the appeal of pride and prejudice isn’t “mysterious brooding gentleman sweeps average smart girl off her feet”. It’s “hot rich man argues with woman for months, eventually tells her she was right” like winning arguments against hot people is the greatest victory
One of the lines in “Thor: The Dark World” that gets overlooked, I think (possibly because Marvel cut it from the final edit) was when Thor is talking to Frigga about Loki, and she says to him that he and Odin always shone so brightly, it was hard for Loki to find any sun for himself, or something to that effect.
Anyway, this is such a massively important line, because it basically tells us EVERYTHING about Loki’s childhood, and how he felt. And here again is yet another example of how absolutely WRONG Taika Waitit’s view of these characters was, given what I heard about him wanting to include a flashback in Ragnarok showing Thor as a sensitive and bullied child, and Loki as dark and mean. That would have been in DIRECT conflict with everything we know about these characters, just like everything else in Ragnarok is.
From what Frigga says to Thor, it’s plain as day that Loki as a child was always struggling just to catch up to Thor, to try and be equal to him, not just in Odin’s and Frigga’s eyes, but in the eyes of probably the entire kingdom. It tells us that Thor, as a boy, was as popular and well liked, as charming and charismatic and as easy to make friends as he is as an adult, and that Loki was very much the introvert, quiet, awkward and isolated. And from Loki’s desperation to win Odin’s approval in the first Thor film, I think it becomes apparent that that desperation grew directly from his feeling inadequate and lesser to the standard of both his father and his big brother growing up. And it’s just so unbelievably sad, to envision that. To envision Loki constantly struggling, trying to match Thor, trying to make himself seem as good as Thor for Odin, trying to make himself seem like a “true and worthy son”, as he says in the first film. How anyone could miss this about his character is beyond me, unless they’re being willfully obtuse.
And we see from this one line, that Loki’s entire motivation is based on a feeling of lack on his own part. He feels like he’s less. He feels like he isn’t as good as Thor, and that Odin must not love him because he’s not as good as Thor, and until he discovers he’s a Jotun, he doesn’t know why, and he can’t figure it out, and he keeps trying and trying to do the right thing to somehow make him, in his father’s eyes, Thor’s equal. Think of the kind of psychological effect that would have on a person, especially a young man growing up in the kind of culture Loki did. Think of the burden of constantly feeling like there’s something WRONG with you, because you’re constantly measuring yourself against the perfection of an older sibling who everyone loves, while everyone treats you like you’re strange, and even are at times outwardly hostile and cruel to you. Think of the weight of trying to figure out how to change yourself so that others will treat you like they treat your perfect older sibling, but not being able to, because you don’t really know what it is about you that makes everyone dislike or hate you in the first place. And then think of what it must have been like, to discover you’re from a race of beings who the people you’ve grown up around consider to be monsters, who are those people’s mortal enemies, and coming to the swift and awful realization that that must have been it all along. That THAT’S what was wrong with you. That that’s why you’ve always been an outcast.
I just think that one moment from The Dark World was so important for understanding Loki’s character.
And yet, once again, Marvel proves it’s own stupidity by cutting it out. Just like they cut out so many scenes from the first Thor film which showed Loki in a more sympathetic light. Gee, it’s almost like they didn’t want people feeling for him. Too bad they ended up doing so anyway.
Yeah, Taika is clearly biased against Loki, for whatever reason. Logic suggests that an anti-imperialist poc would identify with Loki’s character and his storyline, but Taika seems to have rejected him in favor of Thor. I can’t understand it at all. Can anyone think of a plausible explanation.
Well definitely Taika favors Thor, and what I think it really comes down to is, he favors Chris Hemsworth over Tom Hiddleston. Tom is a total professional actor and he takes his craft seriously. I don’t get that impression with Chris. Chris seems to have more or less given up trying to be a serious actor, taking on one comedic role after another, probably because all his attempts at serious drama got panned by the critics. And Chris has a goofy kind of personality with a goofy sense of humor, and for whatever reason, that appealed to Takia Waititi and they hit it off. You get the definite impression that wasn’t the case with Tom. Every interview with Tom done during Ragnarok’s promotion, he talks about how well Takia and Chris got along, and you just get the sense from it that Tom was very much the outsider to their little party. Takia is also one of those directors that HAS to put himself in his own films, which smacks of a massive ego problem. He isn’t satisfied with being behind the scenes. He wants to be the star too. Which tells me he doesn’t appreciate actors or understand what it takes to BE an actor. He’s one of these people, it seems to me, that thinks anyone can do it. But no, it takes a LOT of talent to be a good actor. It’s an actual art. I just don’t think Tom was able to relate at all to what seemed like the idiotic atmosphere on the set of Ragnarok, and I also get the sense that Taika Waititi aggressively shut Tom out of any collaboration regarding Loki’s character, for example Tom’s saying how he was trying to give Matt Daemon (Chris Hemsworth’s friend, by the way) lines that Loki would say, and Taika Waititi just kept telling him no, and giving his own lines, as if he knew better what Loki would say than Tom. He basically steam rolled him. Tom’s a sophisticated, very intelligent and high class man, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that irritated and intimidated a low class shill like Waititi.
wanting to include a flashback
in Ragnarok showing Thor as a sensitive and bullied child, and Loki
as dark and mean
I’m
sorry – what?? What
in any of the previous films could possibly suggest that?? Did TW
even watch them?
@littlefanthing@cosmicjoke I think a big part of why TW (and many fans) favours
Thor is that he has a more friendly, approachable demeanour. It’s
something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently – how we react to
people & interpret their actions is largely based on that, rather
than their actual personality/self. Acting in a friendly manner
doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a really accepting, caring, welcoming
person, but we often react to surface impressions of the person, so I
think that’s part of why people interpret Thor that way. (Also
because he’s the protagonist, but that’s obvious.)
Watiti admitted openly that he hadn’t seen the first two movies before accepting to work on the third one and in my eyes, that’s a warning sign of unprofessionalism. He did eventually watch them, but I somehow get a feeling he did so with a finger on the fast-forward button since he managed to so massively misunderstand them. Or perhaps he just didn’t care.
He’s also been openly saying things like “This is Thor 1 for me.” and “I’m going to respectfully disrespect everything you liked about the other movies.” (paraphrasing the wording here, since I don’t have time to look up the exact quotes).
He got away with it because the movie made a good profit and well, everybody kneels for a dick that squirts money.
Don’t invite me anywhere last minute I enjoy doing nothing so I need to know ahead of time if my plan to do nothing needs to be changed
This is legit and people don’t realize it.
Also, please don’t invite me to a low-key something and turn it into a party without telling me. I agreed to hang out with you and the 3 other people I like, not the 20 other people you know.
[Image description: Tweet by Daniel Alvarenga hat reads, “Ameicans, with your subsidized chiquita bananas, Starbucks coffee, and cheap labor by way of U.S. intervention in Central America not only OWE these tear gassed people assylum but also REPARATIONS.”
End image description.]
If you want people to stop seeking asylum in the United States, STOP CREATING REFUGEES.This isn’t complicated.
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