so i saw some people discussing how loki in ragnarok shouldn’t have been at all phased or subverted by dr. strange – which i agree with, but also, hey, it’s comedic and you can argue that he was taken off-guard, but upon re-watch, something stuck out to me –
there’s this moment when they appear at the bottom of the stairs and thor rolls down the last couple and stands up and he says
we could’ve just walked.
and it made me think of how magic works in terry pratchett’s novels, how (to paraphrase) the hard part wasn’t turning someone into a frog, it was not turning someone into a frog when you knew how easy it was.
like, the whole scene with dr. strange is just. all magic. all pointless magic. unnecessary magic, when, well. they could have just walked.
whereas loki doesn’t really rely on magic overmuch in the movie – he uses it as a tool, when he needs it, but if the job can be done with plain old non-magical trickery or a knife, he just uses those. he resorts to magic when he’s cornered by valkyrie, he uses it when his goals are most directly accomplished by using magic rather than by other means.
whereas dr. strange is using magic all over his scene, just to use it. just because he can. magic was unnecessary for ninety percent of what he did in that scene, the only time he needed magic was to whisk them away to norway. but he teleported all over the place even when he only needed to move a few feet, gave thor an ever-refilling beer that just spilled everywhere, floated around to make a show of how ~magical~ he was, when…
he could have just walked.
i mean, i’m very sure that the filmmakers intended it for comedic effect, but there’s also a layer there of dr. strange being much less comfortable with magic than loki is – loki doesn’t need to bust out the magic at every opportunity, it’s simply a skill, a tool that is completely under his control and at his disposal. whereas dr. strange (at least in his scene in ragnarok) is showing off, which reeks of insecurity.
i guess i’m thinking… if you take the magic away, loki is still a deadly, formidable opponent with many tricks up his sleeve, but dr. strange is just a guy in a cape.
I need to remember this contrast. It’s a subtle one, but a valuable one for characterization.
the fact that Loki’s death scene in Thor 2 was originally intended to be real & retconned later and the end where he’s alive was filmed during pickups has me SO fucked up because now I can’t choose between which headcanon I prefer re: his behavior in Ragnarok. like listen, okay, either:
1. loki was planning on playing dead the whole time and so his very sad death scene & everything he said therein was a calculated move and he was practically writing the theatrical version of it (starring matt damon as himself) as he went along
OR
2. loki really thought he was dying and every melodramatic word of his death scene was 100% heartfelt and then after he realized he wasn’t dead he fucking… woke up peaced out to go take over asgard (lol?) and several months later he was sitting on the throne and could remember every word of what he said to thor on that day and was like “wow im so fucking poetic. that should be a play. starring matt damon as Me perhaps”
1. Tom Hiddleston signed a six film deal, so we can expect him to be in Avengers 4.
2. Loki is known as a ‘Silvertongue’, so his choice of words is always extremely important. So, when he says “undying fidelity”. I think this is an allusion to the fact that he is not dead.
3. Further on from the ‘Silvertongue’ point, Loki says “I promise you, brother, the sun will shine on us again”. This seems too far out of place to be a coincidence. I think Loki is trying to subtly tell Thor that he has a trick up his sleeve that may end up saving them.
4. Loki has already feigned death so many times, is it really so far fetched to think he has done it again?
5. He disappeared from the scene for several minutes and we have no idea what he was doing during that time. He then reappears super cocky and arrogant which is a direct contrast to how terrified he’d been a few minutes prior. This seems to suggest that perhaps he is using an illusion of some sort.
6. He emphasizes the fact that he is a “God of Mischief”, thus perhaps hinting to Thor that he is about to perform a trick, or to allude to the audience that all is not as it seems.
7. Loki did not change into his Jotun form after he died. This seems odd because his Aesir form is an illusion, so it should have disappeared when he died. Furthermore, there are a couple of mentions of Loki being “the rightful King of Jotunheim” and “not Asgardian”, which may be an attempt to draw the audience’s attention to this fact.
8. It was very uncharacteristic of Loki to act so impulsive by stabbing Thanos with a small dagger. It seems to me that the attack was more of a distraction than a real attack. The Loki we know would have attempted to use some sort of illusion or trick in order to attack Thanos and mean it.
9. Tom Hiddleston mentions in a recent interview that “Chaos isn’t something that’s threatening to Loki” and that “Everything is fine”. This seems to suggest that Loki is alright, and hasn’t actually died.
10. Loki’s choice of last words, “You will never be a god”, introduces the idea that maybe Loki has survived due to the fact that he’s a God, and cannot be killed so easily.
11. If the Russo brothers wanted to make Loki’s death truly believable, they would have had Loki using his illusions, and Thanos seeing straight through them and then killing him. The fact that none of Loki’s powers were used at all, makes it seem that he has perhaps feigned death.
12. Finally, I refuse to believe that Thor’s last words to Loki are “You really are the worst brother”, it just seems so wrong to me after all they’ve been through.
i'll apple your turnover 