You’re an analyst, right? What division are you from? Who are you? What’s your name?
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
This is one of Loki’s most physically beautiful moments in this movie and I always think about how this is right after he says, “I’m impressed,” because Thor lied to him and tossed him out of the Dark Elves’ ship.
Loki’s face gets me. In the first gif, he’s looking at Thor with something akin to adoration which, in the next two, kind of turns into genuine amusement and the sort of sense that “I do like tricks, brother, and I’m getting a huge kick out of the one you just pulled.”
Things are so far from okay between Thor and Loki right now that it’s not even funny, but in this moment, Loki looks like a man who’s just been given water after months of starving in the desert. He’s been isolated for so long, locked away, he’s heartbroken over Frigga, and he probably really, really wants the comfort of his big brother who is, really, the only family Loki has left (since Odin has made it clear Loki is no son of his). Even though Thor is thoroughly pissed off at Loki, even though Loki isn’t particularly thrilled with Thor either, this moment kind of cuts through all of that and shows us that Loki is just happy Thor is there. Thor is paying attention to him. It’s not enough, not nearly, and again, their relationship is kind of fubar at this point, but still - Thor is there and Loki is just happy, at the moment, to be basking in the warmth of Thor’s glow.
Y’all know this quote from Avengers:
Well what I have to say, Thor’s been getting stabbed by Loki since they were kids, as we see from the snake story in Thor: Ragnarok. I’m pretty sure that makes Thor at the beginning of the line, Hawkeye. You’re a couple thousand years after him.
Actually, I don’t think Loki has been just stabbing Thor for no reason since they were kids. (I know that’s not exactly what you said OP, but you’re not the first person to say something along these lines, so I’m just responding to the idea in a general sense here. I hope you don’t mind; no criticism is intended—just meta.)
First of all, that snake story in Ragnarok was improvised by Chris Hemsworth, and they kept it in the movie because it was funny. But frankly it’s a retcon of Thor and Loki’s relationship growing up, if you go by the canon set up in their first three movies together.
In fact, the canon seems to show it was actually the other way around, where Thor and his friends regularly bullied Loki, who was probably like a smart, emo, loner geek. This characterization isn’t based on some story told from one character’s biased point of view; it’s based on actual events we can see ourselves in the films.
Evidence of this is in the early scene in Thor 1, where Odin takes young Thor and Loki to the weapons vault. We see a rambunctious Thor declaring, “When I am king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all,” while acting out an imaginary fight. Meanwhile, young Loki is quiet and just asks Odin a thoughtful question. Are we supposed to believe this curious young Loki was regularly terrorizing the obnoxious, loud, boastful, older brother?
In Thor 1 we also see the following:
- At the start of the movie, when Thor and Loki are waiting for the coronation to begin, Thor says several things to belittle Loki. For example, he says, “Some do battle; others just do tricks.” (Mind that this is when Thor is about to be made king—and still he has to be a dick.)
- When Loki tries to talk Heimdall into letting the group travel the Bifrost to Jotunheim, Heimdall is extraordinarily dismissive of Loki considering he’s a member of the royal family. Then, Thor’s buddy Volstagg adds a jab, “What’s the matter, Loki? Silver tongue turn to lead?” Again, not the way you talk to royals.
- On Jotunheim, when Loki tries to calm things down between Thor and the Frost Giants, Thor snaps at him to “Know your place, brother.”
Thor’s friends are consistently nasty to Loki*, and they take their cue from Thor. So does Heimdall, and even the servant who offers Thor a cup of wine in the deleted/extended version of the pre-coronation scene.
But this dynamic shouldn’t be a surprise; the whole plot of Thor 1 was based on the idea that Thor was a jerk who needed to be taught humility and kindness before he was worthy. At the start of the movie, he’s violent, impulsive, selfish, brutish, and overentitled. This is practically the textbook definition of a bully. And he didn’t have to look far for a victim: his misfit little brother was a perfect target.
Meanwhile, in the first part of Thor 1, Loki follows Thor around like a puppy. He tells Thor he loves him; he declares, “I won’t let my brother march into Jotunheim alone”; he even looks at Thor with puppy eyes when Thor isn’t looking at him. When Odin banishes Thor, Loki is literally crying.
People get the idea that Loki was always bad because he played the villain in Thor 1 and Avengers 1. But if you go back to those earlier films, you’re reminded that Loki wasn’t a villain all his life. He was the second son in a dysfunctional royal family, who was placed in the scapegoat role, while Thor was the golden child. Loki’s parents lied to him all his life and taught both boys racism against Frost Giants. When Loki figured out he was actually a Frost Giant himself, he flipped out.
Loki is over 1,000 years old, and even according to Thor he “fought (with Thor) side by side” for all that time. Despite being the family scapegoat and being routinely disrespected by Thor and his friends, Loki was a “good guy” right up until he discovered he was “a monster” and lost his sh!t.
Does this match with Thor’s version of their childhood? For the sake of argument, suppose there was some truth to Thor’s story—that Loki was super stabby and had tried to kill Thor many times. Well, it may have seemed that way to Thor. Since theirs is a warrior culture, we can assume the two of them had countless sparring matches on the practice field. Knives are Loki’s weapon of choice. So, Loki probably accidentally stabbed Thor a number of times.
However, the idea that Loki tried to kill Thor throughout their childhoods is ludicrous. To begin with, Loki would know very well what we learned in Avengers1: you can’t kill Thor by stabbing him with a measly knife. When Loki stabs Thor in the side during the Battle of New York in Avengers 1, he does it to buy himself time to get away—not with any expectation that Thor would die. (If Loki has thought that knife wound kill Thor, he would certainly have stuck around to have a “villain’s premature gloating moment.”)
Secondly, Loki would have been imprisoned (or worse) for attacking the crown prince even once. There would have been significant political upheaval on Asgard—with one prince against the other, split factions would have developed, potentially leading to civil war. If these had been the conditions Thor and Loki had grown up in, it would have been mentioned by now.
Now, here’s the kicker:
Loki banked more than 1,000 years as a “good guy” and roughly three years as a “bad guy,” following his mental breakdown in Thor 1.
If you take Loki’s ratio of “good guy” years (1,000+) to “bad guy” years (3) overall, percentage-wise, Loki was a bad guy for roughly 0.3% of his life.
In a crude estimate of just a simple percentage of lifetime spent, Loki is far more of a “good guy” than about half of the Avengers. Consider:
Hawkeye: Let’s say he’s about 45 years old. He spent 5 years as the vigilante Ronin, assassinating people he thought deserved it. And we’ll give him all the rest of his life as a “good guy,” even though he was probably also assassinating people for the U.S. government in part of his adulthood. 5/45 = 11% bad guy.
Scarlet Witch: Suppose she’s (I have no idea) 24 years old. She worked for Hydra for about 5 years, right? 5/24 = 20.9%.
Black Widow: Lets give her 15 (adult) years as a baddie and 15 years as a goodie (including childhood and infancy). Her percentage would be 50%.
You get the idea. Calculating the years spent being “good” versus “bad” is ridiculously oversimplifiying things, but it does give some perspective on the scope of Loki’s life overall, and how unfairly he is judged simply because we have seen the worst of him and the best of others.
*Thor’s friends are consistently mean to Loki, but there is one exception. After Loki saves Fandral’s life in the Jotunheim battle, Fandral does put in a good word for Loki while Sif is trashing on him (as usual).
I love your analysis, and I agree with most of your premises, but…
Like.
My one argument for the canonicity of the snake story is…
They’re siblings? They’re especially siblings from an abusive household, but most importantly they’re just siblings.
Even if Thor was probably the aggressor most of the time, well, so was my brother. He was the bigger cooler one my dad liked better, and the kids at school liked better, and he was the heir because he was a boy and that made him better than me just on principle and we both knew it.
But you know what? My brother would still have equivalent stories of shit I did to him too. Hell, there’s one specific story that *I* regularly tell about the time I pulled a stunt like that. (It only involved kicking him in the balls, alas I have not unlocked the ability to snake.)
Like, there’s too *much* affection between them – we both agree on that – for Loki not to have given as good as he got; Thor can do a lot worse than bully, he can *ignore* (as evidenced in that very movie), and that he never did. It means Loki got his respect somehow, and the only way either of those boys were taught to show respect was through violence. And their entire arc just proves that while he was bad at showing it and too self-centred to notice how much he was sabotaging his attempts to show it, he *did* very much respect his brother even though he was very different.
So like, yeah the snake story was improv, but it was kept in because it fit the previous characterization. And, like, Thor is a bit of an unreliable narrator in that story, he’s framing it in the worst way possible. I always imagined it normally is a more affectionate story, he was just being a bitter dick at the time. (Not to say he wasn’t justified in that. It’s just an observation not a judgment, I’d’ve been bitter and mean at that particular moment too. I’m just saying his framing is sus. If my brother told the story of when I kicked him in the balls, and never told what incited it or how it resolved, I’d sound like a horrible monster too, which is partially why I’m not giving that context here.)
Lots of siblings tussel and not just when they’re angry with each other, just for the fun of play fighting. *Especially* if you’re raised in a martial tradition. Who better to train with than the other person your age with the opposite skillset as you; Thor needs to know how to fight magic and Loki needs to know how to fight brute strength. And it would make dad happy, to see them be so diligent about their futures (shh don’t tell him it’s fun); they are being raised as child soldiers after all.
So like, I’m absolutely sure there *was* series of interactions through their lives that when framed in the worst possible light can be reduced to “Loki tried to kill Thor a bunch of times”. But Thor just as likely did things that can be framed as Thor tried to kill Loki a bunch of times. Loki’s even alluded to it. Fair’s fair except in this case where they’re both being petty and unfair to each other.
But dads like Odin are really good at playing the kids against each other so they never unite against the common foe. //sigh//
@therarestjewel In your last set of comments on this string, you sound really frustrated about the directions this conversation based on your original post has taken. I just want to say I’m sorry if I hijacked your post. I didn’t mean to distress you. Your post just prompted some thoughts of mine to coalesce, so it was with respect for your prompt that I added my two cents.
I actually think this string has evolved into a very interesting conversation, and I don’t see people going to the extremes you’ve described, but that’s just my viewpoint based on what I can see from the comments—I’m not seeing every repost. (This string seems to have fractured in a lot of different directions.)
I actually agree that it’s silly to reduce the good/bad in all the characters just to percentages. I was really making a point about how our perspective is skewed when we consider only what we’re shown of the character’s journey, versus when we consider the full context of their backstory. As I suggested in that post, we can’t and shouldn’t really reduce characters to good or bad by percentages. That was just an exercise to expand the scope of the characters beyond the obvious.
You also mentioned something about how it was weak to compare the character with other characters (I’m paraphrasing). I completely disagree with that premise. The characters surrounding whatever character we’re discussing (in this case, Loki) have tremendous influence over how we perceive the primary character. We compare them on all kinds of levels all the time (Strongest Avenger?) . They’re often deliberately constructed in opposition to each other (Cap and Tony) or in alignment (Cap and Bucky). The percentage comparisons I made up for that post were overly simplistic, but the comparison is strong.
You also mischaracterize my post (if it is my post you were referring to), by indicating that I’m claiming Loki is all good. I happen to agree with you that if we simplify characters to just good or just evil we’re missing out on the richness and complexity that makes these characters so interesting.
Loki happens to be the best example of this complexity in the MCU that I can think of—I think that’s one of his biggest draws as a character—why he remains so popular despite everything. We see Loki’s inner conflict, we’re moved by his struggle, we’re elated by his triumphs and aggrieved by the wrong choices he makes. Loki draws us in because of his fallabilities as much as his strengths.
I passionately agree with you that Loki is a multifaceted, richly drawn character, and I wouldn’t even want to suggest he is all good. Frankly, I don’t like it when others make that kind of accusation about me and other Loki stans when we point out what he’s gone through or show sympathy for his struggles. When you accuse a stan of acting like their character (in this case, Loki) is all good, you are making a judgment that just shuts down the conversation. I understand that you probably said that out of frustration, feeling like your post had been taken out of control, but I would like you to understand that it’s beyond inaccurate to say this of me, personally.
Loki is really a tragic figure in the ancient tradition, going back further than written history—I mean, aside from the fact that he is literally an ancient legend. Tom and Ken Branagh talk about how they created him from tragically flawed Shakespearean characters like Edmund from King Lear and Cassius from Julius Caesar, but the flawed hero goes back far beyond Shakespeare (have you heard of Achilles’ heel?). Icarus, Narcissus, Oedipus, even Odysseus had similar tragic flaws—and they’re just some of the Ancient Greeks.
In Native American folklore across most of the continent and many Nations there is the Coyote—the sharp-witted, scheming, mischievous outsider. In ancient Egypt there is Set/Seth and arguably Imhotep. I don’t know much about Asian cultural traditions, but I believe Shiva (India) fits the archetype, and
Loki is, in fact, one of the primary representatives of the archetypal trickster character found in legends and literature throughout the world, throughout history. I won’t get too into this point because it will take me off track, but it’s a fascinating multicultural phenomenon. If you’re not familiar, read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth as a start.
Flawed antiheroes like Loki are the most enduring characters of all because they tap into something essential to the human experience: we are all flawed, we all make mistakes—sometimes horrific mistakes.
When these characters keep getting back up, when they show glimmers of hope for redemption, they can inspire hope for us in our own lives. We want so much for these characters to transcend their tragedies; we become personally hooked into their stories because it means so much to us to sustain that kind of hope for ourselves.
Most of this is subconscious, of course. Just like our responses to all fictional characters; they’re visceral and obscure: we often don’t even know why someone rubs us the wrong way or why we’re drawn to someone else. For more on the subconscious influence of the archetype, consult Carl Jung.
I should mention that MCU Loki could easily have become a two-dimensional villain in the wrong hands. But Kevin Feige made a brilliant choice in hiring Ken Branagh to direct Thor and Tom Hiddleston to play Loki.
Because of these two, the MCU’s Loki was created with a rich, multidimensional complexity. They tapped a strong conduit into the greater legend of the Norse character, and into the aspects of the tragic antihero/trickster trope on a literally galactic scale.
It would be a disservice to their work to suggest that Loki is either all good or all bad. Anyone paying attention in Thor 1 and 2, as well as Avengers 1 can see with raw transparency Loki’s internal conflict.
Every moment Loki appears onscreen counts. In every frame we see with Tom Hiddleston’s face (even when he is in the background), he gives us incredibly powerful, complex characterization: pathos, rage, envy, longing, intelligence, pride, fear, loyalty, grief, courage, frailty—an extraordinarily intimate access into the character with an almost hypnotic power. The odd acting praise “he chews the scenery” actually makes some sense in this context.
In other words, Tom Hiddleston has acted his pants off to bring us one of the most remarkable and complex characters in the genre, much less the MCU. His performances as Loki have been truly brilliant. So, to say Loki is all good is about the same as saying he is all bad—either way, it would be missing the deep and abiding power of Loki.
This post is simply FANTASTIC.
Just going to add that the depth of commitment along with Tom’s amazingly gifted acting honestly brought Loki to life. I cannot imagine any other actor providing such an amazing characterization of Loki.
OMFG LMFAO… turn that volume up 🤣🤣
MARTHA YOU CLUMSY SLUT
GIMME THAT WALL BITCH 😂
BWAHAHAHAHA
While Tom Hiddleston has consistently provided us with expressions that make for quality reaction gifs, I would like to take a moment to thank Disney+ for assembling 2 minutes and 45 seconds of Grade A Loki reaction gif material to work with.
