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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Oh, see I saw all of it as speed chess.
Step 1) get Thor in trouble because he’s not ready for the throne
Step 2) kick back and laugh
Except then Loki finds out he’s adopted, which he had no idea about. Your interpretation kinda falls flat here for me, because Loki looks absolutely, positively shocked and devastated about the reveal. And Thor gets banished, which Loki seems genuinely shocked by. And then everything from there is Loki having the world’s most violent panic attack/temper tantrum.
I do not see Loki as a long term, every variable meticulously plotted mastermind. He has small schemes that cause chaos and then he rolls with the punches.
Edited by wisewillow on Nov 28th 2018 at 2:36:46 PM
I really don't think that everything Loki did in the first Thor movie was planned from the beginning. Loki clearly didn't suspect he was a Frost Giant until he went to Jotunheim with Thor and the others. He's distraught when he learns the truth and I don't think its him putting on an act.
I mean, the more likely explanation is that Loki's plan was just to get Thor punished so he could be declared the rightful ruler of Asgard. Him learning about his true heritage was a genuine surprise to him and once Odin entered the Odinsleep, he modified his plans accordingly.
It's like those theories that claimed Loki gave Kurse directions in Thor: The Dark World because he wanted to arrange for his mother's death and his eventual escape from prison. I think it's giving him too much credit for his cunning and doesn't take into account that Loki is an opportunist who adapts his plans as he goes along.
Edited by chasemaddigan on Nov 28th 2018 at 2:38:16 PM
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That's how I saw it too.
The biggest problem with the idea that Loki planned it all from the start is that we literally see how and when Loki learned of his Jotun heritage. The idea that he actually knew all along removes a key moment of Character Development while offering nothing to replace it; it asserts that Loki knew all along despite nobody knowing that he knew because f*ck you, that's why.
It takes an awful lot of offscreen storytelling to justify Loki having already somehow learned of his Jotun heritage without Odin, Thor, or anyone else ever being the wiser.
I don't even know if Loki was necessarily trying to take the throne by getting Thor punished. That just felt to me like a moment of trolling gone horribly, horribly right. Loki set out to ruin Thor's coronation and it went so much better than he ever could have imagined.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 28th 2018 at 12:39:52 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I'm one of the few people fine with Loki's characterization in The Avengers because I see it as a perfectly reasonable direction for his character to take given what he did in Thor. I've never been a fan of him because I found no reason to love him like many others do, but that's not me being a fan hater who insists he's the only party at fault.
There's actually a screen junkies interview with the writer of Thor where he clarifies that Loki's initial plan was more or less a prank, then once he finds out he's a frost giant he sets out to prove to Odin that he's worthy of his affection.
I think Wisewillow actually nailed it up there.
Here we go, it's with Zack Stentz.
Edited by Zanthype on Nov 28th 2018 at 12:21:27 PM
"In 900 years of time and space I've never met anyone who wasn't important."I think people want Loki to be more of a Chessmaster than he really he. He's a prankster, not a long-term schemer. He's the God of Mischief, not the God of 462-Step Master Plans.
It's just that sometimes his pranks are peeing in your coffee cup and sometimes they're the total genocide of an entire race. "Why, that wacky mass murderer, he's in the bushes again! What a rapscallion!"
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 28th 2018 at 1:54:07 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yeah, Loki pla are good but they always have something in comon: they rest on the goal of disrupting(or trolling) stuff, look how loki take a backstuff after the chitauri invade because make the avenger fight each other was the bulk of is work and it really works, it took fury speech to rise them again.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"A common thing with Loki is that he constantly schemes and more often than not those schemes backfire on him.
So, he let's in the ice giants to interrupt the crowning ceremony. The prank is particularly successful, except that two guards died during it and Loki most likely didn't expect them to be there. He thought that they would be at the ceremony and that the destroyer would take care of it (it's not like he cares about frost giants).
Then he eggs Thor a little bit on, most likely because he wants the conflict with Odin to continue, but then Thor plans his little excursion and Loki knows perfectly well that Thor will die. So he informs the guards (though that Thor will be in trouble again is an extra perk, but Loki is later positively peeved that they didn't inform Odin faster, before Thor could leave the planet).
Then Thor is banished and Loki finds out that he is a Frost giant. At this point he is honestly distraught, but remember, his plan then is to leave Thor on earth (hurting him psychological as much as possible in the process, because Thor tends to be petty) and to stage the assassin attempt on Odin in the belief that this would make him the "better son". Ironically he would have most likely gotten Odin's approval if he had shown himself to be a good ruler.
Another aspect of Loki is that he has no self-reflection whatsoever. He likes to blame other people for his misery. Like, his whole revenge against the cursed...remember, it was Loki who showed him the way up to the royal rooms in the first place.
Loki is like a child who does dangerous pranks and then points the finger at someone else when the prank backfires. Except that his pranks tend to be deadly.
Regarding the Avengers, though, I am still not sure if part of him didn't lose on purpose. It was the best way to escape Thanos once and for all after all.
If one wants a chessmaster, one doesn't have to look further than Zemo.
Edited by Swanpride on Nov 28th 2018 at 2:26:26 AM
See, when Loki's Frost Giant heritage came out a little on Jotunheim, his expression didn't read to me as, "Oh my Me, what the eff is this!?" That seemed more like foreshadowing for the audience's benefit, rather than an Internal Reveal.
Later with Odin he acts like he only just learned the truth, but act is the operative word there.
Yes, this apparently doesn't line up with authorial intent, but then, authorial intent is that Thor purposely avoided giving Thanos an instantly lethal blow so he could taunt Thanos as he died, and I know plenty of us take issue with that interpretation.
To be fair to Thor, an axeblade that takes up most of the size of someone's chest going directly through their chest cavity should kill them.
My various fanfics.See, Death of the Author is a tricky thing to use for infinity war if you disagree with some details but like others. The Thor things? I don't agree with, but I do like the idea of Thanis killing half of all plant and animal life in the universe. So am I a hypocrite or is this a fair reading of the film?
I don't expect we'll see a trailer until after Captain Marvel airs. They've been withholding the title for spoilery reasons and now that there's only one film until A4, the only thing left to spoil is Captain Marvel.
The trailer will probably drop after Captain Marvel hits theaters. It might even be the stinger to the film, similar to what they did with the Avengers trailer and First Avenger.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub." one doesn't have to look further than Zemo."
Hell no, Zemo plan relies on him know how the airport plan will turn on and the idea that someone a video will affect the other avenger aside of Tony and Steve, in reallity it didnt do any damn sense.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"It’s a video of Bucky brutally murdering people with his bare hands.
That will rattle anyone.
It can be assumed there’s not much physical or video evidence of Bucky’s exploits as the Winter Soldier aside from Natasha’s few encounters with him & the events of The Winter Soldier movie itself so that video’s a really big deal for showing his murder of the Starks, two very well-known figures.
Plus he expected someone to chase him. They had already known of his existence at that point.
Edited by slimcoder on Nov 28th 2018 at 10:38:30 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Well this is the thing...there is nobody when he show the video, EXCEPT bucky, tony and cap, is plan is to turn the avengers against themselves...except that already happen by little input thanks to the airport fight, what is left is a scarred and over the edge tony who video just did a little push.
Also none of the other avenger have that atachment to tony: Vision? maybe, scarlet? she dosent care, hawkeyes? less.
It cause a battle because there isnt anyone else to fight except them.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Cap is defending, even willing to die for a possibly murdeous assassin because they used to be close friends.
That could prolly knock down his leadership pegs on a couple levels because of how biased he can be.
Plus the video can be used as proof that Bucky has to be locked up, maybe for life or even receive the death sentence.
Edited by slimcoder on Nov 28th 2018 at 10:45:19 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Zemo is a speed chessmaster, he didn't have a fully formed plan. He is, in large part, just making it up as he goes along. Basically as a villain he's acting the way most action movie heroes do.
Edited by Unsung on Nov 28th 2018 at 11:48:45 AM
I always saw it more as him having very specific goals and taking a lot of slight detours to get through them. His plan really only had five steps.
- Get the mission report of the night Stark's parents died.
- Lure the Avengers to secure location with fake assassin threat.
- Confront Stark with the information while Cap and possibly Bucky is present.
- Watch Cap and Stark fight over Bucky, ruining the Avengers since they're the team's driving members.
- Die.
I used to think he only involved Bucky himself when he couldn't get the info from the HYDRA guy, but given how the plan kind of requires Bucky's presence and how ready to go he was with a perfect means of framing him, I'm not so sure. He might not have needed Bucky to give him the mission statement if the HYDRA guy hadn't taken it to his grave, but he did still need the Winter Soldier to be present (and to tell someone about the assassins to the Avengers would go investigate) so it might have always gone down something like that regardless.
Still he got really lucky with the Accords and the Avengers' reactions to it, come to think of it. One of the main reasons his plan had the payoff it did was because the Accords elevated Bucky from a thing the Avengers could have taken care of in-house to a point of contention that exacerbated the splits already forming in the team, and over which Cap had already nearly destroyed himself.
Not that Tony wouldn't have taken in badly otherwise, but it was only allowed to have the consequences it did to the extent it did because half the team was already in jail and Cap was already on his way out.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 28th 2018 at 11:13:02 AM

I know I've said this before, but Loki's Avengers characterization always made sense to me, because (as I interpret it) we barely got to see Loki's real personality in Thor.
While a lot of people see him as improvising from one plan to the next in that movie, to me it always read like everything that happened (until the point where Thor returned to beat him up) was all part of a master plan he'd been working on since before the movie began.
Step 1: Help some Ice Giants attack Asgard, which will prompt Thor to perform an unsanctioned attack on Jotunheim.
Step 2: Snitch on Thor, getting him banished, leaving you next in Asgard's line of succession.
Step 3: Let Odin know that you know about your Ice Giant origins, and the stress will cause him to lapse into the Odin-sleep, leaving you as ruler of Asgard.
Step 4: Help the Ice Giants launch an attack on the sleeping Odin, giving you the pretext you need to, with your newly acquired power, wipe out their entire planet.
With that interpretation, everything we see Loki do in first Thor movie, other than his Motive Rant at the end and that one bit where he tries lifting Mjolnir, is him putting on an elaborate act. None of it can be taken as reflective of his true personality, leaving him a largely blank slate for however the next movie chooses to characterize him.