Lilith's Contemplations @lilithscontemplations - Tumblr Blog

UGH I am furious. This interview with Mike Waldron, head writer of the Loki show confirms all of my worst fears based on the trailer. (x)

My pitch for the show was kind of a big, crazy, fun time adventure,” says head writer Michael Waldron. “The TVA is just an entirely new world [with] a new cast of characters, and that’s what felt most exciting about the show: building a new corner of the MCU.”

Look at this! Not a word about Loki or his character or being excited to delve into his nuance or depth or feeling honored to write for him. Nope. What Waldron focuses on is how excited he is to introduce the TVA to the MCU. Once again we have someone in charge of Loki’s character who’s more interested in other characters and feels the need to knock Loki down in order to build other characters up instead of letting them all stand on their own strengths.

I mean really? The exciting thing about the LOKI show is the TVA and the new characters? Not Loki? He doesn’t even get mentioned at all??! It’s exactly what I was afraid of based on the other promotional material. The trailers felt like they were focusing on Mobius and the TVA as the protagonists and villain coding Loki in his own series. The trailers also focus constantly on mocking and denigrating Loki and seem to take no interest in his character and have stripped him of his trademark wit and poise and turned him into the butt of every joke.

The trailer is framed from Mobius’s perspective rather than Loki and ironically, given the cringe inducingly bad “talky talky” exchange, he gets more lines than Loki does. And it hardly feels like Loki is even in the trailers even when he’s technically on screen because he is written and framed with such little care that he doesn’t even feel like the same character. Even the posters are brown for the TVA not green for Loki. It felt like they were using Loki as a side character to get people to watch the TVA show.

I hoped I was wrong. But the head writer himself has seemingly confirmed it. He isn’t excited about or interested in Loki’s character. He was excited about his own creations - an adaption of the TVA and the new characters that work there. That’s where his passion lies and where the focus of the show is. And based on the trailers, in order to make those characters seem cooler he’s seemingly trying to have them constantly get one over on Loki because he can’t write well enough to just actually make them good characters in their own right.

His pitch for the show was nothing Loki specific and he doesn’t care about Loki’s character. I should’ve known from the fact that they couldn’t even be bothered to get his hair length right even though it’s picking up right where Avengers left off and they literally could’ve just googled a screen shot to match it to.

Well. I certainly hope to be proven wrong but I’m really disappointed. This quote just confirms all my concerns based on the trailers and other promotional materials. I’m so tired of the MCU disappointing me. They promised a show about Avengers/TDW Loki. That’s all I wanted. Instead they’re giving us some generic unfunny garbage instead. At that point just make a TVA show and give Loki his own show.

I’m so sad. I really hope I get proven wrong but it’s looking increasingly unlikely and if it turns out like this - and there’s every indication it will at this point (please Disney, prove me wrong!) - I will never trust Disney or the MCU again. I will be done with them as a company forever. I will engage in the fandom and that is it. Thank god for the Venom trailer so at least I have something to look forward to.

nikkoliferous

Yeah, that quote was a big red flag for me too, for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. Granted, this was presumably part of a larger interview and I don’t know if he may have spoken more significantly (or at all??) about Loki over the course of it. That’s the trouble with little blurbs like this; they’re devoid of context and that can be important to remember sometimes.

But, with that being said, it’s definitely concerning. Firstly, you’re handed a character with the degree of nuance, of depth, of unresolved trauma that Loki has and the thing you find most compelling is the opportunity to write a “big, crazy, fun time adventure”? Seriously? And then there’s the similarity to the Russos violently sidelining Loki in favour of showing how much better “their” Big Bad was and TW being so excited to make “[his] version of a Marvel film” regardless of character or plot consistency. Honestly, at this point, displaying genuine enthusiasm about working with Loki specifically is a litmus test for me because there’s been a very irritating recent trend of writers/directors wanting to make their mark on the MCU at his expense. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I get that same vibe off this quote. It’s one thing to be excited to build a new section of the universe with new characters. Of course, that would be a thrill for any writer, director, actor, etc. That’s a given. But it’s another matter for that to be your primary focus in a show that’s ostensibly supposed to be about an established character, because then your intentions for those new characters are most likely going to overshadow your commitment to the established one(s), who you predictably feel less of a sense of ownership over. This maybe wouldn’t be quite so alarming if every trailer so far didn’t already feel like it were framing Mobius and the TVA as the protagonists rather than Loki. But they have felt that way and this just feels like a confirmation that we’ve been right to think that.

One of the weird/interesting/annoying things about being involved in the Loki fandom is how often our treatment—both by Marvel and other fans—winds up mirroring Loki’s experiences in-universe. And to me, this feels like yet another extension of that. I would almost compare it to the experience of Loki feeling like an outsider his whole life and then having that ‘ah-ha!’ moment when he learns he’s actually Jötun. That moment of “oh, so I’m not crazy. I haven’t been imagining you treating me like a leper all my life. Good to know.”

So yeah, TL;DR, bad vibes all around.

iamnmbr3

Great additions. Also I will add that even if it this was part of a larger interview, the context wouldn’t change the wording he used. Yes maybe he spoke about Loki elsewhere but in this quote he doesn’t just say he’s also excited you the TVA. He specifically said the TVA and the TVA characters are what “felt most exciting about the show” to him. Most exciting. Aka”more exciting than Loki, the supposed central character.” That is not an encouraging sign to say the least. (Obviously I very much hope I am mistaken and that what we saw in the trailers and this interview isn’t representative of the actual show we’re getting).

This is such a big contrast to Andy Serkis’s interviews where he talks about taking the helm for Venom 2 and how excited he is to work with these characters and how he wanted to do justice to Eddie and Venom relationship since that is a big part of the what the audience responded to. You can tell he’s passionate about the project and isn’t threatened by the aspects that he didn’t personally create. Instead he wants to take what worked from the first movie and preserve it, rather than changing it or getting side tracked by only being interested in the new aspects.

everything-you-feel-is-real

The thing that killed my hope for this show a while back was putting the trailer and the marketing strategy together with things Tom Hiddleston has said about Loki in the past. I have no doubt that he takes the character seriously and wants to do him justice. But he has also said plenty of things that make me think he just isn’t aware of how taking Loki in a ‘fun’ and constantly belittling direction can come off as dismissive of trauma.

When asked what he would do as Loki’s therapist, he said he would try to convince Loki that actually, he is loved by his family, and he would try to make Loki consider their perspective (implying that this has never occured to Loki himself). He would tell Loki “your father actually kept you alive” as a way of showing him he doesn’t need to feel so hurt. He has said almost as a refrain that “there is no Loki without Thor, and there is no Thor without Loki” (which fits together well with Mobius feeling like a kind of stand-in for Thor in terms of what his relationship is to Loki). When asked what he thinks Loki wants, he said that he doesn’t know, and Loki probably doesn’t know either, because: “He’s become so accustomed to occupying opposition. Whatever the status quo is, he’s opposed to it.” He’s talked about TR as a beautiful reconciliation between Thor and Loki. And when asked where he’d like Loki’s arc to go next (I think this was during press for TDW), he said the only thing he could think of was that it would be fun if Loki ran a nightclub in the 70’s.

People in this fandom often talk about how “Tom truly loves Loki more than any of us” and “Tom is Loki’s greatest defender”. That may be true from his perspective and that of many fans - both of which I respect, even though I find them harder and harder to understand. But if you look at what Tom Hiddleston has said about Loki over the years, the above interpretation of the trailers is consistent with what we might expect him to be happy with. Sure, he probably needs to just give lip service to whatever production he’s been part of as part of his obligations as an actor. But he really shows no signs of not meaning any of the above. Especially because a lot of it is from before the TR retcon, so he wouldn’t ‘need’ to say those things to support the narrative of the movies he was promoting. He’s been pretty consistent in expressing an understanding of Loki that the kind of show we’re fearing would fit right into.

The journey I’m undertaking as a fan right now is trying to reconcile that with being a fan of Tom Hiddleston. Because I can never be happy with it. I can never see it as a good or healthy approach to depicting a profoundly compassion-starved character. It makes me angry and sad. But I also don’t want it to make me a Loki anti or Tom Hiddleston anti the way I’ve turned into a Marvel anti over the course of TR, Infinity War and Endgame. In part because I’ve always known Tom Hiddleston as an actor who takes his characters really seriously and never half-asses them or deliberately screws them over. I know he pours his heart into his work and would never want to disrespect his fans or their experience. But it’s such a weird experience to deeply respect someone who’s also making something that feels very hurtful. And with which he has shown no signs of disagreeing.

(Man, I hope I don’t get excommunicated from the whole fandom for this. It feels like such a taboo to point out that something I hate about Loki’s arc is probably something Tom Hiddleston thinks is really neat. But hopefully disagreeing with an actor about his character’s likely needs and wants can be part of a nuanced conversation about the work without it coming off as hate.)

lelliefant

You guys. You’re expressing my own misgivings, but so much more clearly than I could have.

I’ve noticed some of these red flags too over the months, but I’ve told myself not to make any conclusions before seeing the series. However, I think there is now enough information (from footage and interviews) to at least support some uncomfortable questions.

@everything-you-feel-is-real Your analysis of Tom’s position is painfully on point. As much as I love him, indications are that he may have lost track of Loki as much as those around him.

I’m afraid it’s possible that Tom may have made the mistake of following the Chris Odinson “acting” methodology: transforming the character into himself rather than transforming himself into the character.

This is tragic, because Tom’s a true artist of acting and filmmaking. He’s deeply talented; a refined and nuanced performer. Tom approaches his characters with profound respect and compassion. There are so few people who can so convincingly slip into an entirely different identity. I mean—in Tom’s original portrayal of Loki he stole major scenes from Anthony. Friggin. Hopkins. That Loki and this Loki from the series look nothing like each other.

There are countless “actors” who only play an idealized version of themselves, and succeed based on their personal magnetism (enhanced by all the clever tricks of filmmaking). They aren’t actors so much as movie stars.

Tom has always been an actor first. Why change now? Well, I’d guess the popular success of Ragnarok might have made a deep impression.

Ugh. These are not good signs, my peeps.

everything-you-feel-is-real

I’m so relieved to hear I’m not the only one thinking in this way @lelliefant!

I’m not sure he’s lost track of Loki over the years, though, because some of these quotes are from the earliest movies, and I don’t remember him contradicting anything he’s said in the past. I think it’s more that he’s always held a view of Loki that isn’t violated by TR or any subsequent content.

The why of that is an interesting question that I’ve been trying to phrase an answer to for like two hours now without any luck. I have so many thoughts on it that they keep bumping into each other and falling over helplessly ^^; (I think I’ve written-then-immediately-deleted like 8 pages worth of confused meta by now)

“Transforming the character into himself instead of transforming himself into the character” is a very interesting phrase, I think there’s a lot to unpack there…

nikkoliferous

I agree with so much of this and I’m so happy/relieved to see even just a few other people saying it. I have enormous respect for Tom as an actor and, to the extent that we as fans can know him, a person. But he’s genuinely said some concerning things about Loki over the years, alongside the more positive things. It’s been difficult to work through my emotions on this topic because I do trust him with Loki’s portrayal in the sense that he had a huge role in creating this character that I love so much to begin with. I believe he does understand and care for Loki, to a certain extent, and I can say with all honesty that I don’t think anyone else could have played Loki with the same depth and nuance and heart. But that belief has to co-exist with the realisation that his understanding of Loki is not perfect. And that, much like with the writers/directors/producers, perhaps what he conveyed to me onscreen is not 100% consistent with his internal sense of the character/story. After all, reading a character–whether as an actor or a fan–is an ongoing process.

As far as losing track of Loki, I think the problem is that he’s always held a mixed view of the character but the shallower(?) aspects have begun more and more to overshadow or outweigh his “defense” of him. The emphasis has become increasingly focused on Loki being fun and chaotic and charming (is that what I’m supposed to be seeing in these trailers? Because uh… I’m not) to the detriment of dealing with Loki’s trauma in a satisfying or meaningful way. And I think there’s a further issue in that Tom is excellent at exploring a character’s underlying psychology in order to give them more depth and nuance, but simultaneously, he’s kind of… well, dumb when it comes to the issue of mental health. I mean that with no disrespect, but as illustrated above, he’s said some very (I’m sure unintentionally) invalidating things about Loki’s struggles. He recognises that Loki’s “villainy” comes from a place of genuine pain, but he appears to have no practical understanding of how to resolve that pain. When I watched that “if I were Loki’s therapist” interview, all I could think was, “dear god, please do not ever let this man be anyone’s therapist.” Again, I have enormous respect for Tom. I’m not judging him. This is just not an area where he excels.

I do have to say that I find his choices in regards to this series baffling, whether he agrees with the characterization or not. Because the acting is just… bad. I don’t have another word for it, it’s bad. It’s cringy to the point of every trailer giving me secondhand embarrassment. Not just for Loki, but for Tom as an actor. He’s so unbelievably talented; I would not hesitate to call him one of the finest actors of my generation. And yet every trailer has just felt… yeesh. It feels as if the director went, “Now, Tom, pretend you’ve never acted a day in your life and you’re really bad at it.” Even in Ragnarok, his acting choices were generally consistent; it was the characterization and the dismissive way Loki was treated by the narrative that was the issue. But this has felt like he’s starring in a parody. At this point, I can only assume Tom lost a bet and throwing the series was his punishment. Either that or Marvel is holding Bobby for ransom.

everything-you-feel-is-real

Your words soothe me, @nikkoliferous. I agree with everything.

I remember when I first saw Tom’s acting as Loki and then saw him in interviews. I was so struck by how, by his own admission, he hadn’t been through anything like what Loki went through, and yet he portrayed it flawlessly. I had never seen that before and haven’t seen it since, to my knowledge. Usually people who haven’t been through it can’t depict it accurately, and they certainly can’t talk about it as anything other than immaturity, malice, laziness, or some other accusation of inherent lowliness. It gave me such hope to think that if he could reach all the way across the human condition like that, maybe people in general could reach each other across such vast distances in real life, too. And us ‘Lokis’ wouldn’t have to huddle together in a corner and shut everyone else out to keep from getting well-meaningly (or not well-meaningly) invalidated every time we opened our mouths.

But I guess he never reached all the way into Loki, only some of the way. Which is still impressive, since he’s the only person from ‘the other side’ that I know of who’s gotten that far. What I wouldn’t give for a chance to give him an hour of my personal tedtalk on Loki’s trauma and see what that did to his perspective on the character. To see whether it would fundamentally change his ideas of what makes sense for Loki’s arc, or if he would just respectfully disagree.

The only explanation I can think of for the acting is that Tom is very socially/collaboratively oriented in his work, both in terms of his openness to other actors and to the directors. Maybe we overestimate how much he even wants to control his own acting rather than go with what the director wants? (I am grasping at straws though.)

lokihasafriend

“What I wouldn’t give for a chance to give him an hour of my personal tedtalk on Loki’s trauma and see what that did to his perspective on the character. To see whether it would fundamentally change his ideas of what makes sense for Loki’s arc, or if he would just respectfully disagree.” I actually love this idea though. Can we just call a Loki conference? Throw together a little seminar?

Do you think Tom would come? I think he might if we asked reeeeally nicely.

everything-you-feel-is-real

Ha! 😀 Well, he tends to like that kind of stuff, so he might enjoy a fan-made Loki seminar if it came off as a serious endeavor and not just an excuse to meet him. Even without him showing up, I think it could be quite fun to do an academic-like conference. Maybe collect all the talks in a memorial volume afterwards. I’ve been thinking for ages that all this thorough Loki meta deserves a proper book.

nikkoliferous

Were it not for my crippling social anxiety, this would be the most fascinating and exciting idea I’ve ever heard—with or without Tom’s participation. I mean. It still is; I’m just not sure whether I’d have the capacity to be an active participant myself. Lol

Tom has always struck me as a very open and curious person, though. Maybe that’s a misperception; it’s not as if I know him personally. But that’s how he comes across to me. I honestly think, whether he took our words to heart and whether it changed his perception of Loki or not, he would be absolutely delighted by the opportunity to hear such in-depth analysis of the character. Whether he could fit such a thing into his schedule or not might be another question. But I do imagine he would find the concept itself thrilling.

everything-you-feel-is-real

There’s talk of an online Loki con right now, and I could imagine a seminar would be great as part of that. Maybe both anonymity concerns and social anxiety concerns could be addressed somehow in an online format. I’d probably be willing to come out of my otherwise prized anonymity to give a talk. 🤷‍♀️

lilithscontemplations

I just wanted to say I I agree about almost everything you said and I’m really happy I’m not the only one feeling like this. If I may add my 2 very modest cents…

I look at these trailers and I don’t see Loki at all, just Tom with back hair. It’s partly due to the plain (and ugly, ugh) human cloths and Tom’s actual hair instead of a decent wig like in TDW, but for the most of it it’s just Loki’s whole demeanour that is wrong. No elegance, no grace, not cool sarcastic comeback event after a bad turn of events for him (now it’s all very theatrical), no sly smile and/or menacing/powerful look in his eyes etc. I remember watching TDW and being completely mesmerised by Tom’s acting (or rather seeing only the god of mischief, no Tom at all) and now that’s no long the case, not by a long shot.

So maybe the Thor-Avengers-TDW Loki was in fact Branagh’s creation. Tom built on it definitely but it’s more Branagh’s Loki since he laid the bases of it. The other directors just went along with it since Loki wasn’t their primary concern and din’t feel the need to change him much. Then came Waititi and he had a whole other vision of Loki that Tom accepted. Maybe it was more in sync with what Tom wanted to do, or the studio simply made it very clear to him that the dark Shakespearean Loki wasn’t coming back that thing had to be lither and funnier. Tom is a professional and even if he preferred the fist version he surely would have found a way to accept this and make way to this new Loki. Let’s not forget that Tom has said (on more than one occasion I think) that he’s like to do more comedy but was never offered any. So TR and now Loki were he’s chance to do that and even if it’s not the Loki as we knew from the first moves it’s something he can be happy to do for that reason. To me, though, it still doesn’t explain why I don’t see Loki at all when I look at the trailers (it felt more like Loki even in that awful death scene and that was ooc) but it might explain why Tom is so happy about this series and the tone of it.

Sorry if what I wrote is a bit confusing, I’m not really used to write brilliant and well argumented essays like you all do :)

everything-you-feel-is-real

No need to apologize @lilithscontemplations, everything you wrote makes perfect sense! I’m gobbling up the compliment on our writing just the same though 🤗

So much same. When I first looked up the actor who played Loki on IMDB and then searched the name on Youtube, it took me like 10 minutes of confused googling to accept that the person I saw in the interviews was actually the guy who played Loki. His whole vibe was just so different that I couldn’t believe it despite him having 100% the same facial features as Loki. That was always such magic to me. My brain still stores the concept of Tom Hiddleston and the concept of Loki in different compartments. I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes shot from Thor Ragnarok where Tom didn’t have his wig on, and even though I’d been in the fandom for years, still for a moment I thought, “Why is Tom Hiddleston there, where’s the guy who plays Loki?” It’s so cringe to me that that just doesn’t happen for me with any of the content we’ve seen in the trailers. Even with all the armor on, it’s just Tom Hiddleston dressed up as Loki for some reason.

I think you might be right about original Loki being more Branagh’s creation, and everything else you wrote about why Tom is happy with the series.

nikkoliferous

I fully understand the impulse, but I don’t think there’s a lot of value in speculating too much about the level of involvement Tom had in Loki’s creation at the start. We know there were moments in Thor 1 in particular where he chose to deviate from the script and it made all the difference in Loki’s portrayal (being afraid to touch Odin after he collapses; depicting Loki as more broken and less of a cackling villain in his final confrontation with Thor). And at least as far as we’re aware, those were choices made specifically by Tom. We also know that one of the first things Joss did when he was working on Avengers was to take Tom out and ask him for a rundown on what makes Loki tick. “What are the nightmares of his soul?” is the phrasing I remember Tom using when he talked about this. So tl;dr I don’t want to take anything away from Tom by suggesting that he just was going along to get along from the start. The fact is, giving birth to Loki was a collaborative effort, but we’ll probably never know to what degree that was the case. I think it’s a mistake, therefore, to ascribe either too much or too little credit to Tom.

I couldn’t agree more with the rest, though. This is exactly how I’ve felt about Loki both in the trailers and over the course of the MCU. I couldn’t have put it into words better. This will make me sound like a kook who doesn’t realise Loki is fictional, but when I look at him, I don’t see a character played by an actor named Tom Hiddleston. (In fact, similar to @everything-you-feel-is-real, I literally can’t see Tom when I look at Loki or Loki when I look at Tom. Believe me, I’ve tried and my mind just can’t make the pieces fit). When I think about Loki, I think of him as if he were an actual person, with real motivations and thought processes and mannerisms distinct from that of Tom or even of the writers. It actually takes effort for me to frame him as a character rather than as a person. And… that’s no longer true in this series. That’s what makes it so jarring. In the trailers, I truly do just see Tom Hiddleston with black hair. I see Loki cosplay, and not even necessarily good cosplay. I’ve never had that issue before, not even in Ragnarok. Certainly not to this degree. And it’s somehow worse than that, actually, because it’s not even just Tom Hiddleston with black hair; it’s Tom Hiddleston with black hair doing such a cringeworthy acting job that I experience secondhand embarrassment with every trailer. Is he being overdirected? Have we simply found the one genre that Tom is not phenomenally talented at? What is it? I don’t know. I just know that I barely find it watchable.

And yeah, now that you mention it, I do recall Tom talking about wanting to do more comedy and I think you may be right on the money. Maybe the tone of the series was his idea initially and maybe it wasn’t, but either way, I can see how Marvel wanting to head in a more comedic direction may have seemed like a good opportunity to fulfill that wish. It’s disappointing, to say the least. I do believe Tom cares for and takes pride in Loki as a character, but at the end of the day, he’s still an actor playing a role. I don’t expect for him to be as emotionally invested as I am. So I’m not mad, exactly. And I definitely don’t want to encourage any of the “placing the blame for the series wholly on Tom” that I’ve seen a handful of people doing lately. But it is painful for me, not gonna lie.

iamnmbr3

Omg I had to hop back into this convo for these last 2 additions bc I had a similar experience to you guys @nikkoliferous @everything-you-feel-is-real so reading this was super validating lol. I remember watching one of the trailers and my first reaction being to think “this feels off. this just feels like Tom Hiddleston cosplaying Loki. And it’s not even that good of a cosplay.” And it stuck in my mind because immediately after that I registered what a bizarre thought that was to have. Tom Hiddleston is the one who plays Loki so technically every moment of Loki’s screen time is just Tom Hiddleston cosplaying him.

And yet it doesn’t usually feel like that. In past movies, even in Ragnarok (which definitely characterized and framed Loki differently from earlier films), I saw various iterations of Loki. I didn’t see Tom Hiddleston in a wig on a movie set. Obviously I know it’s fiction but I was able to immerse myself in the story. Those movies brought Loki to life so I saw Loki.

In all the footage I’ve seen from the TV series I can’t immerse myself at all. I just see someone pretending to be Loki and not even that convincingly. I see Tom Hiddleston. I see actors on a set. And because of that I can’t emotionally engage with the story. And I certainly can’t accept it as new Loki content.

I also agree Loki was created through collaboration and Tom definitely was a part of that and it’s really pointless to speculate about what exactly went wrong here. Certainly a lot of people were involved in this production - including Kevin Feige. It’s not like everyone else was trying to make something super serious. And having a writer who characterizes Loki as “proper and pompous” and an “ass” and who therefore writes him that way can’t have helped.

But certainly in addition to a bad script the performance rings false and even if you view it by-itself without the context of the previous movies it feels cringey somehow. I’d say maybe Tom is just bad at comedy except I’VE SEEN HIM DO COMEDY. AS LOKI!!! Loki’s hilarious. Watch the whole scene where he and Thor are escaping in TDW. It’s really funny and Tom’s comedic timing and delivery and use of expression etc. makes it that way. It’s one of the funniest bits int he MCU imho. Same for a lot of other funny Loki moments in Avengers and TDW. So I know he can be funny. And I know he can be funny as Loki.

Was Tom over-directed or under-directed? (Edit: Given how utterly unqualified Kate has shown herself to be in her interviews, and that Tom has no problem playing Loki live without a director to help, I lean towards “over directed”). Could he not figure out what to do with a subpar script, was he under pressure from the higher ups, is this just what he wanted to do, or is this what he thought audiences wanted? There’s no way to tell. Certainly no one involved in the production will ever criticize it as their contracts forbid it so we won’t ever know.

And it doesn’t really matter. As a viewer I care about results. And the result is that I don’t see Loki. I see an actor doing a bad imitation of him.

Which is an extremely strange way to feel given that it’s the same actor who’s been playing him all along. And a talented one too! He played Hamlet for crying out loud. And yet when I watch this I don’t even see Loki being out of character. I don’t see Loki at all. I just see an actor acting silly while pretending to be him.

alwida10

I don’t see Loki at all, just Tom with back hair. It’s partly due to the plain (and ugly, ugh) human cloths and Tom’s actual hair instead of a decent wig like in TDW, but for the most of it it’s just Loki’s whole demeanour that is wrong. No elegance, no grace, not cool sarcastic comeback event after a bad turn of events for him (now it’s all very theatrical), no sly smile and/or menacing/powerful look in his eyes etc.

Exactly, @lilithscontemplations! I thought just the same.

But the thing that made me cringe repeatedly during the series is that several other people do give off a lot of Loki vibes! Sylvie for example. And President Loki! And that makes me so furious! They knew how to make a good impression of Loki. They just decided against it. The show even includes some meta-aspects I would have loved if it wasn’t tainted by this utter catastrophe that was TVA-Loki’s portrayal. I mean, look at this:

Its a good portrayal IMHO. I can even hear him talking. But this?

When I first saw it I was like watching Loki transform into Tom.

Or this:

I can’t see Loki in this. I just can’t. It’s Tom with a different hairstyle.

But my criticism on the directing isn’t limited to the portrayal of Loki. It’s just where the problem is most painful. But the TVA itself? Miss Minutes is well done, I’ll admit that much. She communicates the proper amount of eeriness.

But Portraying Möbius as an Angel right before he gives the order to prune the timeline including the child with the kablooey? We are supposed to see him as the good guy here?

So it doesn’t matter he’s sending those people to their deaths? The whole portrayal of Mobius being the good guy while he tortures Loki? I would have preferred Mobius being shown ambiguously. He could have been shown to steel himself before going into the questioning. Or to struggle with ordering the pruning of the child!

Going for the Angel symbolism while making him commit atrocities is sending mixed signals at best. (At worst, it’s fascist propaganda). The whole ‘therapy misconception’ is due to this unclear messaging! People were seeing those interrogations and subconsciously realized they weren’t shown as something bad. So, they had to be good, right? I can only speculate they were afraid people would not like him if he did anything wrong in his life, ever, so they hesitated from giving him a darker beginning and subsequently a redemption.

I mean - it would be weird to go for the ‘people won’t like him if he did anything remotely bad before’ in a series that is exactly about redemption of a guy who did bad things. But if that’s how they see it, it would explain sooo much about the fucked up ‘redemption arc’ they delivered for Loki. 🤦‍♀️

lilithscontemplations

@everything-you-feel-is-real @nikkoliferous @iamnmbr3

You folks are right, there's no use speculating on how Loki came to be and who contributed the most in his creation and evolution. However I do stand by my statement that Tom does like to play this Loki. Does he prefer a bit the Shakespearean one? Maybe, who knows, Tom would never say it on record anyway, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't object to this one at all. He seemed to have so much fun on set and in interviews that I can't believe that anything about this project bothered him much. Yes, I know he is always good at parsing everything and everyone but he just seems so genuinely relaxed and happy that I can't believe he's faking any of it. Just to be clear, I don't blame him, nor do I consider him responsible for the show we got. Movies and series are always team work and a lot of people are always responsible for both a good and a bad outcome and I think as an actor his contribution to the overall tone and story was minor if any. I am a bit disappointed, probably because of all those old interviews where he spoke of Loki with such enthusiasm and sympathy that I truly believed that's his an my ideas of Loki were similar. I guess I was wrong.

@iamnmbr3 Yes, Tom can do comedy and I've especially heard his comedy-timing being praised more than once. We see it in some of his movies but also fans who had the chance to see him perform live on stage said that he is very good at it. (And let's not forget that little promo gem for TDW by Comedy Central with the 3 little kids). However it all depends on the director/writer. If they want that kind of more sophisticated comedy in their movie/series/play Tom will deliver brilliantly. On the other hand if they want something with more gags it seems Tom will take inspiration from his favourite comedy which is Ace Ventura (he said it on more than one occasion). It was a bit surprising to me that someone who likes and praises Shakespeare so much can also like slapstick comedy a lot but Tom has proven more than once that he has a vast range of very different interests, lol (he also once mentioned a German comedy he liked and whose name I can't recall bit I checked the trailer back then and it seemed to also be some kind of very cringe "funny" movie).

@alwida10 I agree, we do see glimpses of original Loki in other variants. I think that Classic Loki had a few moments too. Sylvie really bugged me though. She has in fact been given quite a few "Loki" lines and moments and moves and even his clothes ffs (can I just say how salty I am that Loki didn't get to wear his asgardian costume, not even once!) but I just didn't get any Loki vibes form her despite that she was given more Loki attributes than anyone. For the most part that character felt to me like a delusional human believing they are Loki so much they even wear the original Loki cloths. As @iamnmbr3 said it all feel like very cheap cosplay. I fact in many moments I felt like I was watching an early, completely unpolished, rehearsal for what was supposed to be the Loki series, you know the type of rehearsal where they just try to see what are the best angles, if they have memorised the choreography and stuff like that without really trying to deliver the lines right.

One thing has been annoying me particularly these days is Loki's make-up. It's so messed up. His forehead is constantly full of lines and cracks, the tone of his skin is all wrong and there seem to be many little imperfections all over his face. For the whole duration of the show I actually thought that Tom's skin has deteriorated so much that even make-up can't hide it. I even started to think that he might in fact be too old to play Loki. And then the behind the scenes footage came up and there is nothing wrong with Tom's face! He looks just as good as always. I fact in those moments when he is rehearsing he fight choreography he looks more like Loki than he looks in the series. Same things about his hair. In the series it looks awful: greasy, moving unnaturally and more often than not messed up like has never heard of that state of the art technology known as the comb. Again I attributed that to Tom's natural hair being all wrong for Loki. And yet in the BTS/Loki interviews Tom's black hair seem quite nice, shiny, soft, well groomed and moving very naturally. It's perfectly acceptable Loki hair (although I do prefer the TDW wig) So WFT did they do?! I really don't want to subscribe to the theories that they have been trying to systemically destroy Loki but after seeing this I am just baffled how they couldn't even get the make up and hair right when even without any of it Tom looks close enough to Loki.

#loki series negativity

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