GB Loki – Slow, Muddled and Badly Written

[geektalk]

Loki, the latest MCU TV show, has turned out to be one of the weakest and most poorly written things Marvel has produced.

 

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what are you going to do

make another show now it’s no secret

that marvel on tv hasn’t exactly

distinguished itself so far

one division started out with an

intriguing premise only to devolve into

a generic cgi

[ __ ] fist with unlikable characters and

extremely questionable moral messages

they’ll never know what you sacrificed

for them

well falcon and the winter soldier

started out as a cgi

ship fest with marginally likable

characters only to devolve into a boring

preachy critical race theory lecture

session

you’ve got to do better senator [ __ ] off

falcon

in fact [ __ ] everyone associated with

this crap

except craft services those guys are

awesome anyway with those out of the way

we come at last to loki

marvel’s third attempt to ruin a popular

established character

by making them do and say things that

their cinematic counterparts never would

while telling a pointless and

unsatisfying story that didn’t need to

be told in the first place

ready too [ __ ] bad because like i

tell tatiana every saturday night i’m

going in hard and fast on this one and

it’s up to you to make the best of it

so pucker up and witness this

loki picks up during the events of

avengers end game where a bit of time

travel shenanigans allows avengers era

loki to escape custody with the

tesseract

but he’s barely launched into his first

ridiculously self-aggrandizing speech

before a bunch of black stormtroopers

show up and body positive space cop

stuns and captures him

i guess we’ll just overlook the fact

that loki is half as guardian

so he’s got superhuman strength

endurance and reflexes and would almost

certainly be able to fend off an attack

like this

gotta get whatever passes for a plot

moving i suppose

so body positive space cop takes loki to

diverse commander lady where he’s found

guilty of crimes against the time

variants authority

and sentenced to be erased from

existence what the [ __ ] is the tva you

may ask

well the short version is that there

used to be a bunch of different

timelines

kind of like parallel universes or

whatever but then it all got a bit out

of hand and they started fighting each

other

when the [ __ ] would you go to war

against a different branch of existence

that has absolutely no impact on your

own

don’t know the upshot is that three

giant space lizards

somehow found a way to amalgamate all

these different multiverses into one

single timeline and they created the tva

to maintain the integrity of it

and if anyone else is getting umbrella

academy vibes from all of this then rest

assured you’re not alone

anyway the tva’s main role is to hunt

down variants

individuals who deviate from the correct

flow of events and threaten the

integrity of the timeline

how the [ __ ] would you even begin to

monitor something as infinitely vast and

complex as the universe

we’re literally trillions of possible

outcomes are decided every single

nanosecond

how do the space lizards decide what the

correct flow of events should be

doesn’t this mean that absolutely

nothing that’s happened up to this point

actually means anything

because free will doesn’t even exist

don’t know

the point is that loki’s escape with the

tesseract altered the timeline and

marked him out as a variance

wait shouldn’t tony stark be erased

since he’s the one who invented the time

machine

now look he’s all set to be erased from

history when owen wilson comes in with

an offer he can’t refuse

help them to hunt down a particularly

tricky variant they’ve been struggling

to apprehend and maybe they’ll spare his

life hmm i wonder why they want

him in particular for a job like this

what is it about

this isn’t about you no

way oh wow who could have predicted that

this masked figure would turn out to be

another variant of loki

naturally because this loki’s a female

she’s better than our version in every

possible

way she’s smarter more cunning more

physically capable

better at fighting and of course she has

a tragic backstory to totally justify

her actions in the presence

because as you know no woman is capable

of being evil according to modern

hollywoods

[Laughter]

anyway female loki is out to destroy the

tva

and naturally original loki starts

following her around like an obedient

puppy

until the two of them get stranded on a

planet that’s about to explode

and they also have the hots for each

other which is really weird when you

consider

that they’re literally variations of the

same person

so like if they have sex is that

considered incest or masturbation

but luckily the tvas show up just in the

nick of time and rescue them

an original loki gets trapped in a

punishment time loop where he gets

kicked in the balls over and over again

[ __ ] off show eventually the two loki’s

reunite

get to the space lizards and kill them

but they turn out to be puppets and the

man pulling the strings is actually a

crazy black guy living in a floating

castle at the end of time and space

and he explains that he used to be a

scientist who discovered all the

multiverses and made contact with other

versions of himself

but eventually they fell out and a war

almost wiped out the universe until he

recruited a giant space monster thing to

eat all the other timelines

so that his reality was the only one

left if the other multiverses were

allowed to regrow

it would spawn new versions of himself

that would eventually start the whole

war again

the result is a kind of paradox where

the loki’s have only two choices

either kill him and start a multiversal

war that will result in his eventual

resurrection

or take over themselves and carry on his

work either way

well he wins quite the conundrum if i do

say so myself

but then female loki just says vodka and

kills him anyway an

original loki ends up in a different

reality so that the show can set up the

multiverse of madness

honestly just when i think the mcu can’t

get any dumber or more disrespectful to

its own legacy

along comes something like loki to

totally subvert my expectations

this show is an insult not just to

marvel or its characters but to basic

storytelling

common sense and human intelligence it’s

a perfect example

of what happens when hubris agenda and

greed take priority over storytelling

a show made by people who either don’t

understand or openly hate the very

property they’ve inherited

or simply don’t care about anything

except using them as a platform for

the message loki himself now talks and

acts like a completely different person

falling for obvious deceptions that he

never would have before

making dumb decisions that are totally

inappropriate to the situation or

failing to come up with any logical

plans

contingencies or counters to anything

that’s happening

this version of loki is emotional

short-sighted

impulsive stupid weak needy and gullible

in short a one smart calculating and

formidable character has been

artificially dumbed down

in order to make this [ __ ] [ __ ] show

possible i’ve said before that any

character

no matter how awesome is only ever as

smart as the person writing them

and well make of that what you will but

hey at least he’s bisexual now

as we find out in a blink and you’ll

miss it scene that i’m willing to bet

99 of the audience didn’t even notice or

care about or perhaps another prince

a bit of both i suspect the same as you

oh my god i was literally shaking

not that any of this particularly

matters anyway because really loki is

just a side character in his own show

the real star of this story is female

loki better known as sylvie

a version of him that escaped tva

custody as a child

by stamping on an agent’s foots

and she’s been on the run most of her

life plotting for a way to take revenge

the entire narrative is basically

structured around this character and her

objective

an original loki is just along for the

ride sylvie is the one making all the

major decisions

winning all the important battles

figuring out the most vital clues and

generally driving the plot forward

while original loki just kind of

stumbles along behind her looking

confused

jesus what a [ __ ] waste of an amazing

actor the hallmark of shitty writers is

their inability to elevate their own

mediocre work

either through lack of talent

intelligence or creativity

so instead they resort to tearing down

everyone else to make themselves look

better

like the infinity stones for example

which were set up as some of the most

powerful and destructive objects in the

known universe

only for the tva to use them as

paperweights because that makes the tva

look really cool right

or loki himself who was once a cool and

ruthless antagonist but now he’s a

background character in his own story

constantly getting outsmarted

overpowered and humiliated by a

selection of strong diverse female

characters

honestly this [ __ ] is so [ __ ]

ridiculous and predictable at this point

that it barely even qualifies as

storytelling

it’s just recycling the same formula and

ticking the same boxes

over and over again constantly

belittling and mocking the work of

previous writers

doesn’t just bring down their

accomplishments it diminishes your own

such as they are it implies that you

don’t have enough confidence in your own

work to put it on an equal playing field

and the only way to win is to

retroactively handicap the other players

the problem is that your audience isn’t

as dumb as you they can see exactly what

you’re doing and they know why you’re

doing it

the writing direction and pacing is some

of the worst i’ve seen in any

mcu product ever the first three

episodes are basically an endless stream

of dull conversations over a table

or dull conversations over lunch or dull

conversations over

a drink everyone is always talking

talking

talking but none of them are saying

anything worth listening to

it’s all trite irrelevant repetitive

garbage

like the first episode which is

basically loki talking about his

feelings and insecurities for 45 minutes

eventually admitting that he’s a weak

fragile attention seeker

oh god make it stop remember when

scripts would show characters acting

with a consistent pattern of behavior

and trust the audience to make up their

own minds about them instead of straight

up telling you what their personality is

characters constantly repeat things

they’ve already said reiterate stuff the

audience already knows

and circle back to previous ideas and

conversations without adding anything

new

and it all just smacks of lazy bloated

amateurish writing that desperately

needs to be tightened up

in the hands of talented writers and

directors this show could easily have

been wrapped up in three or four tightly

scripted episodes

instead of this tedious repetitive shite

churned out by talentless hacks that

were happy to stand on the shoulders of

giants and take a [ __ ] all over them in

the process

and what’s funny here is that the show

actually tries to grapple with big

meaty philosophical ideas like the

toppling of dictators leading to a

destructive power vacuum

or the paradoxical choice between secure

servitude and chaotic free will

but because the writers are [ __ ]

idiots the show’s unable to offer any

meaningful insights or solutions to any

of this stuff

it’s just kill the bad guy and hope for

the best the upshot is that loki is

quite simply a waste

a waste of time and money a waste of

talented actors and interesting

characters and a waste of all the years

of hard work that made this show

possible in the first place

the infinity saga was all about hooking

you in and getting you invested but it’s

becoming pretty obvious

that the honeymoon is over now and so is

the fun that came with it

now the mcu is all about quotas messages

and smashing down everything they built

up kind of like the comic book industry

now that i think about

it well if that’s the case they’re

[ __ ] welcome to it i’m just gonna sit

back with a beer and watch it all

burn anyway that’s all i’ve got for

today

go away now

[Author]

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