Complaining about Loki
So I watched all six episodes of Loki, and that's 6 hours of my life I'll never get back. I enjoyed parts of it (especially episode 5) enough to hope I might end up liking it at the end. Spoiler: I did not! So expect much complaining and squee-harshing under the cut.
- Time travel/dimension travel in fiction is total nonsense. This is a given; there's no explanation that is going to make it less nonsensical or keep it from occasionally violating its own stated rules. Every time travel canon is like that. Therefore, what I want from a time travel canon is easy. I want it to give me a few stupid, arbitrary rules about how time travel/dimension travel works in this canon and then try not to break them (much). A canon that can't even manage to do that, and breaks them freely in every direction, is going to annoy me to death. Ultimately I ended up just metaphorically throwing up my hands in the last episode and going with whatever the show said because there is absolutely no way to predict from moment to moment what effect any given action is going to have on the timeline because it's 100% running on "because we say so."
- I was deeply, thoroughly annoyed that they took a catnippy premise like "Loki meets alternate universe versions of himself" and squandered it (mostly) on a nonstop series of easter eggs for comics readers.
Look, most of the AU versions of Loki that we saw made no sense based on how time travel rules are supposed to work (there is no way most of those Lokis were the results of a few minutes/hours/days of timeline divergence) but if they're going to go for that level of variation, there were tons of far more plausible AUs that we never saw. We should have had at least a few Frost Giant Lokis. We should have had Thor!Loki, and Loki as a king, and Loki who was never adopted. We should have had WAY more Lokis that were basically our Loki with one small decision different. Given both this Loki and Ragnarok!Loki's tendency to go hero more or less at the drop of a hat (or at least with half a movie/a couple of episodes' worth of character growth), and considering that being a hero is one of the main things that would get him pruned, there should also have been a lot of hero Lokis. But we didn't get any of that, because the show was mainly sticking to comics variations on Loki and sight gags like the alligator. Which was funny! I liked the alligator! But ...
One of the main things I love about AU doubles is that they allow us to learn more about the canon character. A good alternate universe story can take the characters we love and use them to stab us in the heart and show us all their best and worst qualities.
But doing it this way, we aren't really learning anything about MCU Loki. We mainly learn about comics Loki, because that's mostly what they're showing us, and comics Loki is a very different, considerably more classically villainnish character. The comics have vanishingly few hero Lokis because he just isn't like that. So we didn't see any because comics AUs was what it decided to give us.
Plus, I kept feeling like the show is pushing a version of Loki that is both depressing and pointedly conflicts with at least some of what we see on screen - a sad sack loser, batted around by life, who never wins or can really end up a hero because he self-sabotages. Early on, I felt like the show was setting up this premise only to knock it down in the back half once he gets to start making better choices. Instead, it wobbled back and forth between undermining it and propping it up. Every once in a while the general theme of making yourself who you want to be (you don't have to be a villain, you can choose to be the hero this time) rears up and then gets undercut by the show. There was just enough of what I wanted that I couldn't simply hate the show in peace but enough backpedaling that it was a constant Lucy-and-the-football dynamic, never knowing if the show was going to outright go where I wanted it to, or kick me (and Loki) in the face.
And, I mean!! Loki DOES have aspects of that! And some versions of him are going to embrace it wholeheartedly. He does even deserve at least SOME kicking while he's down! I just felt that the show leaned way harder into sad-sack loser Loki than I want from a protagonist, even if it's not inconsistent with his previous characterization.
- Kang the Conquerer was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. His giggly I-know-better-than-you manner worked my last nerve every minute he was onscreen. I HATE that he's almost certain to be a major part of the MCU over the next few years. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the new multi-movie big bad -- the new Thanos -- and while Thanos was boring and occasionally irritating, at least I didn't find him unwatchable. Kang alone may be enough to turn me off from watching every movie he's in. I find him unbearable.
In general, I have vanishingly little interest in watching another season of this. I'll probably just spoil myself and watch any fun-looking scenes in gifs or on Youtube. Because there WAS stuff I liked! Hunter B-15, for example. I love her. I want that actress to be in everything from now on. I want to watch a whole show about her and Loki running around the timeline. There were times when I liked Mobius (still can't get over Owen Wilson as a DILF; this is all kinds of disconcerting for me), even though there were also times when Mobius and Loki's relationship really hit some unpleasant abusive-parent vibes. (The blend of controlling/imprisoning Loki + torturing him in his memories, combined with the "but you BETRAYED ME" *disappointed look* and "but we're FRIENDS" hit me so, so wrong. But the hug was sweet.)
And the show gave me surprisingly many Loki and Thor feels for being an AU offshoot from back when he was still a villain + Thor not being around at all. I'm willing to take crumbs, because I was expecting nothing, and instead I got some very satisfying tidbits of Loki loving and missing his brother.
I also love that - at least for now - the end of the season makes every AU canonical; the Agents of SHIELD universe, the Agent Carter universe, the Netflix shows, realities in which the Snap was undone or never happened at all, and realities in which Loki survived the fight with Thanos are all out there.
And the fifth episode was just generally a lot of fun! I found a lot of the rest of the show draggy and nonsensical and sometimes depressing, with occasional bright spots. But that episode was nonsensical in a really fun way. Look, I am willing to forgive a lot of nonsense if I'm being entertained and getting good character stuff (I forgave a lot of nonsense in Falcon & Winter Soldier, for example, because the fun parts were so fun for me). And the fifth episode was really fun! It made me like Mobius! It made me enjoy the AU Lokis despite my skepticism! It gave delightful teamups like Sylvie + Mobius and it had that AMAZING scene with "our" Loki watching with an absolutely indescribable expression while his AU doubles brawl. It was exciting and tense and dramatic, and the protagonists got to really protag instead of being batted around like chew toys. I would have really enjoyed a whole show like that.
Edit: And then I read an article about how the guy who wrote Loki - formerly a Rick & Morty writer, which explains a lot all of a sudden* - is going to be one of the key voices guiding the next phase of the MCU. Noooouuuuuuuu. Well, I guess I can go back to ignoring the future movies in peace then.
*There's nothing inherently wrong with Rick & Morty. My husband loves it. However, it's a show that I very emphatically do not get on with. I dutifully watched a couple of episodes and absolutely hated it.
This is my basic problem with the current MCU in a nutshell, though. Rolling all their properties together and forcing them to conform to a single creative vision means that if you don't like that vision, you're out of luck.
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1400378.html with
comments.
- Time travel/dimension travel in fiction is total nonsense. This is a given; there's no explanation that is going to make it less nonsensical or keep it from occasionally violating its own stated rules. Every time travel canon is like that. Therefore, what I want from a time travel canon is easy. I want it to give me a few stupid, arbitrary rules about how time travel/dimension travel works in this canon and then try not to break them (much). A canon that can't even manage to do that, and breaks them freely in every direction, is going to annoy me to death. Ultimately I ended up just metaphorically throwing up my hands in the last episode and going with whatever the show said because there is absolutely no way to predict from moment to moment what effect any given action is going to have on the timeline because it's 100% running on "because we say so."
- I was deeply, thoroughly annoyed that they took a catnippy premise like "Loki meets alternate universe versions of himself" and squandered it (mostly) on a nonstop series of easter eggs for comics readers.
Look, most of the AU versions of Loki that we saw made no sense based on how time travel rules are supposed to work (there is no way most of those Lokis were the results of a few minutes/hours/days of timeline divergence) but if they're going to go for that level of variation, there were tons of far more plausible AUs that we never saw. We should have had at least a few Frost Giant Lokis. We should have had Thor!Loki, and Loki as a king, and Loki who was never adopted. We should have had WAY more Lokis that were basically our Loki with one small decision different. Given both this Loki and Ragnarok!Loki's tendency to go hero more or less at the drop of a hat (or at least with half a movie/a couple of episodes' worth of character growth), and considering that being a hero is one of the main things that would get him pruned, there should also have been a lot of hero Lokis. But we didn't get any of that, because the show was mainly sticking to comics variations on Loki and sight gags like the alligator. Which was funny! I liked the alligator! But ...
One of the main things I love about AU doubles is that they allow us to learn more about the canon character. A good alternate universe story can take the characters we love and use them to stab us in the heart and show us all their best and worst qualities.
But doing it this way, we aren't really learning anything about MCU Loki. We mainly learn about comics Loki, because that's mostly what they're showing us, and comics Loki is a very different, considerably more classically villainnish character. The comics have vanishingly few hero Lokis because he just isn't like that. So we didn't see any because comics AUs was what it decided to give us.
Plus, I kept feeling like the show is pushing a version of Loki that is both depressing and pointedly conflicts with at least some of what we see on screen - a sad sack loser, batted around by life, who never wins or can really end up a hero because he self-sabotages. Early on, I felt like the show was setting up this premise only to knock it down in the back half once he gets to start making better choices. Instead, it wobbled back and forth between undermining it and propping it up. Every once in a while the general theme of making yourself who you want to be (you don't have to be a villain, you can choose to be the hero this time) rears up and then gets undercut by the show. There was just enough of what I wanted that I couldn't simply hate the show in peace but enough backpedaling that it was a constant Lucy-and-the-football dynamic, never knowing if the show was going to outright go where I wanted it to, or kick me (and Loki) in the face.
And, I mean!! Loki DOES have aspects of that! And some versions of him are going to embrace it wholeheartedly. He does even deserve at least SOME kicking while he's down! I just felt that the show leaned way harder into sad-sack loser Loki than I want from a protagonist, even if it's not inconsistent with his previous characterization.
- Kang the Conquerer was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. His giggly I-know-better-than-you manner worked my last nerve every minute he was onscreen. I HATE that he's almost certain to be a major part of the MCU over the next few years. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the new multi-movie big bad -- the new Thanos -- and while Thanos was boring and occasionally irritating, at least I didn't find him unwatchable. Kang alone may be enough to turn me off from watching every movie he's in. I find him unbearable.
In general, I have vanishingly little interest in watching another season of this. I'll probably just spoil myself and watch any fun-looking scenes in gifs or on Youtube. Because there WAS stuff I liked! Hunter B-15, for example. I love her. I want that actress to be in everything from now on. I want to watch a whole show about her and Loki running around the timeline. There were times when I liked Mobius (still can't get over Owen Wilson as a DILF; this is all kinds of disconcerting for me), even though there were also times when Mobius and Loki's relationship really hit some unpleasant abusive-parent vibes. (The blend of controlling/imprisoning Loki + torturing him in his memories, combined with the "but you BETRAYED ME" *disappointed look* and "but we're FRIENDS" hit me so, so wrong. But the hug was sweet.)
And the show gave me surprisingly many Loki and Thor feels for being an AU offshoot from back when he was still a villain + Thor not being around at all. I'm willing to take crumbs, because I was expecting nothing, and instead I got some very satisfying tidbits of Loki loving and missing his brother.
I also love that - at least for now - the end of the season makes every AU canonical; the Agents of SHIELD universe, the Agent Carter universe, the Netflix shows, realities in which the Snap was undone or never happened at all, and realities in which Loki survived the fight with Thanos are all out there.
And the fifth episode was just generally a lot of fun! I found a lot of the rest of the show draggy and nonsensical and sometimes depressing, with occasional bright spots. But that episode was nonsensical in a really fun way. Look, I am willing to forgive a lot of nonsense if I'm being entertained and getting good character stuff (I forgave a lot of nonsense in Falcon & Winter Soldier, for example, because the fun parts were so fun for me). And the fifth episode was really fun! It made me like Mobius! It made me enjoy the AU Lokis despite my skepticism! It gave delightful teamups like Sylvie + Mobius and it had that AMAZING scene with "our" Loki watching with an absolutely indescribable expression while his AU doubles brawl. It was exciting and tense and dramatic, and the protagonists got to really protag instead of being batted around like chew toys. I would have really enjoyed a whole show like that.
Edit: And then I read an article about how the guy who wrote Loki - formerly a Rick & Morty writer, which explains a lot all of a sudden* - is going to be one of the key voices guiding the next phase of the MCU. Noooouuuuuuuu. Well, I guess I can go back to ignoring the future movies in peace then.
*There's nothing inherently wrong with Rick & Morty. My husband loves it. However, it's a show that I very emphatically do not get on with. I dutifully watched a couple of episodes and absolutely hated it.
This is my basic problem with the current MCU in a nutshell, though. Rolling all their properties together and forcing them to conform to a single creative vision means that if you don't like that vision, you're out of luck.
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1400378.html with
comments.