#favourite!

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN

LIKE

I LAUGHED SO HARD

No, but seriously: I had read so many blogging against the jokes, criticizing them for making the movie overly frivolous and irritating.

I was afraid  that the constant comedy would undermine the very serious and interesting conflicts the first movie had exposed (KINGSHIP, SUCCESSION, LOKI’S EXISTENCE, LOKI’S PLACE IN THE REALM, LOKI IN GENERAL, ASGARD’S DYSFUNCTIONAL RULING FAMILY AND LOKI AND THOR’S (DYS)FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIP)

but IT DIDN’T

don’t get me wrong: there’s silliness. 

It’s like a video clip sometimes

you just go with it. 

BUT

the complicated stuff is all there

AND MORE (Hello Hella, actual firstborn-WHAAAAT!)

A note, because it’s important:

I’ve always hated the suggestion that Thor is stupid. 

HE IS NOT, DAMMIT. 

At the beginning of the first one he is belligerent, impatient and all around immature. He reacts constantly and his answer to everything boils down to punch his problems away. 

(UNLIKE NOW, WHEN HE FACES THEM)

He is not the leader Asgard needs (Odin sees it and even Loki, though his judgement is clouded with envy and anger towards his golden brother). 

Well, guess what: HE IS NOW. The minute he sits in that chair at the end of the movie is like he has claimed the one place that had been elusive to him from the beginning, that only now he comes to deserve (also, that moment when he sits in the throne, HOLD ME).

For all that said that the plot is bland because Thor is always coming back to Asgard to protect it (as if that were a bad thing, idk), let me tell you about the sheer beauty of this golden warrior that has traveled through all the nine realms and lived a thousand lives but, at the end of the day, all he wants is to do is come back home. A home that’s golden and wonderful as he, that also changes with him: it’s threatened many times, is increasingly unstable and ends up broken but also strengthened in the process, as the hero, by the end of the trilogy. Thor IS Asgard and nothing could wash off the balm of his princely duty to protect it. He loves his home and would lay down his life to defend it. “Asgard is the people”. 

And Loki, for all his Otherness and the feeling that he doesn’t belong, he has to admit... he kind of does. Son of Laufey but adopted by Odin and, truly, more like his adoptive father than the first, despite blue-ish appearances: their parallels in The Dark World have been pointed out,  and even Hela here says he “sounds” like him when he intends to negotiate. Loki keeps going back to Asgard, again and again, as he keeps returning to Thor’s side, even if it is to prove he has the upper hand, and got away with the last laugh.    

For me, one of the most brilliant pieces of dialogue in Thor: the Dark World was: 

LOKI: Satisfaction is not in my nature. 

THOR: Surrender’s not in mine. 

THAT’S THE KEY TO READ THEM IN A NUTSHELL. It’s a duality, of sorts: on one hand, these two are presented as (godly) individuals with motivations and so on, but on the other hand their portrayal needs to be extreme (even seemingly one-dimensional) BECAUSE THEY ARE ALSO AKIN TO FORCES OF THE COSMOS THAT CAN’T HELP THEIR NATURE. 

That takes me back to Thor and Loki’s v. touching scene in Sakaar that has been analysed wonderfully already. Let me just say I WILL NEVER RECOVER </3

For all the Gladiator fun and craziness of Sakaar, Thor is truly desperate to go back and ready to do what it takes to stop destruction. When he understands what he really needs to do in the end (EVEN BEFORE LOKI DOES AND HE IS I M P R E S S E D AT THE BOLDNESS OF THE SCHEME) he takes an enormous risk to save his people and sacrifices his home to the voracity of Ragnarok: as he sees Asgard succumb to the flames WITH ONE EYE, BECAUSE HE LOST THAT TOO, he wonders if he has done the right thing. AND I HAVE PEOPLE QUESTIONING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. SERIOUSLY? WHAT TRILOGY ARE YOU WATCHING? THOR LOOSES SO MUCH FROM THE FIRST MOVIE UP UNTIL THIS ONE. IF YOU SEE PAST THE FIREWORKS AND THE GAGS, YOU SEE THAT HE HAS GROWN THROUGH PAIN AND ACCEPTANCE. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH JOKES IN MARVEL TO COVER THAT UP, GUYS. 

I have more to say but it seems I’m in the mood to defend my awesome god of Thunder with sparking hands and Labrador-like enthusiasm.