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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I would have split Selvig character over both of the females...Ie there is no reason why Darcy can't have Scandinavian roots.
Another thing which always bothered me is that Darcy is supposed to be a politics major (which in itself is a wtf moment) but then they don't even do anything with that. She could discuss politics with Thor.
Anyway, I think that Jane needs a companion if for no other reason than her needed some sort of sounding board for her theories prior to believing in Thor, and Darcy in itself is a fun enough character. What she didn't need is some sort of mentor figure to hold her hand.
And I actually think that the Avengers would have been improved if Jane had been the one kidnapped and not Selvig. They would have naturally needed to adjust the scenes between Thor and Loki if Jane is on the line and they would have to be careful to not go too creepy about it, but I think it would have provided a tighter narrative (and allowed us to skip the whole "yeah, that's why I never came back" nonsense from TDW).
Seriously though, to anyone who feels Jane and "Thor on Earth" are boring, go read Thor The Mighty Avenger
! It's great! And adorable.
Been a long time since I saw either of the first two Thor movies, but I definitely enjoyed them. I do agree that partly because of Selvig, the movies undercut Jane's informed competence as a scientist, due to a combination of the science in comic book properties usually being somewhat risible to begin with, and because the idea of Jane as "competent scientist whose kind of quirky and can lose her savvy when Eating the Eye Candy" pretty easily makes her come across as incompetent in the movies. However, while I like the idea of merging Jane and Selvig as well and/or giving Darcy the Scandinavian background (being knowledgeable of mythology and history would be a good way of illustrating her political science studies). But yeah, it's hard to see the relative chumminess of Thor and Loki in Dark World and Ragnarok if Jane was the one Loki was mind-controlling in The Avengers. Especially because as it is, Whedon's take on Loki is more evil or at least more unlikable than the one in the other movies (whole separate discussion here that's a dead horse).
One other issue I've noted, for which I do give Whedon some props, is that in the first Thor movie, because of the Fish out of Water and Break the Haughty elements, Thor comes across as kind of doofy. Although this is less of an issue in Dark World, I think it's more because of the Avengers movies, especially the excellent party scene in Age of Ultron (the best/only good part of that movie), coupled with that short about him and Daryl, that Thor has transitioned into this character that is more savvy and knowledgeable of Earth-customs than his human teammates would assume. To overgeneralize, Ragnarok is the first Thor movie where he's "in on the joke". Although I admit that it might have been bad for Jane's character, I think Dark World might have been better in part if it played up Jane's Fish out of Water elements. To minimize the potential sexism of this in presentation, would have been good to have her bonding with Sif. Especially because it would facilitate Jane!Thor later on, even if that wasn't in the cards at the time.
Edit- One other thought, which is part of why I would have liked a Jane and Sif friendship is that as much as I like Loki, I'm not a fan of how he's a Thor/Sif shipper and views Jane as the inferior "choice", and the movie agrees with him.
edited 30th Oct '17 8:58:19 AM by Hodor2
Having Jane become Thor would require Natalie Portman to return and, last I heard, she was walking away from the franchise.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Huh. Usually it's Loki that does all the cross-dressing. He once cross-dressed so hard he gave birth to a horse.
edited 30th Oct '17 9:33:51 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Thor crossdressing to get his hammer back is probably the funniest of all norse myths. Loki, in his learned crossdressing opinion, helps him keep up the charade with his enemies (Frost Giants) who stole Thor's hammer to blackmail Freyja into marrying them. So Thor goes dressed as the bride.
The entire story mostly consists of the Jotuns seeing this bearded six feet tall mountain of muscle in bridal clothes and asking things to the effect of "huh why is Freyja built like a fucking tank out of a sudden?" or "why is she eating an entire boar single-handedly? and Loki coming out with some last-minute bullshit they somehow buy like "Oh she was so nervous for the wedding she hasn't eaten in a week".
This continues until the hammer is presented as a wedding gift, by which point Thor just grabs it and murders everyone in the room, presumably still dressed as a bride.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Causing and/or rectifying problems, occasionally rectifying problems he himself caused, is basically Loki's shtick.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To paraphrase The Simpsons:
Loki, the cause and solution of all problems.
But I like how "get help" in the current movie as well as some of the implications in the first movie that this kind of buddy comedy relationship of Thor and Loki working solving (probably Loki-caused) problems that's true of that myth is also true of the MCU characters' backstories.
In the Norse myths, Loki's tale is one of escalating antics leading to evil. He's always a trickster asshole of some sort (one tale is chiefly dedicated to him denigrating every woman in Asgard just to be a dick about it) but he's fighting on the side of the angels chiefly out of his own self-interest, and the myths follow an arc where this role as the grand trickster helping everyone eventually starts to get into his head and he gets cocky, so his antics escalate, leading to his incident with the Dwarves in which his mouth is stitched and then in the fabled event he tricks a poor blind guy into killing Balder, fairest of all gods, by which point everyone's gotten sick of his shit and he went way too far.
People often talk about how Loki is "demonized" these days but he was always the Token Evil Teammate in the myths, and his character arc is essentially that of a Youtube Prankster who starts with tricking people in a park before starting to send death threats to people as a prank.
"IT'S JUST A PRANK BRO" - Loki Laufeyson, Prosa Edda.
edited 30th Oct '17 3:12:24 PM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Darcy and Sif should've hung out more :/ I remember liking Frigga's part in TDW, but I don't exactly remember why.