of appearances have been abysmal and I’m concerned for the series as much as I am excited and praying for it being good.

I do love Tom Hiddleston a lot and I am so happy to know he’s coming back to play Loki for the series. For a while, there was speculation that he would be completely replaced for the show. I know he’ll do the best that he can with the material and even if the show ends up not being great in my opinion, I’m still looking forward to seeing Tom get more Marvel love and expansion.

So… yeah? Marvel Phase 4 has a lot of interesting content that may be amazing and I hope that it is, but because–in my opinion–MCU’s quality has definitely been in a steady decline since Age of Ultron with a few good exceptions here and there like Antman 1 and 2, I’m speculative of if it will actually be good or not. Part of me almost wants a break from MCU before they cram so much more content down my throat, you know what I mean?

Plus, an MCU without Tony Stark feels… wrong to me, so that’s a personal hiccup I’m gonna have to get over.