I Think There Was A Shift In Marvels Attitude Towards Tom Between TDW And TR, And I Wonder What Caused

I think there was a shift in Marvel’s attitude towards Tom between TDW and TR, and I wonder what caused it.

Did Tom do something to Kevin Feige? Did he sing under the shower and use all the hot water in a lodge they shared? Did he accidentally spill tea on his favorite suit? Did he have one drink too many and say “you’re going bald, man”? Did he run over his cat? Or did he piss off someone else? The possibilities are endless.

 - Do you think the Bifrost is the only way in and out of this realm? There are passages between worlds to which even you, with all your gifts, are blind. But I have need of them no longer, now that I am king. And I say, for your act of treason, you are relieved of your duties as gatekeeper and no longer citizen of Asgard!

-  Then I need no longer obey you!

I think the reason I feel particularly betrayed and embittered by Marvel is because when the MCU first began, there was just so much potential. 

And I’m not just speaking from a Loki fan’s POV (though it’s mostly from that side), but the way Marvel movies handled every aspect of storytelling, all of their characters were finely written and fleshed out, even the seemingly minor side characters (Agent Coulson, anyone?). The plot was interesting and not too convoluted (*side eyes IW and Endgame*), they made room for both serious drama and witty, intelligent humor (which then died completely with Ragnarok). Everyone had someone they could root for, which brings me around to being a Loki fan. 

When Loki was introduced, and in the following years and movies after, he became an idol for anyone who has been shit on repeatedly by society just for being who they are, and who then refused to take it anymore and began to punch back. 

I mean there’s a reason why the vast majority of Loki fans belong to the LGBTQA+ community, as well as being neurodivergent in some way. And the reason that Loki’s story touched us particularly instead of any other character, was because: 

A. We got to see his fall from grace, and we recognized it as something many of us have gone through in the past. We recognize the little pushes and steps that eventually leads someone down a self-destructive and dark path. And the only reason many of us aren’t still down that path is because we have resources and support systems that, unfortunately, Loki didn’t have access too. But that isolation in and of itself was also extremely relatable, because it’s something we all experienced before we found people who helped us back into the light.  

B. Loki’s struggles and feelings of betrayal and ostricization actually brought out the darker aspects of what that can do to a person. We live in this fucked up society that expects people who are abused and bullied and marginalized to remain Good and Kind and Pure, when in reality (and I am speaking from experience) when you are constantly being victimized and targeted, often for reasons you don’t entirely understand, that causes you to lash out. It causes you to become angry, even violent (even if you’re only daydreaming about causing harm to people). People will back you into a corner and then act surprised when you bite back at them. And then once you do all of that, once you start fighting back, society suddenly decides that you are a Villain/Criminal, and that you deserve the punishment you give. But they don’t even think about punishing the people who made you that way. 

So yeah. The fact that we were actually getting to explore what causes so many villains to become villains, and why so many marginalized people identify with villains, was exciting. It was exciting for me, at least, who saw the same kind of anger I harbored towards the world in Loki. 

We were finally going to get our story told but then…. 

Then…. 

Then Infinity War happened. And Gagnarok. And Endgame…. 

And we found ourselves, once again, pushed into the shadows. 

All of the heroes that comply to what society dictates is a hero get their moment in the sun, and we are once again told that all we’ll ever be are just villains and criminals, unworthy (I fucking hate that word) of redemption or love or a chance to prove ourselves. 

Marvel was supposed to be different. Marvel was supposed to be the thing that gave every single person a chance in the spotlight. But Marvel just… let us down. 

….So fuck you, Marvel. 

Jumping off the other anon's point - fantasy racism in the Thor movies is so weirdly explored? As a Muslim American I felt a lot of parallels between the Jotunheim-Asgard situation and my own life post-Iraq War/post-9/11 what with the war during my childhood and lingering distrust (and Asgard leaving Jotunheim to rot afterwards definitely struck a chord) but at the same time, the movie so clearly didn't even know it was doing that. It felt like a race metaphor for the sake of a race metaphor 1/3

(2/3) Plus, it’s handled SO CLUMSILY. The whole bit with Thor going ‘I’ll kill them all’ right in front of the King made it clear this racism was a whole systemic issue was NEVER fixed in their society! The perception of Jotuns never changed by the end of the movie! We never even get to find out what happened to Jotunheim ever, because it never gets brought up again. Instead, we find out that Grandpa Bor committed genocide too and throughout the movie it’s an entire non-issue?

(3/3) I think fantasy racism can work really well as a metaphor, IF the writer actually thought through every implication. I know as an American my perception of racism is way more heavily based on skin tone than most but the whole thing with Loki being able to look Asgardian read as ‘white passing’ to me and the implication of a white passing person trying to prove they’re not like the rest of their race? That’s so much to unpack, and the writers just threw out the whole suitcase.

Mmm, yeah, I totally feel you on all of this, Anon.

It’s interesting because like… So Ragnarok obviously has this anti-colonialist leaning, which is all about acknowledging the real horror of past events, and generally just accepting that there’s no Asgardian superiority. I don’t really think it was hard-hitting enough, and I appreciated there was something, but like…

It just felt weird to me for him to be like “colonialism is bad! what Odin did is wrong!” but also never acknowledge what happened to Loki. I appreciate that Taika Waititi isn’t much of a Loki fan (and certainly dislikes Loki’s fans), but it just seemed strange to take an anti-colonialist lilt without using this perfect example right in front of you.

What Odin and Frigga did to Loki (and I want to stress that it was Odin and Frigga, and that we shouldn’t excuse Frigga for her part in this) is what has happened to hundreds of thousands of native & indigenous children across the world. A child would be stolen from their real parents, forcibly “adopted”, bled of their culture, and would be systematically fed the evil ideology that the culture they came from is bad and wrong and uncivilized.

This has happened in Australia; this has happened in Canada - Hell, the last fucking “residential school” for First Nations kids in Canada only closed in ‘96! ‘96! 22 years ago, they were still fucking doing this. You know what that is? Literally, that is an act of genocide.

And like…

I think it’s just so fucked up that this keeps being boiled down to “he was adopted,” like, no… If they’d taken in this Jotunn kid, and he’d grown up knowing he was Jotunn but that he was still loved - that would be adopted. If they’d waited until he was like, an adolescent (say, the equivalent of 10/11) and told him he was a Jotunn but that he was still loved - that would be adopted.

But what Frigga and Odin did to him, raising him not only to not know what he was, but to despise where he came from…

That’s unspeakably and revoltingly cruel. There is literally no possible justification for it. 

People can tell me time and time again “but they didn’t want to shock him by telling him what he was” - he wouldn’t have been shocked, he wouldn’t have been as upset, if Asgard did not explicitly and regularly call for the genocide of the people he is revealed to belong to. If he had not been raised believing that these people - his people - are monsters, creatures, savages. 

“Loki overreacted,” like, no, man, he didn’t overreact, he fucking broke like shattered glass. “He didn’t have to try to kill an entire planet, though,” like bitch, why not? Thor did the same fucking thing like, a week ago. 

I don’t think what he did was right or justifiable, and certainly, it was not a rational decision made by a rational guy, but… Guys, Thor did the exact same thing. Can you imagine having this wild, psychotic break, sobbing your eyes out and knowing that not only did your family never love you as much as your brother, as they claimed, but that they were right not to, and desperately trying to prove to yourself that it can’t be true by murdering the people you supposedly come from–

And then your brother coming at you with this hypocrisy? Actual proof, shoved right in his face, that Thor can do x, but if Loki does x, he is the actual, most evil monster in the world?

The only person that even TRIES to work on the perception of the Jotnar is Loki himself, and that’s in exploring his feelings in this play he wrote as Odin, with nine or ten layers of distance between his identities at the time.

It’s just so fucked up. It’s so wrong. 

And I just don’t understand how they could shove all these facets into Thor (2011), and never unpack them in literally 5 fucking movies. You had so many opportunities, and you just… Ignored ‘em all.