i forgot to mention what I love most about ragnarok: that rangarok took all of the character assassination bullshit from the dark world and age of ultron and turned it on its ass.
dark world implies loki killed his father to take the crown? ragnarok makes loki a blassé and nonviolent leader that just dropped his dad off at a nursing home. GOD OF MISCHIEF. not god of death or god of pain and suffering. MISCHIEF. 100% the most in-character Loki Thing he’s done since the first thor movie. not only that but not for one second does thor ever think loki capable of killing their father. because he isn’t.
the dark world makes thor say a bunch of horrible and damaging things to loki? ragnarok has him still struggle with it but legitimately come to rational terms with everything enough to show their disfunctional but ultimately loving relationship.
age of ultron creates the dumbest romantic trope in the history of man between natasha and bruce? ragnarok makes so much fun of it to the point where it’s shown to be as ridiculous as it is.
the dark world AND age of ultron make thor this broody and unfunny mythical being? ragnarok fuckin made sure that was no longer the case because what makes thor so wonderful is his moral compass, aloofness, and kindness.
they literally fixed the infinity gauntlet plot hole in 0.0002 seconds. this movie took everything wrong with the MCU and fuckin fixed it
This was really important and Thor blew it off which totally floored me. The only excuse I can think of is that because Sakaar is temporally weird, Loki’s been there and able to mourn Odin for two weeks, while Thor literally watched Odin die moments ago.
But even with that being the case? It still flabbergasts me that Thor can be so strangely uncritical of and emotionally enmeshed with Odin, after Odin’s behavior in TDW.
To me that shows that Odin not only emotionally neglected Loki, he also groomed and conditioned Thor to be a mere extension of himself with no autonomous thought, until Thor was simultaneously so privileged and so dependent/reactive that he had to be exiled to straighten himself up.
And he DID straighten himself up with Jane, so I’m kind of like. Why. Is Thor such an asshole in Ragnarok again? Why the character regression???? Is this just his way of coping with constant loss, to get all arrogant and macho and Gaston-like?
This is a genuine question I’m asking Thor muns here. Do you think Thor’s weird combination of petulance, pride and sanctimony are the result of grief? Or just bad writing?
That’s why Loki is so dangerous. He is not 100% evil. If he was, Thor could hate him and leave him behind but he can’t and therefore won’t. And some of the comics are even worse. >.<
Exactly! He was nothing for him he barely knew her but he did risk his life for her.If anyone tells me again that Loki is a monster i will show them this
Look how confused she looks in the last gif. People keep telling her Loki is evil, he’s a monster, a liar, a backstabber, and now he is PROTECTING her?
I swear to god guys, I can’t pass a Loki post without getting emotional.
I honestly don’t understand how anyone can watch this scene and think “oh yes, he’s totally 100% a villain with no heart and is pure evil.” or “He’s a villain, but Bucky is a victim.”
Like yeah, Bucky’s a victim, he was tortured, his mind was messed with – and you really think Loki didn’t go through much the same thing, only a million times worse?!?!?!?! You think Thanos and his minions were somehow less creative and effective in their torture methods than Hydra? Let’s face it, Hydra is made of human beings. Thanos is a titan with immeasurable powers at his disposal. Even with the enhancements of his body by the experiments done on him by Arnim Zola, Bucky’s still human. Loki is a Frost Giant, with stamina, healing, and constitution that is much higher than even an enhanced mortal’s – and not only is he a sorcerer, but he survived falling into the void, something that should have scattered his molecules across the cosmos. He can – and likely did – withstand tortures much more violent, much harsher, much more terrifying than what happened to Bucky.
I mean DAMN they even have a similar storyline – they both fall and then undergo torture. (Yes, Bucky was experimented on prior to his fall. Well, Loki had his ENTIRE EXISTENCE shattered before his fall.)
Joss’s storytelling is in fine form here, and I understand why he didn’t have a flashback sequence showing that torture, at least from a storytelling standpoint because a)it wasn’t strictly necessary to the plot, not with this scene (as well as the tag scene at the end of the Thor credits) to show that Loki had been tortured, and b)It likely would have earned the movie an R rating, which Marvel wouldn’t have allowed. But part of me wishes he had. Even just a tiny one, like the one with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, that doesn’t show the torture directly, but shows the pain the character was in when he gave up the name Baggins to the orcs.
So like, how does that thought process even begin…and how does anyone not see that the safest place for Loki to be, when Thanos comes for him, is with the might of Asgard to protect him? How does anyone not see that Asgard won’t willingly protect Loki, the God of Lies and Mischief, the worthless adopted son that always lived in Thor’s shadow? How does anyone not see that, in Loki’s entire character arc so far, the only protection after the truth of his parentage came out was the protection he gained for himself? How does anyone not see that?
It boggles my mind.
I don’t. Because it isn’t Thanos’ MO. Or are you telling me he tortured Ronan, too? He finds people with ambitions he can use to manipulate them into doing his bidding. It is much more effective than torture–he doesn’t have to worry that something will happen to shake his programming, as obviously happened with Bucky is TWS, just that his minion will fail or double-cross him. And that is when his power comes into play.
There is a difference between torture beforehand and torture after-the-fact. Everything you’re quoting is to show what Thanos will do if Loki fucks him over, not what he did do to get Loki on his side. You’re conveniently leaving out the quotes where Loki shows outright insubordination to his supposed master. “I don’t threaten,” and, “Until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words.” Not to mention the obvious deal between them. If Loki gets Thanos the Tesseract, Thanos will help Loki take Midgard. If he was controlling Loki through fear, he wouldn’t have to offer him a damned thing but a relatively pain-free life.
The safest place for Loki after he fails is indeed Asgard. I’m sure he knew that is where he would end up if he failed, counted on it even, but that he attacked earth solely to get there just doesn’t follow. Why take the long way around? His actions in the first Thor movie would warrant some punishment, but nothing like what he brought down on himself in Avengers. You seriously believe Asgard will marshal more forces to protect a prisoner who only narrowly escaped a death sentence than a Prince of the Realm, no matter how much he is disliked?
You’re honestly telling me that you think it was possible for writers to incorporate a torture scene into TWS, but not Avengers? That they could not have so much as alluded to it without getting an R rating? That Loki, a god who has lived for a millenia, would break in less than the span of one year when it took HYDRA much longer than that to break Bucky, a mere mortal?
The reason it isn’t in the movie isn’t because it’s unnecessary, but because it never happened.
We are talking about Thanos, right? The same Thanos that killed two entire races, save for the two young females (Gamora (whose family Thanos killed right in front of her) and Nebula) he raised through torture both physical and mental to become his assassin minions?
(And no, he hasn’t visited retribution on those who defied him in Guardians of the Galaxy. YET. Knowing it’s inevitable and waiting for it to descend on them is, after all, part of the mind fuck. Thanos has all the time in the universe, after all.)
Manipulation is actually less effective than torture, because as soon as the person doing the manipulation no longer has the thing of value being offered/the person being manipulated realizes that the manipulator either can’t or won’t give them what they want, then the deal’s off and, more than likely, the person being manipulated is going to turn on the manipulator. (See: too many movies and books and tv series to list. It’s a well-used trope for a reason.) Torture, on the other hand…it takes a lot to break through that. Bucky was trying to kill Steve from the moment he was given the assignment right up until Steve fell from the disintegrating helicarrier. And this was after Steve freed him from under the beam that was crushing him. It took a lot for Steve to break through Hydra’s programming and reach Bucky. He was willing to let BUCKY KILL HIM FOR FUCK’S SAKE. And if Steve hadn’t just orchestrated the demise of Hydra so that they couldn’t get their hands on Bucky again, all of that effort to reach him would have been in vain.
And who’s to say that Loki wanted to rule Midgard in the first place? I mean, of all the choices available to him, it makes no logical sense that such would be something he wanted. It would make more logical sense for Thanos to offer him the rule of Asgard/the entire nine realms (both for Loki and for Thanos’ own goal of obtaining the Infinity Gauntlet). And Loki’s resentment is towards Asgard and some of her people, not Midgard. Of course, the tesseract happens to be on Midgard. And it would make logical sense for Thanos to not want Loki to end up in Asgard, one of the realms most able to effectively oppose him and his plans. So Thanos needs to give Loki an incentive to go to Midgard instead. And since Loki wants revenge on Asgard more than he wants to rule Midgard, that incentive would be…torture, and the cessation of it.
You’re also forgetting the part where The Other said “You think you know pain?” Now, he could be referring to the pain Loki experienced when his entire existence was shattered/what happened during Thor, except for this inconvenient detail:
And these:
All of which show evidence of recent physical torture, and is what The Other was referring to. That’s not just the effects of traveling through the tesseract portal – look at the way his back gives out on him. Think about how his back continues to pain him throughout the rest of the movie. Look at his face, at the dark circles around his eyes, the sunken state of his cheeks, how much thinner and bonier he looks compared to how he looked in Thor. That is a person who has undergone torture. Pure and simple.
There’s also the fact that Thor traveled from Asgard to Midgard via Dark Energy – a force that is supposed to be rife with danger to those who use it, even worse than the effects of traveling via the tesseract – and arrived on the top of the quinjet looking pissed but still fresh as a daisy.
Think about Thor’s question to Loki on the cliff: “Who controls the would-be king?!”
Then there’s the fact that, as virgo-79pointed out (and as I have pointed out before), Loki’s personality/demeanor changes after being hulk-smashed – the first time in the whole movie he sustains a blow to the head. I.E., cognitive recalibration.
Then there’s also the fact that both Joss and Tom have alluded to Loki having been tortured.
There’s also the fact that Loki acts so blase’ about any torture Fury might inflict on him. “After. After whatever tortures Fury could concoct, you would appear as a friend. A balm.” That speaks to a)having experienced worse so whatever these “ants” can come up with holds no threat to him and b)being familiar with how torture works (i.e., bad cop/good cop).
As for Asgard, I find it difficult to believe that the realm who had to deal with the aftermath of the Bifrost being destroyed and the nine realms descending into chaos – and remember it was Loki’s actions that led to that – that lost soldiers in the ensuing battles as well as during the events in Thor, as well as what you have mentioned, his attack on Midgard – would protect Loki. And even before all of those events took place, before the first trip to Jotunheim, a servant laughed at him. (A deleted scene, but still, shows that even as a prince he wasn’t held in that high of a regard.) Thor likely would, but remember Sif and Volstagg both threatened to kill him. Frigga would have, but then she was killed. So how then is Loki going to be able to secure their protection? Through deception. (Here I’m talking about him sitting on the throne in the guise of Odin at the end of Thor:TDW.)
And yes, I believe that Thanos broke Loki in less than a year. That’s my entire fucking point when I say such scenes would have earned an R-rating, when I mentioned that Loki was of a higher constitution than even an enhanced Bucky. Think about how intense it had to have been. These are just educated guesses on my part, but I see it involving vivisection at the very least. Probably some kind of energy/seidr torture. Others have posited that, after finding out Loki’s Frost Giant lineage, Thanos tortured him with fire/burned him. Then there’s also the possibility of sexual torture of some kind. And, as I mentioned in the link above, warping of his mind via the mind gem in the sceptre. And honestly all of that probably does not even begin to scratch the surface of the sadism that Thanos, mad titan, courtier to Death, is capable of, never mind The Other. (There’s another reason for it to not be shown – for all of our imaginations, nothing we humans/the writers can come up with would match the sadism of Thanos.)
The torture scene in TWS happened as both part of the plot and as a way to advance it. The Winter Soldier was starting to remember being Bucky, so they had to wipe him. Even the mental flashbacks was part of that – they weren’t shown as some kind of motivation, they were shown because it was part of The Winter Soldier starting to remember. Physical manifestations of his surfacing memories.
They could have done something like that in Avengers, but as I said it was unnecessary to the plot/advancing the plot. The Other smacking a ball of searing energy into the side of Loki’s face was enough of a reminder to Loki of what had already been done to him and what awaited him if he failed. And that was just a reminder. A taste. I mean goddamn…
This was all very eloquently argued … and I’d like to add something I’ve always had in the back of my mind. Loki was obsessed with making Midgardians kneel … but who showed up on Earth kneeling?
This is a very subservient position. Who’s presence was he just in? Thanos.
Also, another point to bring up, Loki goes to conquer Midgard with the god damned Mind Stone. Based off what I’ve seen of Thanos, I don’t think he would just give away an infinity stone to a god whose title is “Mischief, Lies, and Chaos”. He would have to be pretty sure that however was in possession of one of the greatest powers in the friggin’ galaxy was well under his control before sending it away.
Not to mention, it’s the Mind Stone. There’s a huge possibility that Thanos could have used it’s power on Loki before sending him to Midgard and he was brought back with the skull crushing force of the Hulk. Like what was said above about cognitive calibration.
Exactly. Think about what that mind stone did when it created Ultron and what kind of thing it created … Loki was in possession of that. I believe he was possessed by it. His mind was not in the right frame of mind to be wielding it, having been tortured. Vision was created with JARVIS/Mjolnir … and you don’t get more “worthy” than mjolnir. That’s why Vision is A.I. Gandhi. Loki’s mind was gone when he had the gem, that’s why he acted so crazy throughout the movie. And the stark contrast in personality we got in The Dark World.
Also, the argument about Ronin being Thano’s M.O. I think Thanos picked Ronan because he was a much more malevolent being than Loki. He didn’t need to be tortured first. He didn’t want to be king of a realm, he wanted to DESTROY a realm. Thanos went in a different direction after Loki … he wouldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over again wanting the same results. And then Ronan turned on him. And so did both of his daughters that he tortured. That didn’t work out for him either.
Which is why we got the teaser at the end of Age of Ultron. Thanos being like, “Fine bitches, I’LL DO IT MYSELF.”
The link can be found here: http://starkindustries.ru/news/2011-09-02-2925 (This one is the seventh down, titled Воцарение Локи. Again, sorry about the Russian, but I don’t have another link.)
Note about this scene: In the original film, this scene comes after the next one – Loki talking to Sif and TW3 on the throne. However, with the extended version, it was meant to be placed here, so this is where I’ll analyze it.
In the beginning of this scene, we get a very touching moment between Loki and Frigga. Loki is still reeling from all the revelations and he’s trying to get grounded once again. Frigga is there for him in his time of need, comforting him, telling him he is loved, he’s a good son, and that no matter what, he will always be a part of the family.
Frigga: There should be no secrets in a family. Loki: So why did he lie? Frigga: He kept the truth from you so that you would never feel different. You are our son, Loki, and we, your family. You must know that.
This is what Loki needs right now. Calm words, reassurance. Loki could have gone off the rails here, but Frigga keeps him from losing himself. The only other person who ever treats Loki this way is Thor.
Unfortunately, Thor doesn’t really realize how broken and anguished his brother is until after the events of this movie take place. In fact, he doesn’t even know about Loki’s true parentage during this film at all.
It isn’t really until the Avengers that Thor starts trying to reason with Loki, to pull him back from the edge by telling him he’s loved. But by then it’s been much too long, and Loki is too far gone.
Then of course, the other interesting part of this scene is the part that got cut: The Ascension. His conversation over with, Loki turns to leave, but is interrupted when the doors swing open and the guards line up.
Now, despite what Frigga just said about Loki still being family, he’s a Jotun. Jotunheim just declared war. In his mind, he’s the enemy. A long line of guards is not what he wants to see right now. He’s probably pretty scared that they’re here to take him away. He’s thinking they’ve come to throw him in the dungeons for being an imposter, and he’s going to rot there the rest of his days.
Which is why he’s wholly unprepared for what comes next.
The way his eyebrows draw together when he realizes what’s going on says everything. “What? Me? You want me to be king?“
He’s emotionally unstable and really just needs to find somewhere quiet to sit down and think through everything, but the kingdom needs him, and all of a sudden, he has to step up and take control.
He is, understandably, absolutely terrified.
Once again, Frigga is there to reassure him. She’s behind him all the way, and fully believes that he can do this. Her support gives him the strength to step up and do what needs to be done.
Hesitantly, Loki takes the staff, and the responsibility that goes with it. His chin raises as he silently tells himself ”I can do this.“ His mother’s small nod as she addresses him serves to tell him that she believes in him. She knows he can be a great king.
Now, running a country on the brink of war is probably not what Loki should be doing right now. He’s got some major issues that he hasn’t worked out yet and he’s still very insecure and unsteady. He’s needs time to recover from everything that’s happened today – but he hasn’t got any. Asgard needs him now, and – troubled as he is – he’s going to do what must be done.
Loki, in his emotional turmoil, grabs onto this as his chance to prove himself. He has to show all the world that he can be king. He has to prove to himself that he’s no different, that no matter what race he truly is, he’s still the same person, and he’s just as capable as anyone else. This is his one shot – and if something goes wrong – he’ll hate himself even more for ruining it.
Don’t forget what he says to Thor when they are fighting at the Bifrost. “I never wanted the throne. I only wanted to be your equal.” Equal? In what way? Co-rulers? I don’t think so. I think he meant equal in the eyes of Odin. A point which is further driven home when, at the end, he lets go only after Odin says, “No, Loki.” He failed. Loki realized that he was never going to be good enough.
the most implausible thing about superhero movies is that these guys make their own suits, like seriously those toxic chemicals did NOT give you the ability to sew stretch knits, do you even own a serger
I feel like there’s this little secret place in the middle of some seedy New York business neighborhood, back room, doesn’t even have a sign on the door, but within three days of using their powers in public or starting a pattern of vigilanteism, every budding superhero or supervillain gets discreetly handed a scrap of paper with that address written on it.
Inside there’s this little tea table with three chairs, woodstove, minifridge, work table, sewing machines, bolts and bolts of stretch fabrics and maybe some kevlar, and two middle-aged women with matching wedding rings and sketchbooks.
And they invite you to sit down, and give you tea and cookies, and start making sketches of what you want your costume to look like, and you get measured, and told to come back in a week, and there’s your costume, waiting for you.
The first one is free. They tell you the price of subsequent ones, and it’s based on what you can afford. You have no idea how they found out about your financial situation. You try it on, and it fits perfectly, and you have no idea how they managed that without measuring you a whole lot more thoroughly than they did.
They ask you to pose for a picture with them. For their album, they say. The camera is old, big, the sort film camera artists hunt down at antique stores and pay thousands for, and they come pose on either side of you and one of them clicks the camera remotely by way of one of those squeeze-things on a cable that you’ve seen depicted from olden times. That one (the tall one, you think, though she isn’t really, thin and reminiscent of a Greek marble statue) pulls the glass plate from the camera and scurries off to the basement, while the other one (shorter, round, all smiles, her shiny black hair pulled up into a bun) brings out a photo album to show you their work.
Inside it is … everyone. Superheroes. Supervillains. Household names and people you don’t recognize. She flips through pages at random, telling you little bits about the guy in the purple spangly costume, the lady in red and black, the mysterious cloaked figure whose mask reveals one eye. As she pages back, the costumes start looking really convincingly retro, and her descriptions start having references to the Space Race, the Depression, the Great War.
The other lady comes up, holding your picture. You’re sort of surprised to find it’s in color, and then you realize all the others were, too, even the earliest ones. There you are, and you look like a superhero. You look down at yourself, and feel like a superhero. You stand up straighter, and the costume suddenly fits a tiny bit better, and they both smile proudly.
*
The next time you come in, it’s because the person who’s probably going to be your nemesis has shredded your costume. You bring the agreed-upon price, and you bake cupcakes to share with them. There’s a third woman there, and you don’t recognize her, but the way she moves is familiar somehow, and the air seems to sparkle around her, on the edge of frost or the edge of flame. She’s carrying a wrapped brown paper package in her arms, and she smiles at you and moves to depart. You offer her a cupcake for the road.
The two seamstresses go into transports of delight over the cupcakes. You drink tea, and eat cookies and a piece of a pie someone brought around yesterday. They examine your costume and suggest a layer of kevlar around the shoulders and torso, since you’re facing off with someone who uses claws.
They ask you how the costume has worked, contemplate small design changes, make sketches. They tell you a story about their second wedding that has you falling off the chair in tears, laughing so hard your stomach hurts. They were married in 1906, they say, twice. They took turns being the man. They joke about how two one-ring ceremonies make one two-ring ceremony, and figure that they each had one wedding because it only counted when they were the bride.
They point you at three pictures on the wall. A short round man with an impressive beard grins next to a taller, white-gowned goddess; a thin man in top hat and tails looks adoringly down at a round and beaming bride; two women, in their wedding dresses, clasp each other close and smile dazzlingly at the camera. The other two pictures show the sanctuaries of different churches; this one was clearly taken in this room.
There’s a card next to what’s left of the pie. Elaborate silver curlicues on white, and it originally said “Happy 10th Anniversary,” only someone has taken a Sharpie and shoehorned in an extra 1, so it says “Happy 110th.” The tall one follows your gaze, tells you, morning wedding and evening wedding, same day. She picks up the card and sets it upright; you can see the name signed inside: Magneto.
You notice that scattered on their paperwork desk are many more envelopes and cards, and are glad you decided to bring the cupcakes.
*
When you pick up your costume the next time, it’s wrapped up in paper and string. You don’t need to try it on; there’s no way it won’t be perfect. You drink tea, eat candies like your grandmother used to make when you were small, talk about your nights out superheroing and your nemesis and your calculus homework and how today’s economy compares with the later years of the Depression.
When you leave, you meet a man in the alleyway. He’s big, and he radiates danger, but his eyes shift from you to the package in your arms, and he nods slightly and moves past you. You’re not the slightest bit surprised when he goes into the same door you came out of.
*
The next time you visit, there’s nothing wrong with your costume but you think it might be wise to have a spare. And also, you want to thank them for the kevlar. You bring artisan sodas, the kind you buy in glass bottles, and they give you stir fry, cooked on the wood-burning stove in a wok that looks a century old.
There’s no way they could possibly know that your day job cut your hours, but they give you a discount that suits you perfectly. Halfway through dinner, a cinderblock of a man comes in the door, and the shorter lady brings up an antique-looking bottle of liquor to pour into his tea. You catch a whiff and it makes your eyes water. The tall one sees your face, and grins, and says, Prohibition.
You’re not sure whether the liquor is that old, or whether they’ve got a still down in the basement with their photography darkroom. Either seems completely plausible. The four of you have a rousing conversation about the merits of various beverages over dinner, and then you leave him to do business with the seamstresses.
*
It’s almost a year later, and you’re on your fifth costume, when you see the gangly teenager chase off a trio of would-be purse-snatchers with a grace of movement that can only be called superhuman.
You take pen and paper from one of your multitude of convenient hidden pockets, and scribble down an address. With your own power and the advantage of practice, it’s easy to catch up with her, and the work of an instant to slip the paper into her hand.
*
A week or so later, you’re drinking tea and comparing Supreme Court Justices past and present when she comes into the shop, and her brow furrows a bit, like she remembers you but can’t figure out from where. The ladies welcome her, and you push the tray of cookies towards her and head out the door.
In the alleyway you meet that same giant menacing man you’ve seen once before. He’s got a bouquet of flowers in one hand, the banner saying Happy Anniversary, and a brown paper bag in the other.
do you ever think about how perfectly steve, bucky, and sam typify the 3 big wars america’s fought in over the past century?
steve is the soldier who fought in world war 2. he’s the tail end of the glory and honor of war. his reasons for fighting are clear cut, moral, as far as he can tell. but the weapons used are too deadly, too fatal for glory and honor, really. there’s the attempt to treat enemy combatants with respect, with honor, all while killing them quick than has ever been possible before. there’s the unease of the shift from the old style of fighting to the new. there’s the tiredness that only comes from a second global war in only two decades. there’s the closure that comes from unprecedented total destruction. the thought of “maybe now we can go home. maybe now we can build lives like our parents, those of us that are left.”
bucky is the soldier who fought in vietnam. he’s the one that couldn’t dodge the draft, that couldn’t evade the fight no matter how hard he tried. he’s the one who followed the orders he had to, and rebelled against all the others. his uniform was askew, more civvies than not. he didn’t look a soldier, and he didn’t fight like one either. he didn’t know why he was fighting, who he was fighting. he saw too many innocents die by the hands of his comrades, of himself. he felt agent orange burn his lungs, saw orphans crying in the streets. he came home, the rat-a-tat of machine guns echoing in his ears, always. he disembarked a plane, and was spat on by anti-war protesters. he couldn’t even be angry– he agreed with them. he participated in the winter soldier investigations, confessed what he’d been forced to do, and that almost abated the weight on his shoulders. almost.
sam is the soldier who fought in afghanistan. the modern soldier, with just as much shit as the rest of them. the difference is, where steve was greeted with celebrations and bucky was greeted with vitriol, sam is overlooked, forgotten. he suffers in silence, expected to endure without protest. sam copes, but not all vets are able to do the same. afghan war vets are the ones who take their own lives in droves, the unacknowledged, unknown aftershocks from an invasion founded on half-formed ambitions from men in suits who’d never have to bear the real burden. sam is the modern day vet, unknown, unseen, unthanked.
No wonder they’re all Captain America
So is Nat the Cold War? People don’t see a soldier when they look at her, because she really isn’t, just like the cold war was never really a “war”. Nat is the spy on the run, the power never fully unleashed, the constant sense of fear that there is no backing down, no running– there are no vets of the cold war, but there are always the living casualties.
say what you want about woobifying villains, but i think tragic backstories and redemption via love are staples for good reason. we want to believe that people are fundamentally good, just hardened by a harsh world. that suffering earns you a happy ending. because then it means something, then pain isn’t just senseless and futile.
people don’t ‘excuse’ the actions of villains because they just don’t take those actions seriously. i think it’s a kind of projection – we forgive them because we want to forgive ourselves, and we look for the good in them because we want to see that in the world, even in people who have wronged and hurt us. because earth is a goddamn terrifying place if other humans really are evil, if they’re really monsters.
and idk, i just think it’s kind of beautiful that we all want to believe that the scariest mass-murdering motherfucker alive can be brought down by something as pure and innocent as love. that love is the answer, not violence. i don’t think that’s cheap or ‘problematic’ or a bad influence. i think it’s human, and profoundly optimistic in a way that few people are brave enough to be.
If I didn’t hold the hope that love could make a difference, my world would be cold and bleak.
People who ONLY ever like “pure, cinnamon roll” characters and try to buff away every flaw and every morally grey dimension and reduce stories to pure heroes and pure villains give me the creeps, because it seems to me like those are people who refuse to acknowledge their own capability to do terrible things, the inevitable fact that they have done things that hurt others in the past and will do so again (because that IS inevitable if you interact with other humans), who never question themselves, who think incredibly harsh standards of judgment are just fine because of course THEY would never need forgiveness or mercy.
THOSE are the people who are most likely to stomp on your face with a boot while being utterly convinced they’re doing the right thing and you deserve it. And they will never admit they were wrong and they’ll never apologize, because only bad people do bad things, and of course they’re not a bad person, so if they did it, it must have been good.
Give me friends who are honest about their own capacity to harm, who know where their own darkness lies, and can see it played out in characters good, bad, and – best of all, somewhere in between. Who understand when to rage, when to forgive, and when to just walk away. Who understand that other people, just like them, are ever-changing bundles of contradictions. Those are people I feel I can trust.
I just realized the first cars movie and the first thor movie have the same exact plot
I want an explanation
A man on the road to greatness ends up lost in a small desert town with seemingly no hope of getting back to the life he knows, over time he falls in love with someone there and learns to be humble. With this character development complete he’s able to return to his life never forgetting the people in that desert town.
While we’re on the topic of Civil War having weird narratives: Peter Parker’s speech about being a Superhero completely aligns with Steve’s worldview, not Tony’s… yet Marvel had Spidey side with Tony. It makes his storyline a little muddled, because while the narrative objectively connects Peter to Tony through their heart-to-heart conversation, Marvel wrote Peter as being very similar to Steve. With the characterization they gave us, there’s no way Peter would have joined Tony’s side if he knew anything about the fight.
Peter says to Tony ”If you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then bad things happen… they happen because of you” .
Which is the same philosophy that Steve has, and says to Tony twice in this movie: first when discussing the Accords – “What if there’s somewhere we need to go, but [the UN] won’t let us?” – and then later, in a more personal tone: “If I see a situation pointed South, I can’t ignore it”.
Both Steve and Peter believe their powers almost obligate them to help people whenever they can, because they can. Taking that choice to help out of their hands doesn’t make them any less responsible for what occurs – it just shifts the blame. Which is why Steve won’t sign the Accords, and Peter helps people even though he’s just a kid who’d prefer to play football. They want to help, they can help… so they do. It’s that simple honesty and true belief that really defines Captain America, and we see it here in Peter, too.
Tony accepts Peter’s answer even while realizing that it’s Steve’s argument (which is weird, since he fought with Steve on the same statement only hours before), and replies “So you want to look out for the little guy, do your part, make the world a better place?”. Peter agrees and reiterates that the ‘little guy’ is his reason for being a superhero.
Which is interesting, because Steve has always been the little guy from Brooklyn who just wanted to help make the world a better place. Steve and Bucky are the underdog in this fight… not Tony and the government. This aligns Peter with Steve even more, but Marvel still tries to connect him to Tony over their intelligence and shared love of technology.
Tony gets Peter to fight for his side using Steve’s ideology. And Marvel doesn’t really acknowledge the irony in that. It’s especially unsettling when Peter parrots back what Tony said about Steve, not realizing it’s actually Tony’s problem in the film: “You’re wrong, but you think you’re right. That makes you dangerous”.
Tasertrickslove 