Long and Rambling Notes on TDW: Jessica Pontificates

[borderline_mary]

So I'm back from basically nowhere! Mostly for you, Anne. I like you. Also I feel like you might discuss all the below stuff with me, because.

Disclaimer: I liked this movie. The first big chunk of stuff below makes it look like I hated it, but I’m just getting the bad stuff out of the way first.

Comments

[silent_lorelei]

I'm here for youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[silent_lorelei]

Also, ugh, the lack of ladies in this movie, wtf. I was already kind of annoyed by it in the first Thor because they made such a big deal about Sif being the only lady who showed that women could be warriors, too, because wtf, guys. Ancient Iceland was not exactly a paragon of gender-equality happiness, but there was such a thing as shieldmaidens and female guards - especially in times of war, in fact, because women householders were expected to be able to grab a blade and defend the homestead if their dudes happened to be off pillaging while raiders or wolves attacked or something. Somebody's got to do that shit. Especially when they gave us such a cinematographically beautiful scene of Frigga laying waste with a sword, they couldn't possibly conceive of there being any women in the defense forces of Asgard except for Sif? Not one? Where the shit is Freya, the leader of the valkyries and goddess who takes half the slain from the battlefield? (Oh, wait, I forgot, Marvel just turns Freya into Sif for some reason, because the

[silent_lorelei]

But back to what Frigga is actually doing in this movie, aside from dying to solve some dudes' interpersonal problems.

I was also confused about the whole confrontation/death scene with Malekith... which is probably because Bad Writing more than anything else. If she has all these illusion powers - which apparently she does - why does she get stabbed to death instead of pulling the usual illusion switcheroo that Loki is always pulling? Seriously? She had ample time to plan this scene out, and she created an illusiory version of Jane but didn't bother to make one of herself for safekeeping? For that matter, why didn't she make them just not be there so the elves could march right on by? I get that Malekith has a bloodhound nose for Jane right now, but wouldn't it be smarter to just stay unseen and keep running ring-around-the-rosy until Thor or Odin could come bring some military force to bear here? I love Frigga's badassness in this scene, love it, but I don't love the fact that she apparently has great magical powers but for some

[silent_lorelei]

I wish I still had a paid account so I could edit comments and remove embarrassing typos. Like using "who's" instead of "whose." Kill me.

[borderline_mary]

I cannot kill you. John does not yet need motivating.

(Your responses are awesome and I am already formulating further responses to them. I hope you are not done!)

[silent_lorelei]

Odin... is as usual an asshole, but that doesn't surprise me any more than it surprised you. Even though the first movie portrayed him as a benevolent patriarch who was just trying to deal with his fractious children and safeguard his kingdom, there were way too many plot inconsistencies for me to believe he wasn't spiderwebbing the entire situation to kingdom come. He meant for Thor to go off the rails so he could knock him down a peg, meant for Loki's mischief to create an excuse to have hostilies with Jotunheim again, and meant to take himself out of play via convenient Odin-Naps in order to be able to swoop back in at exactly the moment he could solidify his hold without dirtying his hands, all based on years of manipulating them as children. He's a maestro, and I agree that there's something satisfying about finally seeing him show his teeth in this movie. I think some of the writers' intent here was to show that Odin's kingdom is falling apart and he's becoming increasingly desperate, and to lay a lot of the blame for that

[silent_lorelei]

Oh, and in regards to said afterlife of Odin's, I loved Loki's dying line of "See you in Hell." Stock movie line, and yet in this context so fucking clever I can't even stand it - John and I both made a noise in the theatre and then had to explain it to the people sitting next to us. In Norse cosmology, Hel is actually a place, the underworld afterlife for all who die unworthy deaths - and furthermore, it's located in Niflheim (or Niflhel), frozen home of the frost giants (giants also live in Jotunheim, but there are different kinds of them scattered around - the fire giants live in Muspelheim, etc). Loki's sassing his dying enemy, but he's also acknowledging that despite dying in combat, which is what Norse warriors were supposed to do to get to the good afterlife, he knows he's not bound for Valhalla. Valhalla belongs to Odin, and to all good Norse warriors like Thor who go down swinging. Loki knows he's not going there. He's going, like everyone else like him, to Hel

[silent_lorelei]

OKAY SO THOR

[silent_lorelei]

One of the reasons I really enjoyed this movie so much, despite its manifold problems, is because it's a beautiful portrait of what can happen to children - even adult children - thanks to the actions of their parents, and how the same disaster or heartbreak can affect different people in wildly different ways. Thor has always been the beloved perfect son of Asgard, praised and promoted and relied on, and Loki has always been the misfit difficult orphaned black sheep of the family, disliked and mocked and misunderstood, and they are both (possibly irreparably) broken

[silent_lorelei]

Also, thank god for this movie's return to the relationship between Thor and Loki, which finally reaffirmed their obvious and unbreakable love for one another. Avengers was a lot of fun, but it failed pretty hardcore in that area, despite Hiddleston's best efforts (which we can probably blame Whedon for most of the time - I remember him being quoted as saying that he wanted Loki to be much more of a straight villain because sympathizing him too much was confusing the audience). And Avengers wasn't really about them anyway - Loki was the main villain, but it was really a story about earth and the mortal heroes on it fighting the alien menace of the Chitauri, with Thor and Loki as side characters in between. Loki was barely there for most of it, fighting a battle he clearly didn't care much about winning; it was more of a stage performance he was giving and an outward expression of his spiral into nihilism than anything he actually cared about. The Loki of that time period had pretty much forgotten how to care about things

[borderline_mary]

I didn't know that about the novelizations (there were going to be novelizations really?). Seriously it's like when video games get put out before they're actually done, except you can patch those. Agreed totally on Midgard; I think they basically only had it happen there because someone had the biggest pants tent for the idea of Darcy and Selvig and The Intern using their tech to warp shit during the battle and send Mjollnir flying off in confusing extra-dimensional directions for lulz. A lot of this movie seems to be motivated by lulz, actually; there are far too many moments where we're clearly expected to laugh, even when the humor is uncomfortable or excruciatingly badly timed (which is a lot) or way-overplayed. It's so overplayed at times it's almost like slapstick

[silent_lorelei]

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

[silent_lorelei]

3) Loki is actually stabbed and actually dies. I think this option has the most interesting possibilities, though of course the exact mechanics of it wouldn't be explained until the next movie. He of course has his weird working relationship with Hela in the comics (and in myth is actually her father), and Hela's occasionally been involved with Malekith as well IIRC? So it's possible he died, went to Hel as he forecasted, and she let him back out, either because they made a deal or because they had arranged this in advance. If he wasn't planning on it, we finally have a scene that is exactly what it looks like from Loki - self-sacrifice, death, and using his last breaths to apologize to his brother and try to communicate his feelings - followed by a second chance in which he gets to come back badder than ever (Loki II: Trickster Boogaloo). If he was planning on it, the actual act of dying is still more of a commitment to his brother and the situation than illusion shenanigans would have been, and it also invites a lot of

[silent_lorelei]

Also, take that, Odin. If you'd just let him go to the happy afterlife, he couldn't have pulled surprise!resurrection out of his ass.

[silent_lorelei]

...unless he DID go to Valhalla, which is technically possible because that's where people who fall in battle are supposed to go, but Odin is being pretty not cool with him right now so might still be barred to him? It would be pretty poignant, after that "See you in Hel," if he actually did end up in the warriors' paradise instead. It could be Odin himself who let Loki back out of death, having accepted that he redeemed himself by aiding Thor and saving the universe, or because after all this he actually still cares enough about his adopted son that he isn't willing to just let him die