so i saw some people discussing how loki in ragnarok shouldnât have been at all phased or subverted by dr. strange â which i agree with, but also, hey, itâs comedic and you can argue that he was taken off-guard, but upon re-watch, something stuck out to me â
thereâs this moment when they appear at the bottom of the stairs and thor rolls down the last couple and stands up and he says
we couldâve just walked.
and it made me think of how magic works in terry pratchettâs novels, how (to paraphrase) the hard part wasnât turning someone into a frog, it was not turning someone into a frog when you knew how easy it was.
like, the whole scene with dr. strange is just. all magic. all pointless magic. unnecessary magic, when, well. they could have just walked.
whereas loki doesnât really rely on magic overmuch in the movie â he uses it as a tool, when he needs it, but if the job can be done with plain old non-magical trickery or a knife, he just uses those. he resorts to magic when heâs cornered by valkyrie, he uses it when his goals are most directly accomplished by using magic rather than by other means.
whereas dr. strange is using magic all over his scene, just to use it. just because he can. magic was unnecessary for ninety percent of what he did in that scene, the only time he needed magic was to whisk them away to norway. but he teleported all over the place even when he only needed to move a few feet, gave thor an ever-refilling beer that just spilled everywhere, floated around to make a show of how ~magical~ he was, whenâŠ
he could have just walked.
i mean, iâm very sure that the filmmakers intended it for comedic effect, but thereâs also a layer there of dr. strange being much less comfortable with magic than loki is â loki doesnât need to bust out the magic at every opportunity, itâs simply a skill, a tool that is completely under his control and at his disposal. whereas dr. strange (at least in his scene in ragnarok) is showing off, which reeks of insecurity.
i guess iâm thinking⊠if you take the magic away, loki is still a deadly, formidable opponent with many tricks up his sleeve, but dr. strange is just a guy in a cape.
