Thank You (to Lokis like You)

trickerydickerydock:

A quick thing I need to say in regards to the MCU
and its Loki.

Thank you.

To Taiki Waititi, of course, brilliant madman that
he is. Ragnarok looks like it’s going to be a fun ride. In a more general sense
I need to thank the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole for taking a pretty
huge step forward for Marvel and its comics by shedding a bright new spotlight
on these heroes and villains and their antics, drawing in fresh eyes and fans
who might never have given the series a second thought otherwise. I was one of
the latter.

I had only some hazy idea of who those spandex clad
folks were from the X-Men films and the X-Men Evolution cartoon. (I was
enamored with every version of Nightcrawler for a spell, got the action figure
and everything.) But while I still kept Professor X’s gifted youngsters in a
corner of my heart, I never really threw myself into any of the Marvel
universes. They were just another cool thing to smile over, maybe record an
episode, maybe pick up a back issue or two once in a while. No big deal.

Then the other kids started showing up. A number of
Hulks and Spider-Men. Captain America and Bucky. Iron Man and Nick Fury. Thor
and Loki.

I saw them all with my father, half from personal
interest—Nolanverse Batman and some re-watchings of Blade had
psyched me up for more superheroes—and half from just having something to share
with Dad. It was fun.

But the one he liked the least was the one that held
my attention the most, even months after it left the theater.

Thor.

It wasn’t a masterpiece. It’d become obvious later
in the franchise’s run that the MCU just didn’t see the need to put as much
effort into it as they did with breadwinners like Stark and Rogers cavorting
around with their human stories and conspiracies and intrigue. We all know that hours of additional footage were shaved off both Thor and Thor: the Dark World—supposedly
for time reasons, though both films were rather stubby compared to their
neighbors. As a result the movies offered to the public were missing
key character moments only to be found when digging in the Blu-rays and the
storylines seemed choppier for it.

Even so. I was interested.

Why? Because my oblivious ass had no idea these guys
existed. Not as comic book characters, not as gods of Norse myth, nothing. This
was all brand new territory, watered down as it was. I’d only had Greek myths
in my head—because they are the Classic Mythology and therefore Most Important,
say the public schools and community colleges—and these gods seemed more like deities
I’d feel safer standing in a room with. For what little time and space they
got, the Asgardians gave a glimpse of something unique. Yet even with this in
mind, I might have set them on the same, ‘oh that’s nice,’ shelf as every other
fandom if not for the dude with the horns.

Yes, Loki ‘Glassy-eyed, Shakespearian archetype,
“TELL ME!!1!,” ‘Guys seriously we need to blur out the crotch give him a damn
courtesy flap in the next costume,’ #DaddyIssues’ Odin/Laufeyson.

The character that Hiddleston put out there drew me
most because, well, he was kind of a sore thumb. Here were all these big
bombastic warrior gods and giants and comic book flotsam, there was him all
dark and scheming, prepped and ready for a villainous cackling spell, and…

And he doesn’t cackle. Oh, he gets a proper ‘I’m so
smart look at my plan coming to fruition fuck yeah’ smirk here and there, but
there’s next to nothing of the original recipe asshole god I would come to know
and hate-love in the comics. The Loki that Hiddleston put together in the MCU
for that first film was interesting because he wasn’t just the clear cut, ‘Mwa
ha ha,’ bad guy.

When he looks away as Odin lavishes praise on Thor
in the coronation, when he shuts down as Heimdall cuts into him on the Bifrost,
when he goes bug-eyed at the sight of his blue skin in the giant fight, when he
tells the Warriors Three that he let it slip to a guard and thus to Odin where
they were going so they wouldn’t be lost/killed, when he confronts Odin about
his origins, when he murders Laufey in a display of fealty, when he goes into a
psychological meltdown as Thor—Thor, who should be K.O.’d on Midgard after the
Destroyer, after he froze Heimdall to keep him from mucking with the Bifrost,
who should not be there, in his way, always
in his way, suddenly lecturing him for trying to wipe out the frost giants
after only three measly days on the mortal dirt ball when Thor himself went
there to wage war and swing his hammer—when he cries out to Odin Allfather that
he’d done all of it for him, for all of them, look, look where his loyalty
lies, he is not a monster like them,
not like the frost giants, he is of
Asgard, he is an Odinson, Father, look Father, all of this was for you…

“No, Loki.”

And then he goes quiet again. Perfectly quiet.

His grip loosens.

“Loki, no.”

He lets go.

Thor screams and Loki is quiet, quiet, dropping into
the Void, expecting death—I think he expected it later when the Dark World
came around too, but that’s another ramble—not caring either way.

Then he shows up in the after credits scene, clearly
mangled and burnt by something, with
the first hints of the warped bastard from the comics showing in the smile.

That was a hell of a thing to see in what was
otherwise a very hasty B+ movie. I cared more about his story than any of the
thunderbolts and lightning and pseudo-romance flying around. So I put the name
Loki in Google.

And holy shit have I gone far since.

Here were the comics, a sprawling evolution for the
Villain, the Child, the Magpie, and the Storyteller, the last’s tale still
unfolding, marching out of the mold labeled God of Evil by pioneer writers (and
by the first Christians to slap the mantle of the Devil on him).

Here were the mythos, a vision of laughter and
guile, myriad shapes and ultimate despair, strange children and legendary
world-ending wrath.

Here were all these people who knew of all these
Lokis, all these stories, all the stories they made from those stories, these excellent fans and friends.

Since first seeing that live action Loki—a character
very much pruned down from his roots, made subtler, sadder, more prone to use
blades than magic—I have come to put the comics’ God of Stories and the
Norsemen’s God of Mischief both on the shelf reserved for Favorite
Troublemaking Fucker(s). But I would be doing a disservice to the character and
the god if I did not give thanks to the version that first opened the door to
the Trickster and everything they’ve gotten their sneaky fingers into.

So, thank you to the Loki of the MCU.

Thank you to Tom Hiddleston for making the character
more than the sneering cookie cutter villain put down in the script. Thank you
for coddling the sour green meanie as you have, for being as much a geek for
him as your own fans, for making him too marketable to kill off for good, as
has not been the case for so many other MCU baddies. Thank you for being the
gateway jerk god to all the other iterations of the jerk god.

Thank you.

(Now if you could just talk to the directors about
getting a wig that doesn’t look like it’s not been washed in three days…)