loki's like a tootsie pop

While doing fanfic orientated research on Loki’s weapons, I came across an ‘On Set With Tom Hiddleston’ interview from the first Thor movie. While this interview is by no means new, it is - in Tom’s typically detailed manner - an interesting read for anyone wanting to recap on the psyche of Loki (prior to his psychological meltdown), his fighting style, etc.

 Some segments of Tom’s narrative I found particularly interesting, especially as the resulting movie didn’t really expand upon these areas of Loki’s psyche quite as well as they could have.

“Thor and Loki are a 2-man team and they’re both going to run Asgard when Odin steps down.” (Tom, Collider interview)

This notion of Loki running Asgard alongside Thor wasn’t shown to us in the finished movie, however it was hinted at in a removed segment of conversation between Frigga and Odin in the original Thor transcript:

FRIGGA: Thor won't be alone. Loki will be at his side to give him counsel. Have faith in your sons. - Original Thor transcript

This deleted segment between Frigga and Odin showed us that the value Loki’s family held for him was not of a ‘stolen relic’ as Loki believed himself to be, but as a trusted counselor to assist Thor in his rule.

Also in the interview was Tom’s description of Loki’s areas of expertise, part of which was his skill as a tactician: 

“And Loki’s gifts are different in that he is sharper, he’s cleverer, he’s more interested in tactics and strategy.” (Tom, Collider interview)

This part of Tom’s interview reminded me of how Loki’s skill for strategy was portrayed in a (deleted) Jotunheim scene from the original Thor transcript: 

LOKI Perhaps we should wait. (Thor turns back to his brother.) THOR For what? LOKI To survey the enemy. To gauge their strengths and weaknesses from a distance.

Again, it’s a shame that snippet of scene was not in the movie, as it portrayed the concept of Loki being a wise tactician with subtle clarity and gave us insight into the person Loki was before his circumstances took a turn for the worst.

Although we did get an idea of Loki’s skill as a strategist in the way that he carried out his plan to ‘fix the mess Thor made’, this only showed us the darker side of his stratagem.

Another important foundation stone of Loki’s persona was in the deleted scene where we see Frigga give Loki the kingship - much to his surprise and disbelief.

Perhaps this scene was removed so as not to paint Loki as too much of sympathetic (and somewhat accidental) villain. It’s far better for Loki to be the bad guy if taking the throne is seen as one of his inner machinations, than to realise it was given to him by his very mother.

But this is actually a really powerful and integral scene especially when Loki accepts Odin’s staff, Gungnir, and we see his expression settle into one of resolve. In this instant he knows what it is he has to do to ‘fix’ everything and make his father proud, and now he’s been handed the exceptionally powerful means to carry out the task.

It’s a real turning point for him as we see the way that being handed such power - however unexpected - begins to transform him.

The shame of these scenes being cut meant that much of the good aspects of Loki’s persona were removed, and this in turn prevented the wider audience from gaining a greater insight into the motivations of Loki, and of his dynamics within Asgard’s royal family. 

Deleted scenes - they must be the bane of existance for those who don’t want to see Loki as anyone other than a scheming manipulative ‘evil villain’.

So anyway, there we have it. A random bit of (pointless) ramble from me, and perhaps food for thought for any new Loki fans out there who haven’t yet checked out the deleted transcript and movie scenes. 

Oh, but back to Tom’s Collider interview for a moment, I can’t help but love this quote:

“And everything’s been dyed black and my skin’s been made paler than it normally is and so I’ve got black eyebrows and black hair and…just on my face mind you.“ 

Sorry Tom, what was that again? Where else might we have suspected the hair dye to be…? The mind boggles.

He was correct (arguing later with Sif and the Warriors Three) that Thor wasn’t ready to be king yet. Unfortunately, he went about preventing this premature “passing of authority” in a rather drastic manner (which ultimately led to his own unraveling). But then again, we’ll never know if he actually tried to share his concerns with Odin and had those concerns dismissed, which in turn led to him taking more radical measures.

But I could go on ad nauseam. I do think you are correct, however, in that some of these scenes were removed because they would have made Loki too sympathetic. The film would have been less about Thor’s transformation and more about Loki’s self-destruction.

I can just picture the convo Branagh had with Marvel HQ (if only in his head): “Ken, you were supposed to direct a comicbook movie, not a Shakespearean tragedy! No Ken, you can’t make people feel more sorry for the villain than the hero, it’ll confuse their feels. Dammit Ken, make Hiddleston stop crying and turn Loki into a proper villain.”

(I found it particularly interesting to note that Loki’s “destroy everything” addendum to the Destroyer wasn’t in the original script.)

I wanna add cos tweets are too short.

Imagine you wanna introduce villain like Thanos to the world & its supposed to be the most feared & biggest & most favorite villain,you plan this for years...

And then unexpectadily a young unknown english actor comes & brings to life a villain, an antihero that people love more than hero and despite putting your villain dramaticaly in post credit scene,people still mostly ask about that other guy they were not supposed to care for and what happened to him after attack on NY.

They must have been angry how people fell for Loki! I mean even Bob Iger said noone was gonna remember Loki 6 minutes after Thor movie.

This villain,who was supposed to be just mad brother of Thor,got such a power they literally had to change script to TDW and therefor outcome of the entire MCU & even delete his one single scene in AoU because he gained such a fanbase.

Look at the facts. Posters. Trailers. They have been cutting his screentime to the minimum! At the end,despite being in several movies & literally shaping everyone's fate since 2011 he got like 30 sec of screentime & didnt get into the final battle (characters who were in 1 movie before did) despite Thanos torturing him & we can say fucking up his life.

I mean - they wanted a villain everybody loved! Who cares if it the one they planned it to be? This is what we would call ‚flexibility‘! They could have given Loki this amazing, ground shaking backstory of (lemme count) ... five (!!!!) full time movies before he turns out to be the ultimate savior in endgame! They could have revealed his tragedy! How he suffered! How baffled the avengers are when they finally understand! And the force of this ‚from enemies to friends‘ trophy!! Teaming up with tony! The avengers theme on full volume!!!! (Perhaps with the main theme carried by a horn or some other instrument that sticks out of the orchestra-sound? You know to show his class and royalty within the heroic theme?) damn.

medusa Loki ;>

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Loki Laufeyson in ‘Avengers Assemble’ Season 4 Secret War

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?

I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!

I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else? 

I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.

But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.

I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.

The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.

So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?

Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.

Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.

It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.

The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.

it’s true and you should say it: