BLACK WIDOW IS THE BESSSSSSST. I am amused at how everyone bitched about her costume and her sexiness and blah blah blah back in IM 2, but she turned out to be AWESOME X A BILLION in the movie. Strong female character who actually feels like a person and not a Strong Female Character (TM)? More of this please.
And yes I want Black Widow and Hawkeye pre-Avengers adventures! I think they made the right choice in not making a movie for them before, but now that everyone loves them it is the perfect time! Also so ScarJo and Jeremy Renner can hang out and be BFFs some more, they are too cute.
I felt like he packed a lot of genuine characterization into small spaces of dialogue, and I loved it. The fight scenes were actually funny and interesting (I find most fight scenes boring) This is why I already loved Joss Whedon, he does a great job of filling up all the gaps with character bits and comedy, there's no wasted space in his scripts. And I have never had any interest in the Hulk before, but I really want them to make some solo Hulk movies with Mark Ruffalo now. (His performance is just so perfect I don't want to even try the Norton or Bana movies.)
Someone on Tumblr was playing "RDJ or Tony Stark" with photos of him, it was hilarious. You honestly couldn't tell half the time. XD
I went "ROBIN!" in the theater, since I had somehow totally missed that casting spoiler.
Hmmmm, I would have to go with gods, but I think the key is that Loki is AN embodiment of chaos, not THE embodiment of chaos. He's Chaos but Chaos isn't him. Uh, does that make any sense? They're lower-case-gods, and in a lot of pagan mythology the gods can be caught, locked-up, depowered, killed, all sorts of stuff. They don't really do anything that coded as Alien to me, but lots of stuff that coded as Gods, but then I've watched enough Stargate that the line is pretty blurry for me. :)
(And "it's just a movie" is so annoying. Stories are important dammit!)
I might actually have to check out some Joss Whedon stuff. My old roomie really liked "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," but I couldn't stand the show because everything felt too forced-snarky. I've heard a zillion good things about "Firefly."
He's Chaos but Chaos isn't him. ah I get what you're saying. I still think he was really underpowered for a god, but also it's not anything new--SF and fantasy movies with gods tend to treat gods as just "people with awesome superpowers" instead of literal embodiments of abstract forces. I know in "Thor" it was made pretty clear that the "Asgardians" were just aliens with cool powers (there's at least one line where someone references "those humans who think we're their gods"), but I don't know if Joss actively tried to stick with that interpretation or not.
I would strongly suggest trying Firefly. Great dialogue without being quite as self-consciously snappy as Buffy.
You're right about gods being underpowered in SFF, but I think they're not really literal embodiments of abstract forces all the time even in their own myths. Zeus, for example, chases tail more than anything else -- they have very human weaknesses and failing in a lot of myths. But yeah, they do tend to end up as just another kind of superhuman.
I think Joss embraced the Shakespearean tragedy part and didn't worry too hard about alien vs. god distincitons. :)
i rewatched it today and the bits i was looking for re: godhood were more apparent in the themes of order, control, chaos, etc. and who was able to overpower who, who worked with who, who used what strategies, and who got identified with who. so i think joss worked the godhood part and the identification with abstract forces part into the script without making a big deal of it, which was nice and worked to not really beat the audience over the head with the deific aspect.
also i saw it with someone who is asatru, she thought it was hilarious, and we ended up speculating about whether loki's weird babies would be in a future thor movie :D
Oh I'm glad you found more of the godhood stuff on the rewatch! You should writeup some of your thoughts on this, I'd love to read it.
That must have been so weird, to watch with someone who is asatru. Had she seen the Thor movie? What did she think of Asgard?
(SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT: Sleipnir is in Thor, very briefly, leading my friends and I to contemplate whether Loki's horse adventures are therefore Avengers canon.)
I should. I've been ignoring fannish stuff on FB in favor of Tumblr. But it really revolves around the Cap/Thor and Tony/Loki parallels with Bruce as a teetertotter. A lot of what Loki does, he could have accomplished much more easily...I'm still pretty certain he could have stolen that iridium without any help, and gotten out of that cage in the blink of an eye. But it's clear that he gets pleasure out of freaking out the people in Stuttgart, and getting the Avengers to squabble about their personal issues. He pretty much ends up destroying shit--often with fire--whenever he's anywhere. This isn't true of all movie villains, who can sometimes be in a place without destroying it. Loki really can't.
Cap is very much on the side of order--not just law and order, but planning, strategy, and to some extent hierarchy. Obviously he doesn't like that Tony doesn't play by those rules. Tony is pretty chaotic. But Tony's character arc throughout the two Iron Man movies is him learning to control his own chaos. Because he has power over his own chaotic mind and chaotic life, he can basically roll with chaos much easier, create plans on the fly and go in half-cocked and still make it work. Even when Cap's in a tough situation, he still goes with formulating a plan of attack and giving orders to people before he's comfortable attacking. This is why he can't do much against Loki--chaos defeats order every time. Tony is the only one who can surprise Loki, and the only one who can really communicate with Loki, because he can understand him and his strategies better than anyone. (This is pretty clear when he's talking about how Loki's a diva, but it places emphasis on other character traits they have in common.) Loki's chaos doesn't faze him at all.
Thor is about control as well, in a way. His character arc in his own movie also involved him getting himself under control. Traditionally, he's a deity that controls force and power--his hammer, the control of lightning, and the lesser-known emphasis on agriculture, which is about control of nature. This is illustrated really well in two particular places--the big meet-up fight in the forest, and his struggle against the Hulk on the helicarrier. He directs his force at Tony, who actually gains strength from it because, again, Tony sort of has the best of both worlds as far as chaos and order--he has the advantage of chaos and unpredictability, but the ability to control all of the energy and force that comes from that. So he bests Thor by being a variable Thor didn't expect. Then when Thor slams his hammer against Cap's shield, the two enormously powerful symbols of power and order meet, and there can be no victor--neither has the advantage against the other.
Bruce/Hulk is practically a personification of pure force that can be controlled but usually may not be. Tony and Bruce obviously bond because, beyond being science bros (which is a sort of control and understanding of force and power), they struggle with the same thing--learning to control that chaos in their lives. Tony's been there, done that. Loki sets Bruce off the first time because Bruce has such a hard time controlling his power. But Thor is the only one who can subdue Bruce because Thor's whole thing is controlling that raw power. Him using Mjolnir to pin Bruce to the floor of the helicarrier is a good symbolic use of what that hammer represents. And later, Bruce's smashing of the Loki shows that Loki's no longer able to channel force via chaos, because he's not using his own strategies any more--he wants to rule and control, not spread chaos and discord like he's meant to, and him abandoning that pattern means that raw force is going to get the better of him.
This is a really fascinating analysis of the themes of order and chaos!
I like your point that Loki really can't be in a place without destroying it. Pretty true. Stuttgart, the helicarrier, Stark Tower. Plus Jotunheim. Asgard seems like the only place he can inhabit without wrecking, and even then they put some huge holes in stuff and destroyed the Bifrost...
Interesting point about Cap! His role is mostly imposing order on the Chitauri and the ground battle, while Thor, Tony and Hulk deal with Loki directly. Love the analysis of how Hulk contrasts Thor and Loki.
I have the most thoughts about Tony, because he's my favorite. :) I think you can make an argument about how Tony himself is chaos while the order is something he has imposed on himself using outside technology. JARVIS in particular is an attempt to create order for himself. The Iron Man suit is the same, he's trying to build order to get control. In the comics I think the theme is even clearer, because his heart problems force order on him -- having to recharge the chestplate in the early comics, or take medication to handle a transplant later. His control over his own chaos comes from external creations rather than internal self-control. You can say that's why he takes off his suit to face Loki; he's removing those external controls he's placed on himself.
Bruce, in contrast, is a scientist by nature (ordered and logical) who has chaos imposed from the outside (the Hulk), but he finds his solutions within himself rather than through external technological solutions like Tony uses. Kind of Tony's mirror image (which is why I love sciencebros so much.) It makes me think of the difference between two people with internet addiction problems, one of whom handles it through willpower and self-discipline, the other handles it through plug-ins to limit their browser (like me.) No wonder Tony is fascinated.
(BTW you could probably write a really awesome essay on this topic! *encourages academic fandom*)
The Asatruar girl I watched it with thought it was great. She liked the Thor movie and thought it was cool and that Asgard was pretty, and she said that she had ended up visualizing the gods as they were in the movie in some aspects, and didn't particularly mind that the mythology was a bit askew because hey, comic book movie. She made it pretty clear that she separated "Thor the superhero" from "Thor the god," but she still got especially awed whenever he showed up on screen doing something godly.
omg where is Sleipnir in Thor? I might have to Netflix it again. I love mommy Loki :)
During the bit where Odin comes to rescue Thor and Loki and friends from their ill-fated attack on Jotunheim, he gets beamed down from the Bifrost on a horse. If you watch carefully, when the horse rears up you can see it has 4 front legs. It's kind of blink-and-you-miss it but I was like OMG SLEIPNIR THIS MEANS HORSE!LOKI IS CANON. XD
And yes I want Black Widow and Hawkeye pre-Avengers adventures! I think they made the right choice in not making a movie for them before, but now that everyone loves them it is the perfect time! Also so ScarJo and Jeremy Renner can hang out and be BFFs some more, they are too cute.
I felt like he packed a lot of genuine characterization into small spaces of dialogue, and I loved it. The fight scenes were actually funny and interesting (I find most fight scenes boring) This is why I already loved Joss Whedon, he does a great job of filling up all the gaps with character bits and comedy, there's no wasted space in his scripts. And I have never had any interest in the Hulk before, but I really want them to make some solo Hulk movies with Mark Ruffalo now. (His performance is just so perfect I don't want to even try the Norton or Bana movies.)
Someone on Tumblr was playing "RDJ or Tony Stark" with photos of him, it was hilarious. You honestly couldn't tell half the time. XD
I went "ROBIN!" in the theater, since I had somehow totally missed that casting spoiler.
Hmmmm, I would have to go with gods, but I think the key is that Loki is AN embodiment of chaos, not THE embodiment of chaos. He's Chaos but Chaos isn't him. Uh, does that make any sense? They're lower-case-gods, and in a lot of pagan mythology the gods can be caught, locked-up, depowered, killed, all sorts of stuff. They don't really do anything that coded as Alien to me, but lots of stuff that coded as Gods, but then I've watched enough Stargate that the line is pretty blurry for me. :)
(And "it's just a movie" is so annoying. Stories are important dammit!)
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He's Chaos but Chaos isn't him.
ah I get what you're saying. I still think he was really underpowered for a god, but also it's not anything new--SF and fantasy movies with gods tend to treat gods as just "people with awesome superpowers" instead of literal embodiments of abstract forces. I know in "Thor" it was made pretty clear that the "Asgardians" were just aliens with cool powers (there's at least one line where someone references "those humans who think we're their gods"), but I don't know if Joss actively tried to stick with that interpretation or not.
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You're right about gods being underpowered in SFF, but I think they're not really literal embodiments of abstract forces all the time even in their own myths. Zeus, for example, chases tail more than anything else -- they have very human weaknesses and failing in a lot of myths. But yeah, they do tend to end up as just another kind of superhuman.
I think Joss embraced the Shakespearean tragedy part and didn't worry too hard about alien vs. god distincitons. :)
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also i saw it with someone who is asatru, she thought it was hilarious, and we ended up speculating about whether loki's weird babies would be in a future thor movie :D
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That must have been so weird, to watch with someone who is asatru. Had she seen the Thor movie? What did she think of Asgard?
(SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT: Sleipnir is in Thor, very briefly, leading my friends and I to contemplate whether Loki's horse adventures are therefore Avengers canon.)
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Cap is very much on the side of order--not just law and order, but planning, strategy, and to some extent hierarchy. Obviously he doesn't like that Tony doesn't play by those rules. Tony is pretty chaotic. But Tony's character arc throughout the two Iron Man movies is him learning to control his own chaos. Because he has power over his own chaotic mind and chaotic life, he can basically roll with chaos much easier, create plans on the fly and go in half-cocked and still make it work. Even when Cap's in a tough situation, he still goes with formulating a plan of attack and giving orders to people before he's comfortable attacking. This is why he can't do much against Loki--chaos defeats order every time. Tony is the only one who can surprise Loki, and the only one who can really communicate with Loki, because he can understand him and his strategies better than anyone. (This is pretty clear when he's talking about how Loki's a diva, but it places emphasis on other character traits they have in common.) Loki's chaos doesn't faze him at all.
Thor is about control as well, in a way. His character arc in his own movie also involved him getting himself under control. Traditionally, he's a deity that controls force and power--his hammer, the control of lightning, and the lesser-known emphasis on agriculture, which is about control of nature. This is illustrated really well in two particular places--the big meet-up fight in the forest, and his struggle against the Hulk on the helicarrier. He directs his force at Tony, who actually gains strength from it because, again, Tony sort of has the best of both worlds as far as chaos and order--he has the advantage of chaos and unpredictability, but the ability to control all of the energy and force that comes from that. So he bests Thor by being a variable Thor didn't expect. Then when Thor slams his hammer against Cap's shield, the two enormously powerful symbols of power and order meet, and there can be no victor--neither has the advantage against the other.
Bruce/Hulk is practically a personification of pure force that can be controlled but usually may not be. Tony and Bruce obviously bond because, beyond being science bros (which is a sort of control and understanding of force and power), they struggle with the same thing--learning to control that chaos in their lives. Tony's been there, done that. Loki sets Bruce off the first time because Bruce has such a hard time controlling his power. But Thor is the only one who can subdue Bruce because Thor's whole thing is controlling that raw power. Him using Mjolnir to pin Bruce to the floor of the helicarrier is a good symbolic use of what that hammer represents. And later, Bruce's smashing of the Loki shows that Loki's no longer able to channel force via chaos, because he's not using his own strategies any more--he wants to rule and control, not spread chaos and discord like he's meant to, and him abandoning that pattern means that raw force is going to get the better of him.
(wow, that was long)
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I like your point that Loki really can't be in a place without destroying it. Pretty true. Stuttgart, the helicarrier, Stark Tower. Plus Jotunheim. Asgard seems like the only place he can inhabit without wrecking, and even then they put some huge holes in stuff and destroyed the Bifrost...
Interesting point about Cap! His role is mostly imposing order on the Chitauri and the ground battle, while Thor, Tony and Hulk deal with Loki directly. Love the analysis of how Hulk contrasts Thor and Loki.
I have the most thoughts about Tony, because he's my favorite. :) I think you can make an argument about how Tony himself is chaos while the order is something he has imposed on himself using outside technology. JARVIS in particular is an attempt to create order for himself. The Iron Man suit is the same, he's trying to build order to get control. In the comics I think the theme is even clearer, because his heart problems force order on him -- having to recharge the chestplate in the early comics, or take medication to handle a transplant later. His control over his own chaos comes from external creations rather than internal self-control. You can say that's why he takes off his suit to face Loki; he's removing those external controls he's placed on himself.
Bruce, in contrast, is a scientist by nature (ordered and logical) who has chaos imposed from the outside (the Hulk), but he finds his solutions within himself rather than through external technological solutions like Tony uses. Kind of Tony's mirror image (which is why I love sciencebros so much.) It makes me think of the difference between two people with internet addiction problems, one of whom handles it through willpower and self-discipline, the other handles it through plug-ins to limit their browser (like me.) No wonder Tony is fascinated.
(BTW you could probably write a really awesome essay on this topic! *encourages academic fandom*)
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omg where is Sleipnir in Thor? I might have to Netflix it again. I love mommy Loki :)
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During the bit where Odin comes to rescue Thor and Loki and friends from their ill-fated attack on Jotunheim, he gets beamed down from the Bifrost on a horse. If you watch carefully, when the horse rears up you can see it has 4 front legs. It's kind of blink-and-you-miss it but I was like OMG SLEIPNIR THIS MEANS HORSE!LOKI IS CANON. XD
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