Cut Scenes From Thor 1 Reveal Loki is the Victim, Not the Villain
I find it really interesting that the first Thor film ended up cutting out a lot of the context for why Loki acted the way he did. And yet the film ended up adding context to the one part in the script that lacked it. After the Bifrost has been destroyed and Thor and Loki have been flung over the edge, Odin keeps them from falling. In the script, no words are spoken between Loki and Odin, and the stage direction just leaves it up to the actors to convey Loki’s want of approval and then Odin’s lack of it. The film adds the “I could have done it, Father! For you!” “No, Loki,” dialogue to fully explain why Loki lets go. After an entire film of cutting out the explanations and reasonings for why Loki acts the way he does, suddenly they add this in. Why this moment?
Let’s go back to the beginning to see if we can shed some light on why this might be.
They cut out a scene where Thor is getting ready to be coronated and Loki comes to see him. Thor makes a joke at his expense (“Some do battle, others just do tricks”), Loki’s feelings are hurt so he fills a goblet with eels, then Loki compliments Thor, and Thor says, “You’re incapable of sincerity.” Loki says, with all the sincerity in the world, “You’re my brother and my friend. Sometimes I’m envious, but never doubt that I love you.” I love this scene; in this moment, Loki is nowhere near the villain he becomes—he’s just Thor’s overlooked little brother. I can understand why they would ultimately cut this scene, as the audience would have sympathized with Loki right out of the gate, and they wanted to set him up as the villain in both this film and in The Avengers and beyond. But in cutting this scene, they lost a big moment of character development for both Loki and Thor. Thor comes off here as an asshole, making fun of his brother and accusing him of insincerity when Loki is there to be supportive, and Loki comes off as a sensitive guy constantly put down by his older brother. They actually filmed this scene and then cut it, but some scenes never even made it that far.
They also cut out the scene where Heimdall and Thor both cut Loki off and talk over him when they’re headed off to Jotunheim. Volstagg throws a snarky comment his way and then Loki replies with a comment about Volstagg’s weight. What only made it into the movie was Volstagg’s comment about Loki’s silver tongue turning to lead, with no context as to why that was said or what was said after. Bullying at its finest, which does gain some sympathy for Loki, but for a lot of viewers, that sympathy disappears as soon as it’s clear that Loki is responsible for letting the Frost Giants into Asgard (and the various other things he does in this film).
Another scene that was cut was when Loki goes back to Jotunheim after Thor has been banished and Odin has fallen into Odinsleep. He approaches Laufey and Laufey grabs his throat. Loki turns blue, much to the astonishment of the Frost Giants present, and Loki says, “Hello, Father.” It seems like he’s searching for at least the care and approval of his biological father, but Laufey calls him his “bastard son,” says Odin should have killed him, and calls him weak. Loki jumps to defend himself, saying he’s not weak and that “perhaps you should not have so carelessly abandoned me.” I feel like this is the moment Loki decides to betray Laufey. If Laufey had been pleased to see him and had taken him into the fold as his son, I feel like there would have been the possibility that Loki would have formed a true allegiance with the Frost Giants and let Laufey kill Odin. But what happened was that Loki sought out his real father for some sort of approval (that’s what he was seeking the entire film), was rejected, and so then decided to put on a front of allying with the Frost Giants with betrayal being the ultimate goal. All Loki wants is a father that approves of him.
Another thing that wasn’t necessarily cut out was in the scene where Loki sends the Destroyer to kill Thor. In the script, Loki has transformed into a raven and watches Thor’s “Brother, for whatever I have done to wrong you” speech. At least, Loki being the raven is heavily implied since the script says the raven is “watching the scene.” And since we know Loki is a shapeshifter, it’s a good bet that Loki is, indeed, that raven. Additionally, without the first scene of Loki complimenting Thor and Thor putting him down for it, Thor speech here seems justified, since we haven’t seen Thor really do anything mean to Loki; Thor is the victim, and we are meant to see it that way. But if that first scene had been in the movie… well, Thor becomes less of the victim and more of the bully who is getting his comeuppance. Had the scene before the coronation been included, it would have been fairly obvious exactly what Thor had done to wrong Loki in some way, because if Loki’s entire childhood was like that (and I suspect it most definitely was), then Loki has every right to be angry and upset and hurt (finding out he was a Frost Giant just accelerated his feelings of anger and betrayal tenfold and really kickstarted his whole villain arc). Whether or not he should be trying to obliterate Thor completely is a different matter entirely.
Now we come back to the end. Loki says, “I never wanted the throne. I only wanted to be your equal. Now fight me!” He’s desperate to fight Thor, to show him that he may do tricks, but can also do battle—Thor needles him with this line at the beginning of the script and it feels like this is something Thor has said before, probably while they were growing up. That would absolutely make sense considering that when Thor and Loki fight, the script says: “The two battle—Loki unleashing years of pent-up rage and jealousy, Thor having no choice but to defend himself.” Skipping the battle, then Thor destroys the Bifrost and Odin saves them from falling. So we circle back to this moment. The script only says, “Loki searches his father’s face, looking for some kind of approval, some kind of redemption, but all he sees is disappointment and regret. Loki lets go.” The movie adds in the dialogue. So why here? After a film painting Loki as the villain (thanks to the cut scenes), they decide to throw in some dialogue that helps explain Loki’s motives—he just wants to please Odin. I’m thinking the filmmakers wanted to throw in a sympathy card for Loki, but didn’t want the audience to feel too sympathetic, considering he was being set up to be the main villain in The Avengers, so they cut the scenes showing Loki being bullied by Thor and Volstagg, which would have painted Loki as a very sympathetic character. Either way, they took care to write in a character not fully bad and not fully good, a character with the possibility of redemption, a character that undergoes an identity crisis and struggles to cope, and a character that has a complicated past that leads to a complicated future. And I am grateful for that.
Even so, I would have loved to see the movie with all these cut scenes kept in. I think it really would have thrown the Loki as the cold-hearted villain presentation off kilter.
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