what is the deal with the Loki-love?

I can see how the woobification happens there, but considering Loki personally killed Agent Coulson, I don't get it either.

Matt, I think Jensen could easily do a basic New York accent. Especially for a role that's not, you know, on the Sopranos or something.

Damn, I love Thor. It's just big uncomplicated fun.

Exactly! I think part of it for me was that I had zero expectations, knowing nothing about the character or the storyline. It was just delightful. And uncomplicated is totally the right word.

I don't get the woobification of Loki, either.

Me, neither. I felt kind of sorry for him in Thor -- not being told you're adopted, much less from a hated race, is pretty shitty -- but not in a wooobie way.

Of course, one of the people I know who is all WoobieLoki is also hardcore WoobieMoriarity

Well, there is also a lot of that on my dash--maybe the groups overlap a lot? Kind of makes the Karl Urban obsessive there feel nice and fresh, although I have now seen every picture ever taken of him twice at least.

What I don't get about the skinnyization of CE, especially wrt that site last linked, is the affect on background action - people moving in blurs behind him, which you see more of when Evans gets shrunked. I feel like I've entered Bladerunner tech territory, where you can take a picture and look around the angles and corners not shown in the actual shot.

The text explained--everything was shot up to four times:

• Accommodating Chris's shrunked head
• With Chris' Double
• Accommodating everyone else in the scene
• Without Chris or his double

Which I understand barely makes sense. But when they acted with SkinnySteve, he had dots on his chin for where his eyes are supposed to be, and everyone else had dots on the top of their head for Skinny Steve to look up to and make a connection with.

And the coverage you're seeing is from #2 or #4. They just paint that in when they finish warping Steve small.

I enjoyed Captain America, and from a not-American perspective, the treatment of jingoism didn't bother me. (I enjoyed it more than Thor, which of course, if I were to get my own jingoism on, should probably be reversed.)

Loki, to me, was the Master from Doctor Who (especially Anthony Ainley's Master). He had the veneer of urbanity hiding some psychotic anger management issues; wears his ego on his sleeve; he's smart, but not as smart as he thinks; he has zero threat assessment capacity (it was when he caught Hawkeye's exploding arrow and decided to keep it that I decided it was the same character); his goal, of course, is world domination, and there's the whole "if I can't have it, nobody can!" vibe; he likes using other alien races for muscle; at least one of his adversaries seems more interested in forgiving him than stopping him (which doesn't actually make him look more formidable); and, finally, he seems to spend a lot of time having to escape from one prison or another.

(Oh, and there's also the mind control thing. They both like that.)

Loki didn't ping me at all in Thor, but I thought he was very hot in certain moments in The Avengers. Maybe it was the increased snark.

I still have to catch up on the 900 or so posts that I skimmed over, but I loved The Avengers. Although, I think I liked Cabin in the Woods more.

I posed the questions of "what was his motivation/plan" on IO9, and pretty much no two people had the same answer. Some suggested you look to Thor for the answer, then there was taking over the world, or destroying it...basically more answers than I think a good comic book movie should have.

Not that there isn't supposed to be room for interpretation--that's a good thing, to a certain point. But when a bunch of geeks who OCD over the movie and have seen it multiple times can't agree on "what did the villain want to accomplish", it's, well, it's clear that the antagonist isn't Loki, the antagonist is a combination of all the roadblocks to the Avengers functioning as a team, and he's just a catalyst.

Which is basically fine--having the villain not be what the protagonists must overcome to succeed, but I think for form's sake, that you should flesh him out at least that much. Not saying it has to be the focus, but just have enough dimension for that to be clear to more people.

Also, the explanation that he's getting back at his father is totally dependent on another movie, and not even a movie in Joss' control. I think Iron Man managed to function completely within this movie, and that Loki (and Thor) should do so too.

she's my running favourite for Wonder Woman...

Running favorite, hell - ain't no one else in that game, as far as I'm concerned.

I have no Loki love. In fact, I have a hard time appreciating Hiddleston for the charmer he is, due to my extreme lack of Loki love. As for motivation, maybe he'd been watching the earth for a long time (explaining his familiarity with customs) and when he couldn't be king of Asgard, hatched a plot to rule this "weaker" world. And I could see that time chilling with The Other and Thanos and the Chitauri in whatever fuck dark realm that was could warp a guy further. In conclusion, ::jazz hands::.

eta ha! x-post with ita !