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bbygirldahyun · 2 years

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Ooh I see it was the director

but I finally found another person who thought the Loki show wasnt good omg, honestly had high expectations for the movie but just got disappointed with it after leaving the theater though I do agree with Wanda's character! just something about her acting like that in the movie felt kind of? off to me

-♠️

omg loki was awful! the first three episodes were decent i guess, they weren’t any worse or better than anything else but man the last three episodes just tanked the entire thing in a bad way. i’m not a huge loki fan (not that i dislike him but he’s just not my number one, you know?) but it seems like the same problem i had with wanda in MoM die hard loki fans had with him in his show — it just wasn’t loki. his character felt off.

wanda has been through a lot of character development since her first appearance in the winter soldier end credit scene, and yet up until now none of that development felt a) completely not grounded in who wanda is and b) for the detriment of her as a character. we’ve seen wanda do bad things before, doing morally questionable stuff isn’t out of the norm for her, but it was always in an attempt to do the right thing or an accident or something she felt genuine remorse for. the lagos incident? completely an accident and she felt terrible. westview? she apologized several times over and was hysterical when she realized she was putting the residents in pain. there was humanity in her mistakes. we could see her and maybe not agree with everything she does and says but still feel for her, because she’s a young woman who’s been through insurmountable trauma and torment in her life, and she’s not been given the right tools to cope with it.

MoM just threw that all out that window. and before someone says it — yes, i know it’s cause the darkhold, but that’s still lazy writing!! sure in universe i guess that explains it, but it’s still a lazy way to just throw all her prior characterization out the window and make her the premiere example of the awful “woman gone mad” trope. and again i circle back to none of the rules about these things stay consistent!! agatha had the darkhold for literally centuries and what was the worst thing she actually did? kill a dog??? make wanda cry??? and despite anything bad agatha did, she still had so much of her in there. she had a personality, she had ups and downs, she cried a little during one of wanda’s traumatic memories! kathryn hahn who played her said she was in love with wanda and stayed for so long because she was having fun. like she still had personhood underneath what the darkhold was doing. but wanda has the darkhold for a year at most and suddenly every trace of wanda is gone and she’s a crazed murderer. there was no person left, except for when she was talking about her kids, which is a whole other can of worms.

sorry for my thesis length rant, i am just *shakes fist* tired of men writing wanda poorly

#ask #♠️anon #mom spoilers

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fanfictrashdump · 2 years

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Queening a Pawn, 27

If you’re new: this is my procrastination fic. It is what I drabble around with when I’m being my worst self, and ignoring all my other WIPs and responsibilities! Enjoy!

Summary: During the Time Heist, Loki stole the Tesseract and escaped. He did not expect, however, to be pulled through a Time Loop that delivered him to a Midgard more than a decade older, wiser, and bitterer. Having just lived through his unsuccessful attack in New York, Loki must learn to live in Midgard after the defeat of Thanos (post-Endgame). The question is, who is Loki without a quest for a throne or total domination?

Pairings: Loki x OC

WARNINGS: Language, domesticity, babysitting chaos, and unbearable cuteness. FLUFF

Previous Chapter

Loki was tidying up his workspace. The children had all gone home about twenty minutes prior, and even though he did his best to encourage them to clean up after themselves, it was obvious that his and their standards of "clean" were very different. He had been putting blocks into a basket when the sound of rustling fabric tickled his ears. With little hesitation, he drew a dagger and turned. Pepper, who had been at the door, yelped and arched back, though Morgan, who was standing at her mother's side seemed generally undisturbed.

He let out a puff of breath. "Virginia, I've told you a million times that creeping up on me is not advisable at the best of times," he responded, tucking the dagger away and drawing a deep breath. "Hello, Morgan. How are you, sweetheart?" Morgan grinned and offered him a thumbs-up.

Pepper smiled apologetically, smoothing down her skirt in a fidget. "Sorry. Old habits die hard, Loki."

"At least I no longer throw the dagger first and ask questions later, as it were." Placing the filled basket down on its designated spot, he stretched up to his full height and stuck his hands into his trousers. "What can I do for you, Pepper?"

"I really hate to do this to you, but… could you possibly watch Morgan for a few days? I have to go to Prague on emergency business and I can't take her and–"

Loki's mouth fell open and his eyebrows rose dangerously close to his hairline. "Me? You want… are you sure?" His features screwed up as he tried to make sense of the request in his head.

Pepper's expression fell. "Do you not want to?"

"No, I, um, I'm more concerned as to how desperate you must be to come to me for help," he said slowly, watching Morgan sit down at one of the art tables and start drawing on a fresh sheet of paper.

As realization hit her, the redhead pulled a smile. With an easy expression, she crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway. "You're actually first on the phone tree. Tony and I both agreed you were top choice."

His guts twisted in a not at all unpleasant way at that statement, a reflexive smile tilting at his lips. "That's certainly a surprise."

"What do you say? Can you watch the munchkin for us?" Loki nodded, eyes sparkling excitedly. Pepper nodded once, pleased with herself. "I'll have her stuff left at Delilah's– no offense, but I don't trust her inside of New York's premier knife museum aka your apartment."

Loki smirked. "Fair enough. Lilah will be ecstatic."

Kneeling down by Morgan, Pepper pressed a kiss to her daughter's crown. "You think you can be good for Uncle Loki for a few days, Mo?" Morgan nodded, smiling brightly between her mother and Loki. Loki's stomach twisted once again at the moniker. "I won't even ask about your Aunt Lilah, because Lord knows no one misbehaves on Aunt Lilah's watch, do they?" Morgan giggled and shook her head in the negative. "OK. Give Momma a kiss." Morgan twined her tiny arms around her mother's neck and squeezed while Pepper peppered her face with kisses. "If there are any issues, FRIDAY can reach me at any time."

"Hopefully, there will be none to speak of."

Pepper laughed. "Oh, you do not know this child." She stood, sighing. "Thank you so much for this, Loki." Her voice was as sincere as the hug she wrapped him around that took him by surprise.

"Of course," he managed to choke out before he was released. "It's my pleasure."

"OK. If I don't go now, I'll never make it out of the building. Morgan, be a good girl. Have fun!"

"Bye, Mommy!" Morgan was once again engrossed in her drawing, and had barely glanced over her shoulder to call her goodbye.

"Shove me out the door, why don't ya'?" She offered the pair a wave. "Bye, Loki! Thank you again!"

Loki waved shortly, nervous excitement filling his body. He kneeled beside Morgan, leaning against the crafts table to watch her work. "Once you finish that, would you like to go get groceries to make dinner?"

Morgan turned to Loki, eyes sparkling. "I can go with you?"

"Yes, you may, little one. Does that mean you're ready?" Morgan nodded, hopping to her feet and taking Loki's hand as if it were second nature.

An hour later, Loki opened the door to Delilah's apartment, loaded with several bags and Morgan riding piggyback. "Lilah, are you home?" He called into the apartment, but after a long pause, no response was heard. "I guess it's just you and I for a little while, Starklet," he mused, lowering the groceries onto the countertop and then helping Morgan down from his back.

"Can I have some chocolate, Uncle Loki?" Her face looked mischievously hopeful.

Loki smirked. "I believe you know the answer to that question. How about you help me with dinner and I'll get you some fruit as a snack?"

"Alright," she grumbled, climbing onto a stool at the kitchen island.

He set a bunch of podded peas in front of her and a bowl. He took one of the pods and split it open, showing her how to shell them into the bowl. "Shell these for me, please." Turning briefly, he grabbed some strawberries from the fridge and put them beside her. "Snack."

"Uncle Loki, do you love Auntie Lilah?"

Loki looked up from the tray of vegetables and chicken he was arranging to throw into the oven. He smirked, raising an eyebrow at the child. "That is a fascinating question. What do you think?"

"I think you do. You go all pink when you see her," she responded matter-of-factly, as she went through the pea pods.

He let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head. "I do, do I?" Loki slid the tray into the oven and set the timer, pottering around, and cleaning the counter and instruments used. "Well, does she go pink when she sees me?"

"No."

"Of course she doesn't," he muttered drily under his breath, rolling his eyes. "I do love her very much. Why do you ask?"

"I think Auntie Lilah is cute and I want her to have a cute boyfriend."

Teeth sunk into his lower lip to keep from laughing. "And do I fit the bill, then?"

Morgan shrugged. "Meh." She held in her own laughter at the response.

"Oh, you little imp." He snagged a pea from the bowl and playfully hurled it in her direction. "You're lucky I like you or else you'd be sleeping in the woods tonight."

"Hey, Momo," Delilah cooed as she walked through the door. Loki and Morgan had set up the table and were just putting out glasses of lemonade when Delilah had arrived from work. Morgan dropped napkins on the table and barreled into her side, hugging her as tightly as her little arms could. "Is Loki behaving? Tell me the truth."

"Uncle Loki kept me tied up under the table all afternoon!"

"Did he?" Lilah gave him a look of feigned outrage. "How dare you mistreat this lovely creature? Don't worry. I'm here now. How can I make it up to you?"

Morgan thought for a long moment. "Ice cream for dinner?"

Lilah tutted. "You were so close, Mo. You got too greedy. I was prepared to let you get away with extra dessert."

"Aw, man!"

"Yeah, yeah. Go wash up for dinner, OK?" She tapped Morgan's nose and grinned, and the child turned tail towards the washroom.

"Hello, love," Loki husked, pressing a slow kiss to her lips and enjoying the relaxing sigh she emitted.

"Hi, babe. How was your day?"

"Much better since you arrived. Not that I don't love the imp–"

"You're all piiiiink."

Loki closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. "–but she has my number, for sure."

Lilah snorted. "Yeah, she's a smartass like her daddy," she whispered back. She pecked him on the lips once more. "I like you pink."

He rolled his eyes, bowing his head to hide his rapidly heating cheeks away from both females. He decided, instead, to place a carefully arranged platter onto the middle of the dining table. Loki was meticulous about the arrangement of even the most trivial things, but meals were a different beast. Delilah had more than once suggested that it was a stowaway habit from his days in the palace. In reality, his obsessive compulsiveness boiled down to idealized notions of what it meant to have a normal dinner.

"Lilah, I made pea!" Morgan called as she settled into her seat.

Delilah cut her gaze over at Loki with a questioning look. He made a mimicked shelling the pods with a lazy half-smile. "Oh! That's great. That means they'll be extra yummy."

"I found a worms in them!"

"Caterpillars, promptly taken outside," Loki clarified.

"They tasted like glue!"

Lilah's head snapped towards Loki so quickly, he swore she'd get whiplash. "Maybe not as promptly as I should have, but…"

A solitary brow lifted on Delilah's face. "How do you even know what glue tastes like, Morgan?"

"Dinner! It'll get cold! Eat. Your weak mortal corporations need sustenance," Loki irrupted, before Morgan could launch into the story of breaking into the art supplies.

"Uncle Loki is fun!"

The loving look he received made his insides flutter like a swarm of bees. It seemed that these warm emotions were all tied in some way to his poor stomach. "He is, isn't he? Do you like hanging out with Uncle Loki?" Morgan nodded as she gnawed on a roasted carrot. "Good. I'd have to get rid of him if you didn't."

"If you get rid of him, can I have his dessert?"

"I thought you liked me!" Loki argued, suppressing a smile. "We were bonding!" Morgan beamed up at Loki–there was a hint of trickster in this one. He was so proud. With a serious face, he leaned towards the child. "I'll give you extra sprinkles if you put in a good word for me."

"He can stay."

#loki mcu #mcu fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #mcu phase 4 #loki x oc #loki x ofc #alternate timeline #time heist #original female character #fix it #not Loki show compliant #Queening a pawn #27 #morgan stark

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iamanartichoke · 3 years

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Sometimes I really do think a lot about how I have no idea how much of Thor/Thor’s feelings for Loki are arguably canon, and how much I’ve projected onto him based on fanon and fic. I was reading some of my old meta and while there’s lots going on under the surface of Thor that I and others have taken a stab at exploring, the films - all of them - really leave a lot to be desired, insofar as how Thor treats Loki:

Thor never says I love you.

Thor never pushes beyond surface-level.

Thor seems more willing to just believe that Loki has simply “turned evil” than willing to put in the emotional energy to figure out why.

Thor is content to leave Loki in prison indefinitely, and has no narrative issue with Loki’s life sentence (in fact, he even makes sure Loki knows that Thor intends to put him right back in prison after their road trip to Svartalfheim). Frigga intervened; Thor didn’t. Would Thor have been okay with Odin executing Loki?

Beyond his initial heartbreak, he doesn’t seem very affected by Loki’s death in TDW. One could argue that he doesn’t seem very affected by Frigga’s death, either, and that’s bc Thor would rather push his emotions down and/or fight them out than express them but, again, is that actually true or is that a headcanon?

He leaves Loki’s body on Svartalfheim and never asks after it or attempts to go back for it after Malekith was taken care of.

His defense of Loki as a person in Avengers is undermined by “he’s adopted,” and he doesn’t really attempt to defend Loki after that. There’s no “this isn’t who Loki really is, something is wrong,” there’s no “I’ve known my brother for a literal millennium and seriously, this isn’t like him,” there’s no “Loki, even if this is you, I fucking love you anyway and I’m not going to stop loving you, so please let’s figure this out.”

(Re that last point - the “broken crayon” scene from Buffy lives rent free in my head [15 years and 137,000 viewings later and it still makes me tear up], and I often compare it to Thor and Loki - how the closest thing we get to something similar is ‘we can stop it together’ on Avengers tower and how much is lacking from the latter. It’s all kinds of heartwrenching for a lot of reasons. I’m not saying there was narrative time or space for a full on broken crayon scene, I’m just saying they could have done better in showing Thor trying a little fucking harder.) (I realize Joss Whedon did both of these scenes. my point stands.)

I don’t have much of a point in writing all of this out, and I am certainly not trying to start any Thor wank so please don’t let this post spiral, it’s just something I think about a lot and was specifically thinking about today bc of how far apart Thor and Loki have come in canon.

And not to make this about Ragnarok but I often feel like a catalyst of the frustration in how Thor treats Loki in Ragnarok and how their ‘reconciliation’ leaves a lot to be desired for a lot of people, is that - I’m not really sure how to articulate it except to say that the first half of the franchise gave us a broken, complex relationship with a ton of unexplored potential and, by having Thor kinda change things up regarding how he treats and interacts with Loki, and having the narrative slap a band-aid on the relationship before killing Loki off, there’s that extra bitterness of, okay, I guess we’re never going to explore any of that potential. And that’s ... you know, something that sucks.

Ftr, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with projecting a lot of fanon/headcanons onto Thor and/or Thor’s behavior in the films irt Loki. Personally, I wouldn’t enjoy their relationship as much without the supplemental metas and headcanons and fanon things (even things as simple as Thor having a lock of Loki’s hair braided into his own). I’m just acknowledging that it’s a thing that happens, at least with me, and how disappointing it is to remember that a lot of Thor’s motivation and character development comes more from meta than from actual source material.

Plus, it’s more than a little irksome to see that the widespread assumption about Loki is that there were no more stories to be told after he died and until they reinvented him and made him “fun,” (apparently that particular quote is going to stay under my skin for awihile and idek where it came from - one of the reviews, I think? I saw it on my dash somewhere, idk) because like - *gestures like Will Smith at his and Thor’s relationship and all the unexplored nuance and complexity*

Like, come on.

#i am pretty sure this post is nonsensical #i don't know what my point was #or if i even had one #these are just some things i was thinking about #prior to the loki premiere #one time i wrote a post that just said #'the kindest things thor has ever said to loki have been in fanfic'#and boy was that a mistake #i think it had 300 notes within an hour #lmao #this isn't a post meant to drag thor btw #i fucking love thor #but he fails a lot when it comes to loki #and i wish that there was more narrative acknowledgement of that #anyway #tag rambles #i don't have much work to do today #so i am just #being unproductive in general #don't mind me #loki meta #thor meta #loki pokey artichokey #thor glorious thor #the broken crayon scene seriously does make me cry though #i paused to watch it when linking it here #and yep #it hits hard in the feels #it's probably the only scene in existence #that does the 'love conquers all' trope well

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twh-news · 3 years

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We spoke to Tom Hiddleston about Loki, PowerPoint presentations and the nature of free will

Despite a decade of playing Loki in several Marvel movies and now a TV show, Tom Hiddleston isn’t tired of the role. “There is always something new to be found,” he says The edge.

This week is the premiere of Loki on Disney Plus, a six-episode series that marks the character’s first lead role. It is a story of time travel and branched timelines as Loki is captured by an organization called the Time Variance Authority (TVA). It combines action, humor and some old-fashioned detective work, while tackling serious topics such as the nature of free will. There are also some new faces on board as Hiddleston is joined by Marvel newcomers Owen Wilson, who plays a TVA agent named Mobius, and director Kate Herron, best known for her work on the first season of Sex education.

Prior to the show’s premiere, I had the chance to talk to Hiddleston about his time as a character, a presentation that made him feel like an “amateur academic giving a thesis on Loki,” working with Wilson and Herron, and whether our lives are predetermined. Typical Marvel stuff.

The following interview has been edited and abbreviated for clarity.

We are now at a decade where you play Loki. How have your feelings about the character changed or grown over that time?

I’m honestly just thankful that I’m still here. I find that I am always surprised and happy that I get another chance in it. Long before I was cast, Loki was just the most fascinating and complex character with such depth and range, and he’s been in Marvel comics in several iterations for 60 years, and he’s been in our thoughts, in stories we tell as humans, for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I find that even though it has been 10 years, every time I come back, there is always more to discover. There is always more to dig because these impostors are kind of mercurial and shape-shifting. So there is always something new to be found.

"“Loki is out of control. He’s a man on the run.”"

Now that you’ve focused this six-episode series on Loki, what were you looking forward to exploring with this? What were you hoping to dive into?

I think he’s really opening up and bringing out his many different identities and facets. In my preparation to play the character, I’ve always seen him have so many different and seemingly contradictory characteristics. You think, “How can all these characteristics exist in one person, in one being?” And yet they do.

Loki has always been a character in all MCU movies that seems to be very controlled. He seems to know what cards he has in his hand and how he is going to play them. And Loki, in the TVA – this organization that rules time – has gotten out of hand. He’s a man on the run. And he is motivated by a desire to understand. Suddenly he discovers that there is all this information that he does not have, and he has to get his hands on it. And that actually gives the series great momentum. Loki is on the back foot, everyone knows more than him, and seeing how he adapts, seeing how he improvises after that – if improvisation is possible in the TVA. That’s a question we’re trying to raise, whether you have free will.

I read about the Loki school you led to prepare the team for the character’s history. How did you prepare for that? Did you actually know it all, or did you have to do a lot of research?

I wish it wouldn’t be 10 hours long. I knew I had to summarize what I found useful to tell the crew. It came about thanks to Kate Herron, our director who has done an extraordinary job on this whole series, and he thought maybe it would be a good idea to get everyone together because there were so many department heads, different crew members – production design, costume design, cinematography, camera, sound, stunts – and wanting to make sure everyone had the same information about Loki, and it might be helpful to listen to my experience. I was trying to explain how we constructed Loki’s arc across the six movies he’s in the MCU and figure out what was useful in that arc and what we could leave behind.

I suddenly felt extremely nervous, as if I were an amateur academic writing a thesis on Loki. You’ll have to ask the others if it was helpful at all. But at least we synchronized the watches and we started from the same place.

"“If I were tall enough to use PowerPoint, I could retire and become a full-time professor.”"

So is there a PowerPoint file out there somewhere that will leak out one day?

If I was highly skilled enough to use PowerPoint, I could retire and become a full-time professor.

I did have a few clips. I thought there were some clips from the movies that could be helpful. It was interesting, even though it was about how the costume had changed over the years and why. And when does Loki wear the horns? Are the horns a casual thing? Are they a ceremonial thing like a crown? Is it an extension of an inner intention? Do the horns come out if he’s particularly evil? Why is her hair different? Sometimes he wears a cape, sometimes not. Sometimes he uses magic, sometimes he uses his own body to fight in combat. All questions that people were curious about.

I know this was meant for the rest of the crew, but was it helpful for you to go through this again as you prepared to jump back into the role?

Oh yes, absolutely, just to refresh myself about certain decisions we had made and why certain things were changed… sometimes you try to bring very elaborate and beautifully illustrated comic book panels into a physical reality on a movie set and figure out how to merge these two worlds. It was interesting. I got some great questions about how he moves the way he does and where certain things showed up in stunts, especially hair, makeup and wardrobe, how the clothes changed and why we made those choices.

It was interesting to refresh myself on the extraordinary input, because I carry the inspiration of great people with me. [Thor director] Kenneth Branagh and Alexandra Byrne, our costume designer; Bo Welch who designed the first Thor movie; Charlie Wood who was production designer on The dark world; the whole crew of Ragnarok; Mayes Rubeo, the costume designer of Ragnarok; and people like Douglas Noe, who has been doing makeup on Loki for a long time. So there was a lot to unpack.

Both Kate Herron and Owen Wilson are newcomers to the Marvel machine. Is it helpful to have such an external perspective?

Absolutely. Both Kate and Owen came in with so many questions because they hadn’t lived in Loki’s head for 10 years. They have a fresh take on it. Kate was so well prepared and so well researched; she even brought in new Marvel Publishing material that I’d never seen before, about Loki’s inner world. Owen came in and asked me a lot of questions about my experience. I remember him saying, “Tom, why should I?” you do you like to play Loki?” And I found myself saying, “Well, he’s just got this whole range. He can play the light keys, but he can also play the heavy keys in the bass clef. And somehow the character has both.” And he loved that way of thinking about it, he said, “I think I could say that on the show.” And so it was really his very intelligent question that took us elsewhere in the story.

Given the themes of the first two episodes, I have to ask: do you believe in free will?

I hope so. Free will is such an interesting, eternal question. I think people have asked to what extent we have the power of self-determination, self-realization, choice about our actions and whether we can control the course of our lives. It goes back to evolutionary or psychological arguments about nature and nurture and why we are who we are. Maybe it’s the journey of a lifetime to find out, to really take the wheel of your own life. Because we are set on a path in childhood, I think, often by accident – the misfortune of birth, where we were born and when – and we are propelled in many ways by the unconscious.

That’s a complicated answer. It’s a complex question. So I hope so. I hope true free will is possible. But for all of us, I think it can be a long journey of self-discovery.

#tom hiddleston #loki #loki series #interview #article #whatsnew2day

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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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LOKI 4 PRESIDENT! For a narcissist trickster sorcerer with the personality of a praying mantis, there are few occupations in the world that would suit Loki better than president of the United States. A few years ago, in the summer of 2016, comic book writer Christopher Hastings imagined just that in a satirical limited series for Marvel titled Vote Loki.

Five years later, Vote Loki has found its way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the fifth episode of the Disney+ series, “Journey Into Mystery,” a variant Loki (still played by Tom Hiddleston) appears in the desolate “Void” surrounded by a Mad Max-esque posse. On Loki’s tattered blazer is a red, white, and blue “Loki” button, indicating this Loki was, uh, elected to lead. Turn on the subtitles on Disney+ and you’ll find this Loki is credited as “President Loki.”

In an email to Inverse, Christopher Hastings says he had no idea this was going to happen.

“I found out [they were doing Vote Loki] when a trailer for the show featured the campaign outfit from Vote Loki,” Hastings tells Inverse.

When Inverse exchanged emails with Hastings, it was prior to the episode’s premiere, to which Hastings said he was “very curious to see exactly what from the comic gets into the show.”

“I love time travel and multiverse material,” the writer says in praise of Loki. “I am a big fan of the TVA as a setting. I'm eager to see how it goes, and what it might mean for the next phase of MCU movies, especially since multiverse wackiness seems to be a major part of those upcoming movies.”

In 2004, while a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Hastings wrote and illustrated The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, a serial webcomic about a doctor who is also a ninja. The series was a cult hit, at one point attracting 110,000 unique visitors a day. By 2011, Hastings was doing work for Marvel, writing single issues of A+X and Howard the Duck. With Chris Bachalo, he co-created Gwenpool — a bizarre blend of Spider-Man ex-girlfriend Gwen Stacy and Deadpool — and penned the 2016-2018 solo series The Unbelievable Gwenpool, teaming up with Japanese studio Gurihiru to create the character’s deeply unique comedic tone.

But during Gwenpool, Hastings spent the summer of 2016 playing with a different Marvel trickster: Loki. In the four-issue miniseries Vote Loki, Hastings spoofed the chaos that was the 2016 race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In Vote Loki, an ambitious Loki seeks the seat of the president with a very unique campaign strategy: being honest about lying.

With “President Loki” having a minor cameo in the MCU, Inverse caught up with Hastings to look back on his explicitly political riff that took place inside the Marvel Universe.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Take me back to the origins of Vote Loki. When did the seed for the story plant in your mind? What was going on in the world of culture/politics at that time?

Gosh, it's tough to come up with one thing specifically, because we were making the comic by the seat of our pants, and so many things got scrapped and rewritten along the way, often at the last second. But one of the core topics I wanted to cover had to do with narratives versus reality. It's kind of a given that in the world of politics, truth is this malleable thing, and now more than ever all you have to do to make people believe a lie is to repeat it enough times.

I liked the idea of Loki playing with narrative in a way that wasn't necessarily outright lying, more bending. (Except the bit about being born in Maryland. One outright lie there.) The other driving point I wanted to explore was how Americans can have a tendency to incorporate their national-level politics into part of their identity, and what that does to a person, particularly when a character like Loki is the one on the ticket.

What sort of conversations did you have with Marvel about a political satire starring Loki? What was the elevator pitch that got approval?

Like I said, things changed so many times, I'm not even entirely sure how many versions were kind of approved and then scrapped on the way to get to what was actually published. I think it was more that I assured editor Wil Moss that I could jump on the book (which Marvel was determined to make; they just hadn't decided who was writing it when I was pitching) after talking about the stuff about narrative and identity, and the basic idea that the viewpoint character shouldn't actually be Loki but a journalist covering Loki's campaign.

Vote Loki introduced the character of Nisa Contreras. What was the primary inspiration for her?

That would be my real-life friend, Nisa Contreras. She's not a journalist, but she’s someone I'm sure could take down Loki if he were a) real and b) got on her bad side. I wanted the story to be more about witnessing the tension and the comedy of Loki running for president, about not knowing what was up his sleeve. And so I came up with [a] journalist.

Vote Loki was published over the summer of 2016 when the election was ramping up in awkward ways. (“Pokémon Go to the polls!”) Did the real election influence the comic in any way, including any specific moments?

The comic was a direct response to things that were happening during the 2016 campaign, specifically that a “joke” candidate that was obviously terrible could get pretty far with enough media oxygen and a comfortable political system that ignored the disgust a lot of people had with it.

Vote Loki ran for four issues. Was there ever a possibility for more?

If it was a smash hit, I believe there would have been a President Loki to directly follow Vote Loki.

What do you think of Vote Loki's inclusion in the TV series?

Top five surreal moments of my life.

Do you think Vote Loki could be the focus of its own adapted series/movie?

Oh for sure. You wouldn't even have to take the material from our comic; there's so much more brand-new political madness that a new Vote Loki series or movie could tap into.

A lot has happened in the five years since Vote Loki was published. What are your feelings looking back now in 2021? Did your opinions on the book ever change?

There was a lot happening in American politics in 2016 I missed and wish I had been able to see to include. For example, how broken political polling has become. I had no idea, along with the rest of the country.

It was tricky to do a cohesive narrative amongst a shifting Marvel continuity we had to stay inside; a lot of feedback and demands from various sources within the company and an election that was changing every single day. It was truthfully (heh) a quite stressful book to write, but looking back on it I'm proud to see what we absolutely nailed about American culture. In particular, what we had to say about politics as entertainment and identity, and how a slippery enough politician can not only shake scandal [off] by speeding up an already fast news cycle but embrace and twist it to their advantage.

LOKI WILL AIR ITS FINAL EPISODE JULY 14 ON DISNEY+. VOTE LOKI IS AVAILABLE NOW.

#President Loki #Vote Loki

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uhlikzsuzsanna · 3 years

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SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t seen all of Season 1 of “Loki,” currently streaming on Disney Plus.

Ever since “Loki” first premiered in June, Kate Herron, who directed all six episodes of the Marvel Studios series, has had to pretend like she knew far less than she really does. For one, she couldn’t acknowledge that the homages to sci-fi classics like “Blade Runner” and “Brazil” that she’d baked into the elaborate sets for the Time Variance Authority — the cosmic bureaucracy tasked with maintaining the sacred timeline — were “meant to be sinister” rather than just “playful and quirky.”

For another, Herron was delighted to see fans theorizing after the very first episode that Kang the Conqueror — a character already set to appear in the Marvel Studios feature “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” as played by Jonathan Majors — was really pulling the strings of the TVA. But until the finale streamed last Wednesday, she couldn’t even hint that those fans were only half right: Majors does play the mastermind of the TVA, but he’s a variant of Kang referred to as He Who Remains. It’s only after He Who Remains encounters Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his female variant counterpart Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and Sylvie plunges a blade into his heart, that the multiverse is reborn, creating the possibility for Kang the Conqueror to emerge.

Again, though: Herron couldn’t acknowledge any of that, even to those closest to her.

“Nothing has prepared me better for working with Marvel than playing tabletop games with my friends,” she says with a laugh. “It definitely taught me how to have a good poker face. You have to hide your hand — and sometimes lie.”

Now, thankfully, all of that is behind her — as is “Loki” itself. Despite receiving widespread acclaim for her assured, ambitious, and visually sumptuous work directing the show, Herron says she has decided not to return for Season 2 of the series.

“I gave it everything — in my soul, in my heart, everything,” she says. “I feel so proud of the work we’ve done. And yeah, I’ll be enjoying Season 2 as a fan.”

She’s quick to sing the praises of everyone she worked with at Marvel, and she says she’s “sure” she’ll work again with the studio. For now, however, she’s ready to take a holiday, and then turn to a project she’s writing herself “that’s really close to my heart that I really want to make.”

“It’s my own decision, but I just feel like my part with ‘Loki’ is finished now and I’m just excited to see where his story goes,” she says.

Before she parts ways for good, however, Herron spoke with Variety about bringing Jonathan Majors into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what she thought of the shocking revelation about infinity stones and what she would like to see happen in Season 2.

She always knew “Loki” would introduce Kang and the Multiverse…

From the very start, Herron says, she and head writer Michael Waldron knew that their six-episode run of “Loki” would always end with Loki and Sylvie meeting He Who Remains at his citadel, the result of which would cause the creation of the multiverse.

As Episode 6 makes clear, both of these events were massive turning points for the future of the MCU — and Herron still can’t quite believe she got to be the one to make them a reality.

“We were just, like, waiting to be told, ‘Actually, guys, we’ve had a change [of heart],'” Herron says. Instead, Herron says she and “Quantumania” director Peyton Reed participated in casting Majors in the role.

“I was just like, pinch me,” she says. “I can’t believe I was at the table for that, because I know it was such a big decision for them all.”

Herron also decided to have Majors provide the voices for all three “Timekeepers” who are supposedly at the head of the TVA, but are revealed by Sylvie to be nothing more than “mindless androids.”

“We didn’t have someone cast for those voices,” she says. “I remember thinking, well, ‘Wizard of Oz’ is clearly a reference for us. We should have the wizard. It’d be great if it’s Jonathan. So we sent him all the art of the timekeepers. And he just kind of came up with these incredible voices for each of them.”

…but not with a cliffhanger.

The most significant decision of the season, though, may be that it ends with a giant cliffhanger, when Loki discovers he’s in a brand new reality for the TVA in which Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) don’t even recognize him. But while Herron knew how this season of “Loki” would end, at first, she did not know that there would be any more seasons after it.

“When I started, there wasn’t a discussion of Season 2, exactly,” she says. “It was just that season of ‘Loki.’ As we got deeper into production, everyone was very happy, and obviously there’s so much to explore with Loki. It felt like we should continue the story. So I think the cliffhanger ending came in later in the process.”

Herron says she sprinkled in some hints to viewers that Loki is in a new timeline, like redressing sets to look slightly off, and recasting Eugene Cordero’s TVA receptionist Casey as a hunter headed to the armory in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. But her favorite bit is that the final line — said by Mobius to Loki — is the same as the first line spoken in the show, by a woman in the Gobi desert, also to Loki: “Who are you?”

“That was kind of the question of the whole first season,” Herron says.

She was just as shocked about the Infinity Stones as everyone else.

In the first episode, Loki discovers to his horror that not only does his magic not work inside the TVA, but Infinity Stones — heretofore believed to be the most powerful objects in the known universe — are just inert rocks there. The revelation sent shockwaves across the Marvel fandom; Herron was right there with them.

“That was in Michael’s script when I first got it to pitch [for the directing job],” she says. “I remember being like, ‘WHAT?! You put me through so much!’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?'”

Herron especially appreciated how her shock — and the audience’s — mirrored Loki’s own as the rug gets pulled out from under him. “I was quite excited by it,” she says. “It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU — and it’s not what we we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to.”

She told Kevin Feige she wanted gender parity among her crew.

Prior to “Loki,” Herron’s most high profile job was directing the second half of the first season of the Netflix dramedy “Sex Education.” She got the “Loki” job thanks to a 60-page pitch memo that filled out just about every detail of the world of the show. After hiring her, she says Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige asked her, “What are your terms?”

“This was the first time I was gonna get to hire my heads of department on a television show I worked on,” she says. “I was like, I’d really love [the crew] to be 50/50 across gender.”

Herron says she wasn’t out to fill any jobs on the film with a specific gender. But, she says, “There aren’t enough women in these roles. They’re out there. It’s a lack of opportunity. It’s not a lack of interest.”

She did end up hiring two women for critical roles that are still rarely occupied by women: cinematographer Autumn Durald (“The Sun Is Also a Star”) and composer Natalie Holt (History’s “Knightfall”).

“I felt like she was inside my mind,” Herron says of Durald. “We have the same taste. And I love the way that she talks about light as a character.”

Herron hired Holt unusually early for a composer, after she’d completed editing the first episode during the pandemic shutdown. She knew that the particular sci-fi film noir look of the show that she was developing with Durald needed similarly unique music, and she liked that part of Holt’s pitch was focusing on Loki’s identity as a character.

“Her music then started to inspire how I wanted to shoot other scenes,” Herron says. She’s especially enamored of Holt’s vision for her dynamic and foreboding theme for the TVA.

“She was like, ‘Oh, let’s have that theme be Kang’s’ — well, He Who Remains, I guess, in our show. But I hope that will go on to be Kang’s theme. That was the real fun of it is that you feel like he’s really played a hand now across the whole show, because you realize that music is his music.”

Herron, Durald, and Holt all deliver distinctive and superlative work that’s nothing like the MCU has quite seen before — and nothing quite like anything previously in their careers, either. And that’s entirely the point.

“I think for us, it was about just showing people what we could do and that we could do it at this level,” Herron says.

The episode in which Loki comes out as bisexual was inspired by Alfonso Cuarón and Richard Linklater.

Every episode of “Loki” features multiple extended scenes of two characters just talking to one another, a rarity in a comic book production. Herron says that cutting Episode 1 together during the pandemic lockdown and seeing the scenes between Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) play out so well “definitely gave us confidence” to continue that rhythm for the rest of the show.

That was especially true for Episode 3. Written by Bisha K. Ali (who went on to create the upcoming Marvel Studios series “Ms. Marvel”), the episode is essentially an extended meet-cute between Loki and Sylvie as they get to know each other on a planet doomed for total annihilation.

“Bisha’s reference was ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Children of Men,'” says Herron. “And it lit my brain on fire. It was kind of weird. It was almost like a bottle episode in the sense that we’re just with the two characters, but obviously, it’s Marvel, right? So they’re bonding in this Apocalypse, which also feels very Loki at the same time.”

That episode is best known for making Marvel Studios history, when Loki casually mentions that he’s had dalliances with both men and women. Herron says that when she first interviewed for the job, she asked if the show was going to acknowledge Loki’s sexuality, which had long been established in the comics as bisexual or pansexual.

“I think everyone wanted to acknowledge it,” she says. “It was just really about giving a care and consideration and doing it in the right way. I think everyone knew it was gonna be quite a big moment. So it was just really about doing it in a way that felt respectful. And honoring it.”

Herron also confirms what many fans had suspected, that she deliberately made the lighting scheme for the scene evoke the blue, purple and red of the bisexual flag. “We knew what we were doing with that scene,” she says with a smile.

She has a lot of ideas for what she’d like to see in Season 2.

Since Herron will be watching Season 2 of “Loki” only “as a fan,” she is also free to wildly speculate as to what she’d most like to see happen — like how, wherever Loki story leads, “we’ve opened the door” for the character to explore his sexuality with men as well as women.

Otherwise? She says she wants to know where Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) goes to when she leaves the TVA in search, she tells Mobius, of “free will.”

“I love her,” Herron says. “Gugu used to always call her an indoor girl, which made me laugh, but she is. She’s in the office, but she used to be this kick-ass Hunter. So I’m like, Okay, well, where’s her path going?”

Herron is also keen to learn more about Hunter B-15’s backstory — since she deliberately decided to hide it in the scene in Episode 4 when Sylvie shows B-15 her repressed memories as a variant.

“I was like, we shouldn’t see her memories,” Herron says. “It’s a character that thought they had power and realizes they have no power. It felt really powerful to at least give her some power in that scenario. The memories are private. They’re hers.” She pauses. “Also as a fan, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is she?!'”

“And obviously, you know, Loki and Sylvie?” Herron continues, on a roll. “He’s in a completely different reality. What’s going to happen to him? How will he get back? Or will he get back? And where’s Sylvie? She’s still in the Citadel? And the multiverse of it all. What the hell is going to happen?!”

Herron chuckles at her own excitement. “So I think there’s so many questions to be answered, and so much more road to travel with all our characters,” she says. “You know, I’m really proud that I got to set up Loki’s story here. But there’s so many different aspects of his identity and personality that’s yet to be explored. I’m excited to see where it goes.”

#Loki #Loki series #Tom Hiddleston #Kate Herron #Jonathan Majors #variety interview #2021.07.17

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owenwilsonsbestfriend · 3 years

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If you have been emotionally invested in Owen Wilson prior to the premier of the Loki show you may be entitled to financial compensation

#PAY ME BITCH #after years of “Owen Wilson? really?#the time has come #my best friend is in the spotlight #Owen Wilson #Loki #loki show #mcu loki #mobius #wow

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fromthecouch · 3 years

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“The Variant” and their implications for the MCU — a look at “Loki” Episode 2

Note: This recap and analysis do contain spoilers.

Loki, Episode 2: The Variant

Looking at the second episode of Loki, we learn that “Variants” are exactly that — variants of a person. They are variants who get intercepted and don’t live out their own “storylines.” Implying, the Loki that we see in Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War is or was never introduced to the TVA. Looking back at the Loki premiere, Mobius declares that this was never Loki’s story. At the time, this seems to allude to Loki as an antagonist in the MCU, rather than a heroic lead. Now, this observation takes on a double meaning. This was never the variant’s story, but the story of the Loki that we’ve been watching all along. (This is aside from the scene when he intercepts the tesseract)

In Avengers: Endgame, Tony and Dr. Banner explain that, within the context of the MCU, time-travelling becomes your future, rather than undoes your past. This fits into the concept of variants and the TVA interestingly because it seems that the Variants are not a part of this. They cease to exist after being intercepted.

The implications for time, universes, and multiverses in the Loki series are intriguing, and it seems like we’ll learn more and unravel more about the “rules” around all the concepts in the MCU. This may make for a setup for upcoming films, such as Spiderman: No Way Home, which many fans have theorized will explore the multiverse more.

Beyond the implications for the MCU at large, there is a lot to unpack in The Variant. The characterization of Loki and his motives take center stage. Tom Hiddleston, as usual, gives a fantastic comedic performance — showcasing Loki’s eccentric personality and style of humor. (This is highlighted wonderfully in the salad scene and during the destruction of Pompeii.)

Beyond that, we see Loki grapple with the different parts of his nature —the desire to be a part of something bigger than himself while maintaining his inability to step away from his role as an outsider and away from being self-serving. It’s easy to psychoanalyze this character as being this way, because of his status within his family in Asgard, as a Laufeyson rather than an Odinson. However, it was clear that this characterization of him long proceeded his self-awareness of his lineage. The Variant starts to dive further into this duality that Loki possesses. On one hand, Loki seems to connect with Mobius and finds intrigue in the idea of being a TVA agent. He decrees his agent status sarcastically, but we see moments of his genuine curiosity around being a unit. (This has also been shown throughout his role in prior MCU films, in his relationship with Thor.) We also see his clear connection to Asgard, despite his constant attempt to rule over and mock his people. The emotive expressions and grief he experiences as he finds the TVA file on Ragnarok best express this side to him.

Contrasting this, Loki’s fixation on the scale of the Time Keeper’s power and his transparent desire to meet them and infiltrate the TVA is also shown. Yet, his outwardness with these plans sometimes feels disingenuous. It is like Loki is falling into default habits that he cannot help. Going back to the Loki series exploration of free will, as a concept, this could be indicative that he cannot help this. This duality comes to a climax at the end of the episode when he must choose to stay with Mobius and the TVA agents or follow the rogue Loki variant, Lady Loki, as she carries on with her agenda.

Loki, Episode 2: The Variant

In regard to curiosities for future episodes, it will be interesting to see this internal conflict with Loki manifest further. It is also exciting to learn more about Lady Loki’s intentions. She makes it clear that control and power through the TVA are not her intentions. Rather, it seems she may be set on destroying the TVA and the Sacred Timeline. If Lady Loki truly is a variant of Loki, maybe this shows another side to Loki that we have yet to see the variant of Loki that we’ve been following and the Sacred Timeline’s approved version of Loki. Perhaps she is truly Loki without falling back into a power struggle or drive to self-interest. Maybe, Lady Loki knows something of the Time Keeper’s that Mobius and the protagonist variant of Loki don’t. (On a personal level, I have a theory that there is something more sinister, under the surface, in regard to the Time Keepers. Maybe it’s just distrust of that much power from previous films in the MCU. Maybe it is how strange it is that those employees of the TVA are portrayed as having their entire life centered around their work for the Time Keepers, and mindlessly at that.) Only time will tell, but following Glorious Purpose, The Variant leaves us eager to find out.

#Loki #Marvel #MCU #marvel cinematic universe #disney #tv

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fysebastianstan · 4 years

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Confirmation that the series’ release has been delayed has arrived, as it was nowhere to be seen on the list of new shows and film coming to Disney Plus next month, which the streamer released Thursday. Precisely when “Falcon and Winter Soldier” will premiere, or even return to production, is still unclear.

The show was about a week into filming in Prague when COVID-19 caused productions across the globe to halt. The cast and crew were recalled to Atlanta, where Marvel shoots the majority of its projects. Series star Anthony Mackie elaborated on the shutdown situation and the feel of the upcoming series during a recent interview Variety‘s Actors on Actors.

“We were in Europe, and everything got crazy in Europe first,” Mackie said. “So they shut us down two weeks before the U.S. shutdown. It was really amazing just because I feel like we’re the first Marvel show or movie that had budget constraints. And that was always my [experience], ‘It’s Marvel, we could shoot forever.’ And they’re like, ‘Nah.’ So it was a very different experience from the rest of the movies. But at the same time, it was a lot of fun.

Production on “Falcon and Winter Soldier” hadn’t exactly been smooth prior to coronavirus either. Back in January, the show was due to shoot in Puerto Rico, but was forced to postpone shooting after the commonwealth was hit by a series of powerful earthquakes.

Disney also hit the pause button on production for “Loki” and “WandaVision,” which stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany and is slated to be released closer to the end of 2020.

#the falcon and the winter soldier #sebstannews #tv shows #news #i mean we knew but

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twilightoftheapprentice · 5 years

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I’ve been in the MCU fandom since it was just the Iron Man fandom because those were the only movies that were out, so in honor of the end of the Infinity Saga, here are some memories of what it was like in the MCU fandom just after it got big on here circa 2012-13:

I’m pretty sure we just called ourselves the Marvel fandom at that time. I don’t think MCU really became a widely used term until after GOTG came out.

Seeing the phrase, “Love is for children, I owe him a debt” at least five times a day

People were also very into Nat needing to wipe the red out of her ledger

75% of the fandom thought Loki was the hottest person in those movies

Widespread dissatisfaction with the lack of a Black Widow movie. It was what everyone was talking about post-Avengers. If I hadn’t actually watched us go from that to complete apathy when it was finally announced five years later, I wouldn’t believe it.

The oft-discussed fanfics where everyone was just kicking it in Avengers tower

The fandom’s most pressing question was what happened in Budapest. It was a runner up to “chilling in Avengers Tower” in terms of the amount of fic written about it.

Stony was the big slash ship

Clintasha was the big het ship. I don’t think any other het ship has ever achieved that level of prominence in the MCU. Almost everyone shipped Clintasha.

I also remember a lot of people shipping Tony/Loki, a truly unfortunate amount of Thorki, and then Clint/Coulson for some reason?

Thinking Clint Barton or Maria Hill might be important at some point

The fandom treating Joss Whedon like a god. I know there were already people out there talking about his issues, but as a whole, fandom didn’t really turn against him until AoU came out.

Thor was almost universally considered the boring one

The campaign to save Coulson. I rewatched recently and he wasn’t in the movies as much as I remembered. Why did we love him so much?

Not knowing the tesseract or the Chittauri sceptre were infinity stones and not thinking the solo movies were really related to each other

The gif of the Hulk flinging Loki around that was clearly made from a cam recording

The movie theater that accidentally displayed a fan-made Thorki poster for Thor: The Dark World

The collective shock when Mark Ruffalo was cast as Bruce Banner and the following debate over whether he would be able to live up to Edward Norton’s performance

Marvel and Harry Potter getting lumped in with Superwholock to create one unholy megafandom

Bonus: A couple things I remember from the pre-Avengers fandom, 2009-2011

No one knew these movies were supposed to take place in a shared universe until Tony Stark showed up at the end of Incredible Hulk

Prior to Captain America coming out in 2011, Pepperony was actually a huge ship. I remember being at the midnight premier of Iron Man 2 and the entire theater applauding and cheering when they kissed because we’d all been waiting for it for two years (Ant-Man should have taken notes honestly).

When the post-credits scene in Iron Man 2 showed Mjolnir, the entire theater went wild because a lot of people were finding out for the first time that there was going to be a Thor movie. It has been publicly greenlit two years before, but people weren’t carefully watching Marvel Studios’ every move at the time, so anyone who wasn’t big into the comics pretty much missed the announcement. Captain America’s shield showing up in Iron Man 2 was a big deal for the same reason.

#marvel shit #fandom history

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fathercharlesoffdensen · 5 years

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ThOr DiDn’T eVeN mEnTiOn LoKi By NaMe In EnDgAmE!!!1*

Apparently unpopular opinion: Thor didn’t need to mention Loki by name for Endgame to heavily imply that he missed him. The levity of watching him toddle by Loki’s cell underlaid with a canned shot from TDW of Loki throwing the doohickey in the air again and again out of boredom aside, we can ascertain fairly easily from it that Thor intentionally tries to remove known obstacles to his and Rocket’s success at stealing the Aether in 2013 Asgard, and Loki by far would be the biggest one. After all, if hearing Thanos’ name is enough to elicit the kind of reaction it did when Hulk and Rocket first meet up with Thor again, post-Snap, and Thor basically can’t talk about Jane without almost crying, and also that he starts pacing and freaking out when he sees Frigga walk by in 2013 even before he puts two and two together what day it is wrt her death, his trying to communicate with any Loki in his current state would have been nothing short of disastrous. I’m willing to bet Monopoly money that the Avengers specifically had a Talk while Thor was snoozing on the couch while wearing his entire collection of lesbian depression sweaters at the same time regarding What To Do About Loki if Thor got sent back to a time period where he would most likely run into him.

Notably, too, Thor makes a damn good effort to work through his panic attacks and reliance on alcohol/food to do what they came to past Asgard to do - it’s not his fault his mother could basically sense that something was hinky the second he and Rocket teleported to 2013. I’m not sure how well the ‘talk to pretty pants’ conversation would have really gone had the original plan actually come to fruition, but I assume the Avengers were a little desperate to make all the variables for each team’s mission add up, and whether or not Natalie Portman believed that 2023 Thor bore any kind of resemblance to the emo nard she was dating a decade prior probably wasn’t high on their priority list compared to everything else.

I also personally appreciated that Tony was the most understanding of Thor’s plight, having been that same kind of messy bench himself only scant years ago. (I could write a literal essay on how the other Avengers’ coping mechanisms wrt their treatment of Thor were actually pretty in-character/justifiable, but, well.) Likewise, we get a nice parallel of both Thor and Tony meeting up with their departed and dearly missed parents back in time and getting some closure. Also, Tony’s fumbling reaction to seeing Howard in 1970 jeopardized the 2012 New York mission waaayyy more than anything Thor did in 2013 Asgard - which is fine, it was kind of refreshing to see Tony having to fly by the seat of his pants while no longer having the emotional strength/stubbornness to hide when he’s feeling sappy/appreciative of his friends/family, etc. (In the same vein, Peter Quill shared at least as much of the blame as Thor in not taking Thanos out at the tail end of IW before the Snap, and arguably in a much stupider way, so.)

Bonus, we also know now that all Asgardians think raccoons = rabbits.

TL;DR: We are all disappointed by the lack of confirmation that all of the hopeful build-up before Loki’s death scene in Infinity War wasn’t just a fluke, that the big-wigs at Marvel really aren’t even going to try to lazily write him back into the main plotline, even after learning about the Loki TV series and the premiere What If? episode that both Hiddleston and Hemsworth are in, probably to show yet another alternate timeline of Loki getting to wield Mjolnir without giving proper weight and closure to the original one, etc. I would even go so far as to say that it’s okay to be legitimately angry that Loki fans in particular might be getting toyed with because those in charge of his MCU story line seem from interviews and snarky Twitter statuses and whatnot to find it kind of funny / hold a grudge for so many people focusing on him instead of all the Other Stuff they painstakingly set in motion across 22 films. That said, there is nothing in Thor’s portrayal in Endgame to suggest that every unshed tear or mechanical fumble for another beer bottle or wayward, distressed facial expression wasn’t specifically implying how devastating it was to him that Loki was no longer at his side, possibly for good; the directors/writers chose to show, rather than tell, and it sometimes feels like mere crumbs, but the few morsels we got were still pretty satisfying, imo. (The fact that like 30 people who need to see this so they’ll stop peddling tired B.S. about the Russos putting ‘kick me’ signs on Tom Hiddleston’s back every day during filming won’t because they’ve blocked my fat ass is, well, pretty telling. Sigh.)

* It’s really fucking hard to type like that for any sustained length of time, fwiw.

#endgame #thorki #fat thor #rip loki #meta

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lucianalight · 5 years

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I thought that you guys were maybe going a bit far by saying that Chris had completely changed the character.. but after Endgame.. holy shit. You're right?? Almost every scene with Thor was difficult to watch because that's. Not Thor. Not the Thor that we loved.

We’ve been saying this since TR. That the Thor we loved is gone. That this new character is not Thor. That the Thor we knew wouldn’t torture inflict pain on his brother, enjoy it and then leave him defenseless to enemies. That he is not manipulative. We’ve written lots of meta on it. Here’s one of the recent ones that analyzes the problem with both Thor’s and Loki’s characterizations in TR perfectly. The thing is this wasn’t what we were saying. This was sth they said themselves. We were just repeating them and doing meta, comparing the previous characterizations with new ones.But we were just crazy Loki stans. CH admitted himself that he was tired and exhausted by the old Thor.

“Luckily, when we came into Ragnarok, I was exhausted with what I’d been doing, and a little underwhelmed by what I was putting out there,” he said, adding that it wasn’t the fault of writers or directors, but something that he was struggling with. “It felt like I’d put myself in a box with what the character could do,” he elaborated. “So on Ragnarok it was about breaking all the rules.“ ”Taika… had the guts to just roll the dice, and anything goes. That was so liberating and freeing, to break away from who the character was prior,“ he said.[X]

It wasn’t all CH though. TW basically stated that TR was a reboot of Thor franchise. This is a post about everything he said about the characters and why he changed them.

“I came into this and called Joe and Anthony and said, ‘Look, don’t write me the old Thor, we’ve got a new Thor now,’” Hemsworth said during a set tour in Atlanta, Georgia in December. The Russo brothers told him they had reinvented the character of Thor all over again, something that took Hemsworth a while to embrace. “I was like ‘no, no, no’ and I was really protective of what I’d created with Taika,” Hemsworth said. “They then said, ‘No this is a whole different thing; Thor’s never faced something like this, never been a part of this large and ensemble.’ [X]

CH wanted to continue TR’s characterization in IW. Russos disagreed. Because it wouldn’t make sense to have that characterization in IW considering what Thor went through. But in Endgame,CH worked closely with directors to figure out “how far we could push” Thor.

“I just had an opinion. I wanted to do something different this time. Each film I’ve wanted to, in particular the last couple, and they were on board,” he said, referencing how his once serious, long-haired warrior became a goofier, edgier-looking good guy in “Thor: Ragnorak” and “Infinity War.” “Infinity War” and “Endgame” writers Steve McFeely and Chris Markus said on the premiere red carpet that collaborating with Hemsworth was “instrumental” in redefining Thor. Hemsworth added, “We shot for many hours and days and discussed how far could we push (Thor) and what we could do different.“ [X]

Again it was not just CH. The writers and directors agreed with him. That doesn’t change the fact that he wanted Thor to change. And he succeeded.

#endgame spoilers #anti chris hemsworth #anti taika waititi #anti thor ragnarok #anti russos #anti tr thor #chris odinson #anon #messages #no more marvel #no marvel this time

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tomhiddleslove · 5 years

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Review - Betrayal starring Tom Hiddleston at the Harold Pinter Theatre

"Director Jamie Lloyd has just finished a six-month season featuring seven rotating bills of all Harold Pinter's short plays, which proved to be a thrilling and frequently alarming journey into some of the playwright's lesser-known works. Now, Lloyd follows it with a blisteringly brilliant production of one of Pinter's best-known (but still brief) and most powerful and personal plays, Betrayal, originally premiered at the National in 1978.

I missed that first production as I was only 15 at the time and not living in London yet, but I've seen at least four West End revivals since and two in New York, with actors that have variously included Bill Nighy, Toby Stephens, Sam West, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. But I can confidently say Lloyd's is the most acute, spellbinding, and at times most surprising, I've ever seen.

It fields its own impressive trilogy of star names, all of whom have strong stage pedigrees that each include previous appearances at the Donmar Warehouse and, in the case of Charlie Cox, a prior credit starring in a Pinter double bill of The Lover and The Collection, also directed by Lloyd, at this same address a decade ago. But if this fine younger actor has gone on to American TV fame in Daredevil, the real Hollywood star power comes in the form of Tom Hiddleston, now most famous for his recurring role as Loki in the Marvel franchise of Thor and The Avengers, while rising film and TV actor Zawe Ashton completes the billing.

They respectively play two best friends - a publisher (Hiddleston) and an agent (Cox) - and the wife of the publisher (Ashton) whom the agent has a long-established affair with (it lasts some seven years). To reveal this isn't a spoiler - as Pinter's play spools backwards from the end of the affair to somewhere near its beginning, we find this out in the opening minutes of the play. But this marital betrayal isn't the only betrayal in the play; there's also another in the friendship between the two men - and secrets held onto by each of the parties.

The simmering - or variously spiralling - tensions multiply throughout the play, as we come to know more about what is known and unknown by each character.

But more than any other production I've ever seen, it strips the play to its bare bones, both physically and emotionally: it is stylishly staged with minimal sets and props (four bottles stage left, three movable walls, and two chairs) that are placed on a revolve and reconfigure the space constantly.

So, too, are the emotions (or sometimes lack of them) among the characters, who project an intoxicating combination of sexuality, hurt and damage. As Hiddleston's publisher first discovers his wife's affair, for instance, he is positioned against a wall that's right at the front of the stage, and his tears are visible.

Also for the first time in my experience, Jerry and Emma's child (alluded to in the script) makes a physical appearance, and suddenly the dramatic stakes and emotions are even higher.

This is a magnificent, searing account of Pinter's most autobiographically charged play (inspired by an affair he had himself when he was already married), and it brings Lloyd's classy season of Pinter at the Pinter to an end with a fine flourish."

Betrayal is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 1st June.

#tom hiddleston #zawe ashton #charlie cox #harold pinter theatre #betrayal #pinter 8 #pinter at the pinter season #jamie lloyd production #harold pinter play betrayal #theatre tom #tom hiddleston stage performance #betrayal press night #london #london theatre uk review #betrayal review #march 13 #hiddles 2019

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twh-news · 3 years

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‘Loki’ Launch A Home Run For Disney+; Marvel’s Kevin Feige “Still Learning” Streaming Success Metrics

While Disney+ hasn’t reported figures on the first episode of Marvel’s Loki, which dropped last Wednesday, Samba TV updated its stats to reflect that the five-day viewership of the show is the best the streaming service has ever seen with 2.5 million U.S. households views.

That figure beats the five-day numbers of the first episode premiere of Disney+/Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier (1.8M U.S. households) and WandaVision (1.6M). Previously, SambaTV reported that the first day number of Loki was a record for a Disney+ show with 890K U.S. households tuning in.

Today, during a Paley Dialogue discussion, Marvel Studios president and chief creative officer Kevin Feige said that when it comes to “success in the streaming world, I’m still learning and figuring out.”

“It’s a whole new world,” he said. “As far as I know there aren’t really any Nielsen ratings (for streaming). I haven’t been given any Nielsen ratings for a streaming series.”

“All the different streaming services have access to their own information, but don’t share it so easily to the public or across services,” he continued.

“We knew what success meant at the box office — that was very clear. There were numbers to compare it to,” he added.

“One sign is social discussion of reviews, that’s been helpful,” he said.

Feige brings up an interesting point, and it’s part of the evolution of streaming: What do these streaming numbers actually mean aside from raw numbers? When it comes to measuring streaming viewership, it’s the wild west with no standard streaming data metric determining how well a particular series or special actually did in comparison to the competition. Not to mention, in regards to a global reach, Disney+ and HBO Max aren’t as wide as, say, Netflix.

SambaTV clocks streaming viewership in 3 million U.S. households which in tune for at least five minutes. The sampling doesn’t include mobile viewers, but rather smart terrestrial TVs. I’ve heard the unit of viewer measurement over at HBO Max is a tune-in rate of 2-3 minutes. Netflix reports audience figures as it sees fit on series and movies, and it’s often a four-week global projection. Most recently, its Zack Snyder movie Army of the Dead is reportedly one of the top nine most watched ever on the service in 72 million households, tied with George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky.

Prior to talking streaming figures, Feige said that when it comes to the commerce of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about numbers, either the budget numbers or box office numbers. I think about them in as much as it allows us to do more work.”

“If Iron Man didn’t work, we wouldn’t have been able to make another movie,” he explained. “If Avengers didn’t work, we wouldn’t have been able to make another Avengers.“

“Success enables you to keep growing and keep evolving,” he said. “We have not and have never embarked on a project because research and analysis said we should. Sometimes, quite the opposite.”

#loki #loki series #kevin feige #deadline #article

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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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It's no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is thriving in the realm of the Disney+, as shown by the successful run of WandaVision. The MCU series became a hot topic on social media, leading to numerous fan theories and overwhelmingly positive reactions.

The next Marvel show to take center stage is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it seems that it will generate the same hype from its predecessor. Based on the reception from viewers, it looks like the trend will continue for the Disney+ slate of the MCU, and this should serve as good news for the studio.

Now, a new study has emerged, and it revealed that a certain MCU project is hotly anticipated by fans like never before.

THE ANTICIPATION TOWARDS LOKI IS SKY-HIGH

TV Time shared in a report that the current interest for the Tom Hiddleston-led Loki Disney+ series, which is currently about three months from release, is tracking at 67% higher than the interest for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in the same time period. For further comparison, the anticipation for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier one week from release is 38% higher than WandaVision interest one week prior to its debut.

The data and trends shared by TV Time indicate that the Loki show has substantially more pre-release buzz than Marvel's first two series, suggesting that it will become the most popular MCU series prior to its June release.

The full breakdown can be seen below:

TOM HIDDLESTON'S RETURN EXCITES MCU FANS

Based on the data from TV Time, it's safe to say that fans can't wait for Tom Hiddleston's return as the God of Mischief in Loki. The numbers prove that the hype surrounding the upcoming series is overwhelming, especially considering that it only has a lone trailer at this point.

From serving as the chief villain of the Avengers' first outing all the way to being redeemed, Loki had a very interesting journey throughout the Infinity Saga. Given the character's shocking death at the hands of Thanos during Avengers: Infinity War, many fans expected that it was the end of the character's time in the MCU.

However, it all changed during Avengers: Endgame when the film showcased a different version of the character that escaped by using the Tesseract. On the surface, the premise of Loki is intriguing on its own, but there are other factors that could've contributed to the data presented.

For instance, the actor's portrayal of the MCU villain is widely praised by viewers and critics, and the long-form storytelling approach of the series presents an opportunity for the character to be explored in a deeper manner. That being said, this could only be one of the many reasons why the anticipation for Loki is very high.

At this rate, as the debut of Loki inches closer, it's reasonable to assume that the excitement from fans will be higher, thus boosting these numbers.

Whatever the case, all will be revealed when the Tom Hiddleston-starring Loki premieres on Disney+ on June 11, 2021.

#Loki #Tom Hiddleston #Disney+

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