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darkellaine · 6 months

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Well, after watching a recap of the first episode of season 2 of "Loki" (because I'm not paying Disney for anything at this point), I can pretty much confirm everything I said in my previous post. This show isn't about Loki at all. It's about the multiverse and just a set up for the next Avengers movie. Why is Loki even necessary as the main character, I wonder. They're just using him, and calling the show "Loki" to capitalize on his popularity, and that's about it. But otherwise, this show has nothing to do with him personally, as a character. It's got nothing to do with his own, personal growth. It's got nothing to do with his own, personal struggles. It's got nothing to do with his actual history within the MCU. It's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about the multiverse and Kang and the branching timelines. This is part of Marvel's problem these days. Everything is just a set up for the next movie or the next show. Instead of focusing on just telling good stories with the characters they're using, about the characters they're using, it all has to be a prelude to some big, universe spanning BS event.

They also had a scene, apparently, where Loki gets into an argument with Mobius about who "won" the fight between him and Sylvie at the end of the first season, and of course Mobius has to say it was Sylvie who won, while Loki gets all defensive and tries to claim it was a draw, because she's just better at everything than Loki, and Loki is an insecure, narcissistic little bitch. She's the better one. Obviously.

I heard that Loki doesn't get AS emasculated in this season as the first, but that's a pretty low bar to clear, since every other scene in the first season was him getting emasculated.

Also, it's just, every clip I've watched from this season still has Loki acting out of character. Why the hell does he RUN from the TVA agents in that scene in the hallway. He doesn't have that power repressing collar on. He should easily handle their asses. But as usual, Loki has no power when it's inconvenient for him to. And like, look, I love Tom Hiddleston. I think he's an amazing actor. But they're obviously directing him to try and be "funny", and it's lending an exaggerated, unnatural quality to his acting. It's been this way since the first season, and really since the dumpster fire that was "Ragnarok", where his movements are these over the top, exaggerated gestures, his line delivery has this forced, fake quality. His expressions look more like he's pulling faces than conveying any sort of nuanced or subtle emotion. It just feels like he's satirizing Loki instead of actually becoming Loki, and it sucks. I don't feel like I'm watching Loki, I feel like I'm just watching Tom Hiddleston acting like an idiot. Loki shouldn't be this clownish character. He can be funny, but his humor should always be understated, because Loki himself is an understated character. A master manipulator, someone who's always several steps ahead of everyone else, someone who's smarter than everyone else, someone who relies on trickery and deceit and misdirection to get what he wants done. Not this flailing around, desperate, overly emotional cry baby that they've made him into. It's unbearable to watch, and it's had a negative impact on Tom Hiddleston's acting to boot.

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darkellaine · 9 months

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Promoting Ragnarok Netflix because no one else does.

#ragnarok netflix #magne seier #laurits seier #fjor jutul #fjorits #laurits x fjor

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darkellaine · 9 months

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In Search of You

#thorki #thunderfrost #thor #loki #my art #darkellaine #artists on tumblr #marvel

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darkellaine · 10 months

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Jungmeng Bros

#mdzs #the untamed #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #darkellaine #yes i am still alive #although not much #i am trying #artists on tumblr

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darkellaine · 11 months

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I love Thor 2011 but I’m currently thinking about the inconsistent use and framing of the Jotnar in the narrative. In the beginning they’re supposed to be scary monsters for Thor to fight in a cool action sequence. Kinda like the orcs in LOTR. That fight sequence is supposed to show us Thor being rash and overconfident and aggressive, but we’re not supposed to be sitting there thinking ‘oh my god this guy is just brutally murdering people whose home he invdaded… this is horrible.“ we’re more supposed to be thinking “ooh this is a cool badass fight scene tho thor’s obviously overconfident and needs to learn to tone down his brashness a bit.”

But the problem is that doesn’t really mesh with the inclusion of Loki’s Jotun heritage storyline which very definitively humanizes the Jotnar and makes quite clear that they are sentient sapient people. (Or even Laufey’s storyline which certainly shows him to be an intelligent person and not just some video game monster.) And this dissonance leads to a weird issue where in the end Thor is heroic for telling Loki that his attempted genocide is wrong, but Thor’s own earlier aspirations to commit genocide, the violent bigotry of Asgardian society, and Thor’s brutal murder of scores of Jotnar in the beginning of the film are not addressed or dealt with. I mean yeah presumably Thor learned that genocide is wrong while on earth but we never get shown that as an audience.

the result was Thor being more morally grey than the writers intended and Loki being more sympathetic. I mean these aren’t really ‘problems’ because the deep complexity of both characters is what makes me love them and their story. but there is a certain narrative dissonance which I think the writers didn’t really intend and which accidentally resulted in really interesting characters. later movies didn’t know how to handle this so rather than taking advantage of it they tried to ignore it, causing these latent issues to be magnified in later movies. bc the later films just dropped this storyline.

bc they couldn’t handle the magnitude. we should have had thor coming to terms with the flaws of Asgardian society and odin and his own flaws and having to make changes. we kinda got that. but not really. bc we never see thor really own up or call out Asgard or odin forcefully. and we never see him reconcile with loki or acknowledge loki’s side of things. thor 2 gets him partway there. and thor 3 could’ve gone the rest of the way but instead it retconned everything. which is such a shame. bc the writers accidentally created 2 really interesting morally complex characters and made a great setup for a story about forgiveness and reconciliation and deprogramming of deeply held bigotry. but then they backed away from those themes and never fully delivered.

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darkellaine · 1 year

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