Do I need to remind you what he looked like during this entire scene?
He’s sweaty, his blood circulation isn’t working well due to vasoconstriction (namely, look at how pale his lips are,) and he’s got dark, sunken in eyes. Now we’ve got a point in which he trips and almost falls for some inexplicable reason. Well, let me ask you this.
How do you torture a frost giant?
With heat.
Whedon wouldn’t just put in clips like this for no reason. He’s trying to show us something. The Loki we see here in this scene is not a healthy Loki, it’s a Loki who is weak and pale and probably focused on just staying conscious—a Loki who has probably been tortured by Thanos into submission and then sent out to do his dirty work for him, that way Thanos will never get the blame. Loki is just the puppet in the grand master scheme of things. Thanos is using him.
The Loki we see in Thor is radically different from the Loki we see in The Avengers. Sure, post-Thor, Loki is emotionally unstable, and maybe a little nuts, but he wasn’t a murderer. The only reason he went after Jotunheim is because he was having identity issues. Murder wasn’t something that was normal in his repertoire, yet we see him doing it frequently in The Avengers. The Loki we see at the end of Thor doesn’t want to live, let alone take over an entire realm that he had no interest in before. Something drastic must have happened between the two movies to have made Loki have such a huge character change.
It’s said that Thanos caught/rescued Loki after he fell from the Bifrost. Well, what did he do after that? Thanos is known for having telepathic powers, and since he had to have caught Loki knowing who he was and how strong he was, he likely broke into Loki’s mind to find out all of his fears and weaknesses. And once he found out all of Loki’s darkest secrets, it was easy to break him. He and the Chitauri took the Loki we saw in Thor and tortured and corrupted him until he was warped into their own personal demigod, ready to do their bidding. Why do you think Loki spouts off all these quotes about how “Freedom is life’s great lie,” and “In the end, you will always kneel”? He’s projecting.
So, when he trips? That’s the aftershocks of torture. That’s a Loki, weakened and struggling to stay upright, pushing forward through the pain because, otherwise?
“You will long for something as sweet as pain.”
He has to keep going because the alternative isn’t a question.
Reblogging this photoset again because OH MY WORD LOKI NO.
Yeah, I’ve been on the torture theory a long time. Not only physical torture, though. I strongly feel the Mind Stone was used on him as well to help further crack his mind into something more malleable to Thanos’s whims, while the physical torture had him distracted enough to help create an opening.
This goes to the headcanon I’ve had that for a while, he was considered another of Thanos’s warped idea of ‘Children,’ and that at least two (post IW trailer, maybe more) other such children were aware of his place in Sanctuary – Nebula and Gamora.
I do agree about the torture having the mental aspect too. I personally think that the mental torture was more extensively used, as Thanos still needed Loki to physically be functional enough to land on Earth and do the job.
It’s one thing that Marvel has not gone back to acknowledge, and I do wonder if this whole thing has been brushed under the carpet. I guess we’ll see in Infinity War.
Thor Ragnarok showed us the true Loki. Not greedy of power. Just looking to make his way as softly as possible for him. (Like getting into the “good stuff” in Sakaar by getting close to the Grandmaster. – even if he suggests an alternative “asgard” to Thor by pushing the grandmaster away, it’s not what he wants. He wants a clean slate to live in so the past won’t hurt him again.) He’s neutral chaos. Taking the side that will help him the most to get to his “life goal”. Unpredictable (up to some point) and yet so predictable. He’s the god of mischief. He lives to put some salt in everyone’s lives. And yet he can overcome his “natural state” if the ones he loves / cares about / consider the most turn their back on him and stop caring.
Infinity War, according to Joss Whedon, will bring a “bad side Loki”. Yet, Loki does not often forgive. And he NEVER forgets. (That’s why he can also be called the “ god of stories” – in comics anyway.) And even if he chooses his side according to “the most powerful side”, I don’t think he’ll take Thanos’ side willingly.
Frankly, I’m quite afraid about what Joss Whedon did. And tells. Because if he completely breaks down Waititi’s character construction, that means he didn’t understood what’s left of Loki. Otherwise, if he took care of including Loki’s “new” (not new at all but still) charaterization, that means it would hurt us even more to see what’s became of Loki.
(Gosh, it’s 5 a.m, I’m not very good at english usually – mostly because I’m French and didn’t have a proper english class in YEARS -, but I’m afraid my mistakes are worse this time. Forgive me for this. And I hope you’ll understand what I mean anyway. 😉 )
@fuckyouimalltequilaandbeer But Jos Whedon is no longer at the helm of affairs. It’s the Russo brothers (who also direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War).
Also, in my honest opinion, Waititi didnt really do justice to Loki. It was more of a mockery of him, often to build other characters up. The issues which had hurt Loki enough to cause a psychotic break were made into jokes, and his act of saving Thor and Jane’s lives was made into a betrayal. Loki had indeed suffered that fatal wound in The Dark World, because as per Ragnarok canon, illusions break or become apparent upon being touched. And he did offer the throne to Thor at the end of the movie, which Thor expressly rejected. In Ragnarok, Thor kept saying Loki betrays him regularly, but a look back to past movies would show that it’s not true. Loki was fully with Thor’s plan in Svartalfheim. Plus, he was not really acting with full agency in the Avengers, and in Thor-I, he was going through trauma, which ended in a very real suicide attempt, not a faking of death.
And each one of these things were made into jokes in Ragnarok.
I say this all not because I have some personal bias against Waititi (because I’ve seen people being called racist when they criticise his work). I’m a POC as well, so yeah, that accusation is not gonna work.
This^ isn’t directed at you @fuckyouimalltequilaandbeer btw. You did fine with English, it ain’t my first language either. 😉
This! I’m not sure what it is with Watiti and deep feelings, but he seems to shy away from them at every cost. There was so much potential in the emotional backstory of Thor and Loki and it was just reduced to… cheap jokes?
He’s also said something like “these are just a couple of rich kids whose problems we shouldn’t care about.” Really? Identity crisis, suicide attempts and losing family members don’t matter if you’re raised with privilege? Try again.
Yeah, it makes me cringe to watch certain scenes in the movie (the play about TDW, blowing up of Asgard, to name a few). They could’ve done without the jokes there.
The rich kid comment too. In bad taste really. 😒
Don’t worry, I’m not taking it for me. Let’s just say that even if there were cringe moments for me about Loki and his backstory in Ragnarok, having seen “Boy”, “ Hunt for the wilderpeople” and “what we do in the shadows”, I can only take defense of Waititi by saying two things : he’s a master at “ happy – sad comedy”. He brushes EVERY heartbreaking scene / backstory by a joke or / and mockery. A LOT of his directing / writing actions make those cringy as fuck sometimes. But it’s his way of showing his emotions. Of COURSE he will make fun of the “characters’ disability” (that come from their past both physically and psychologically talking.), because that’s his own way of showing them without showing too much darkness. Waititi comes from a country with one of the higher rates of teens’ suicides (attempts of not). He’s here to bright things up and yet stay true to the story. Now’s the second point : be VERY careful about Waititi’s interviews. Because he doesn’t often say the things he truly thinks. Look for small / intimate interviews made a couple of years ago then look for bigger interviews made for Thor : you’ll get what I mean. Don’t take everything he says first degree. He turned his celebrity life into a huge joke.
So, I get your point of view about Ragnarok and Waititi’s hand on that. I respect it and I think you’ve pointed out very true things and all I can do is agree with you. Now I’ve a very strong opinion about Waititi which made me defend him. You’re free to agree on that or not. 😉 (and I’ve realized I didn’t talked about Loki at all. XD – which was btw our first conv)
So. Russo Brothers… (I apologize for not getting this idea right. I’ve convinced myself that it was Whedon.) Okay. That’s far worse than I’ve first imagined. (Yeah, that’s another one of my VERY strong point of views. – I hated the Captain America “spin offs” because they were tasteless, sentiments were kind of forced down and the backstory was… Debatable ? Anyway. I should stop my CA ranting there. I’m not here to bring hatred back about Marvel. XD)
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