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Marvel

Loki, Ep. 6: For All Time. Always.

It’s the end (for now) of our episode-by-episode look at Loki.  As always, spoilers lie in wait, threatening evil and ruin.

Years ago, back when I’d find myself in a movie theater two or three times a week, I took in a late showing of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (2004).  It was a week night in a suburban theater, so but for one other fellow way on the other side of the room, I had the place to myself.  If you’re unaware or have never seen it, Passion concerns itself with the last day of Jesus’ life, culminating with his crucifixion.  Gibson’s movie runs 127 minutes, including credits, and I’d wager that at least 90 of those minutes are given over to flesh-shredding, blood-spattering, bone-cracking mayhem and torture of the most graphic sort.  If mainstream American filmgoers have ever been exposed to a movie more relentlessly cruel and violent than this one, I can’t imagine what it might be.  There are virtually no concessions to audience expectation.  Passion‘s dialogue is primarily in Aramaic, a dialect that very few people still speak…and by some accounts I’ve read, Gibson had to be persuaded to add subtitles!  Nor are there any accommodations made to catch anyone up on the story or provide any context.  If you know the details and the principle characters surrounding Jesus’ arrest and death, great; if you don’t, too bad.  I remember sitting there in the theater, watching this deeply strange and unsettling film, and thinking:  Who the fuck is this movie for?  Like, seriously…who’s the intended audience for this thing?

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Marvel

Loki, Ep 5: Journey into Mystery

Our episode-by-episode examination of Loki continues, served up with a side of spicy spoilers topped with a hot ‘n unholy scoop of more spoilers.  Beware!

What are we doing here?

Had you taken yourself to a comic book store to find some Loki-related material on the day that the fifth episode of Loki was released, the most recent comic you’d have found featuring the God of Mischief would’ve been Mighty Valkyries #3 (Aug 2021).  Released three weeks before, it was written by Jason Aaron and Torunn Gronbekk, with art by Mattia De Iulis, Erica D’Urso, and Marcio Menyz.  In that book, you’d have found Loki enmeshed in a scheme cooked up by Karnilla, former Queen of the Norns and current co-Queen of the Dead, to create new life — new gods — down in Hel.  Oh, those tricky Norns!

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Marvel

Loki, Ep. 4: The Nexus Event

Welcome to our continuing episode-by-episode examination of Loki.  As always, there are spoilers ahead.

Writing Opposite of Cool is a weird mix of love and assessment, investment and detachment.  It usually involves an attempt to accurately view a given thing while standing eyeball-deep in the middle of it.  Film adaptations need to be assessed on their own merits, but when it comes to Marvel, my own intimate familiarity with the source material makes comparison between print and film versions unavoidable.  I’m almost always fighting the urge to deal with the show I wish I was watching instead of the show in front of me.  It’s possible I’d like Loki a lot more if I were coming at it without any prior knowledge…though let’s allow that without prior knowledge, I probably wouldn’t be watching it in the first place.

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Marvel

Loki, Ep. 3: Lamentis

Welcome back to our episode-by-episode examination of Loki.  Spoilers, you say?  Why, yes…and plenty of them!  So be sure to watch the episode first.

With a title like ‘Lamentis,’ a reasonable person might well anticipate this episode of Loki would be all about regrets and the paths not taken.  If you make no claims to being reasonable, I’ve got some good news for you:  the title refers to a planet, and that’s it.  None of that tricky subtextual foreign movie shit going on here, no sir.  What you see is what you get.  No more and maybe even a little less.  And if you do make claims to being reasonable, well…you can go ahead and check your high-falutin’ notions about theme and metaphor at the door.  Trust me, you won’t be needing them.

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Marvel

Loki, Ep. 2: The Variant

Welcome back to our episode-by-episode examination of Loki.  Fair warning, there are spoilers ahead.

Before we start, let’s recognize that Disney’s anti-piracy game is strong.  Whatever brief window there was that allowed me to take screenshots to better explain the visual tricks of the trade is now apparently closed.  I’ll do my best to work around it, but alas…things were a lot easier when I could just grab what I was looking for right from the scene in question.

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Marvel

Loki, Ep. 1: Glorious Purpose

Welcome to our episode-by-episode examination of Loki. Be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

One of the downsides that come with adapting comic book source material into live action movie material is an often unpleasant and entirely unavoidable clash with realism, defined as the quality or fact of representing a person, thing, or situation accurately or in a way that is true to life.  The great strength of comics as a medium lies in its capacity to manipulate perception in specific and distinctive ways:  to distort time at will, expanding or compressing events for narrative effect; to play fast and loose with the visual properties of objects and people (an obvious plus for super-hero stories); and the incorporation of more than one point of view at a time, something I think might be unique to comics.