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I wonder if the TVA covers it overhead by renting out the "get verbally abused, slapped, and kicked in the nuts by Lady Sif over and over again" room to gentlemen with very particular tastes. You know that scene was somebody's very special thing. I have been on the internet too long and it has made me a wretched creature.
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Jul 1, 2021 06:03
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TheBigBudgetSequel posted:His switch from jovial buddy cop mode to "you betrayed me, go get kicked in the nuts by Lady Sif for a bit" is so goddamn. Seeing him disappointed/angry is like actually kind of upsetting He was just excellent when he was confronted by Ravonna and the other agents. When his bluff failed and he immediately switched to angry and defiant and didn't back down in the face of being purged. But he's been so great this whole series.
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Jul 1, 2021 06:24
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Sylvie saying she was "born the Goddess of Mischief" was a big oof moment for me. Sure, there's a way for that to be interpreted as a trans-positive statement, but given this is Disney I highly doubt that's what was intended. When we first met Sylvie it felt like they were finally acknowledging Loki's genderfluidity. Now by implying Sylvie was always female (despite frost giants being ungendered) it feels like they're actively trying to erase Loki's gender diversity from the MCU. It feels super gross. On another note, I found it odd how one of the Time Keepers calls Sylvie (or possibly both of them) "a cosmic disappointment". Calling someone a disappointment indicates you had hopes or expectations for them. They could just be referring to becoming a variant in the first place, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's more to that statement.
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Jul 1, 2021 06:26
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It does feel a little unclear what exactly a Variant is. Originally it was portrayed as anyone who made an unexpected choice that transgressed against the Sacred Timeline. Under that model, things supported the reading that Sylvie was trans. But if she's afab...? Now that we've seen the other Lokii, it feels weird to believe that any of them started as the vanilla MCU version. If Variants are simply alternate realities, it conflicts with the show's themes of personal choice over destiny.
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Jul 1, 2021 06:41
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I think that's the entire point of the show is that it's unclear what variants are.
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Jul 1, 2021 06:45
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Crocodiles.
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Jul 1, 2021 07:19
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Is there any doubt that Mobius was a jetski dealer before TVA?
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Jul 1, 2021 07:32
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Squidster posted:It does feel a little unclear what exactly a Variant is. Originally it was portrayed as anyone who made an unexpected choice that transgressed against the Sacred Timeline. Under that model, things supported the reading that Sylvie was trans. But if she's afab...? I'll say what I said before again. Because it's dealing with time it's pretty possible that variants exist for ages before they get picked up. TVA sees the red line but it takes them (subjective) 5 minutes to handle and in the actual splintered timeline 30 years has passed, giving us those variant adult lokis.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:14
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The guy who purged Mobius. He wasn't like Hydra in the main timeline was he? I guess he just has that same hairstyle as one of the Hydra people. It would be cool if it was as it would sort of explain why Mobius could give some "you're all variants" bombshells in front of these other hunters and these particular brands of hunters happened to be Hydra operative variants who simply signed up with the next bigger world/universe domination organization are are totally cool with knowing they are variants and are able to keep a secret or two.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:51
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Taear posted:I'll say what I said before again. This makes no sense on many levels, but neither does anything else to do with any form of time travel or multiverse, especially on this particular show. You really just have to completely turn off your brain to enjoy it, because if you think about anything even slightly, none of it makes any sense at all.
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Jul 1, 2021 09:08
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This show makes my brain hurt. I can't decide if I love or hate it, and half the time the stuff I hated in one episode is the stuff I love in another.
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Jul 1, 2021 09:33
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I gotta say this show is for me doing a pretty good job of not making the time travel stuff feel too confusing or contradictory, like I don't really feel like it's creating big huge headachey paradoxes. When I watched Tenet I legit had a migrane for like 2 days because my brain couldn't stop trying to make sense of it all. I mean, there's still time for it to go into 'the end is also the beginning' territory. One of the characters is literally called Moebius. volts5000 posted:This is my current working theory, and I'll spoiler the whole thing just to be safe. Just to say I really hope it doesn't turn out to be the case that the TVA made that happen. The only entertainment property that is allowed to do the whole 'the events of the thing before this thing were actually all supposed to happen like that because of an even bigger puppetmaster we are only now introducing' is Metal Gear imo. It just strips out any meaningful conflict from prior stories - which is the whole point of Metal Gear - but would be a shame if Marvel went down this route (although not knowing the comics too well, I'm sure they pull that stunt plenty).
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Jul 1, 2021 10:09
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How the heck did Mr.Strange view 14 million timelines. Was he in time-stasis-shenanigans for 1000 years looking it up? It'd take so long to study that many versions of events
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Jul 1, 2021 10:20
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The Grumbles posted:I gotta say this show is for me doing a pretty good job of not making the time travel stuff feel too confusing or contradictory, like I don't really feel like it's creating big huge headachey paradoxes. When I watched Tenet I legit had a migrane for like 2 days because my brain couldn't stop trying to make sense of it all. See I think it's doing the exact same thing Tenet did. Being super vague and non-committal about the internal rules of the universe, and settling for that being a smokescreen inferring that there's more going on than what you can see. That way the writers don't have to do any real work to justify how they choose to kick the plot down the road.
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Jul 1, 2021 10:20
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Is the TVA racist against non-humans because they only employ humans, or are they racist against humans because from what we've seen they seem to be disproportionately targeting humans
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Jul 1, 2021 11:26
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DaveKap posted:Can someone do me a favor and explain why Richard E Grant is someone everyone's excited about? I looked up what he's known for and I've never watched any of those films other than Hudson Hawk. I only know him from Dispatches from Elsewhere, but he was great in that.
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Jul 1, 2021 11:26
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The Grumbles posted:I mean, this [the idea that there are no stakes in Loki] describes every single piece of media in the MCU to be honest It...does? Why? How? A more common compliant I can at least understand is "the stakes in these movies are so far beyond human experience they're alien", but the D+ shows are mostly human stakes, so I don't even see how you can complain about that in Loki. The stakes in the show are Loki literally being recognized as a being allowed to exist and to have a future of some kind, as well as now maybe having a future for Sylvie too. You could extend that out to whether Loki is allowed to be more than the villain of someone else's story, and have some self determination. That's some pretty relatable, human stuff though either way. The show also deals with a huge, time spanning organization it might eventually be destroying, but that's the kind of over the top stakes people complain about a lot, and a lot less important to the character than securing some kind of future for himself. By the same token, Captain America & The Winter Soldier was about Sam deciding whether he wanted to follow in someone else's legacy or not and Bucky trying to get over some trauma. There were larger stakes around the Flagsmashers, but the primary stakes of the story were smaller, personal stakes around legacy and trauma. And WandaVision was about grief. Hell, the larger stakes never really stretched beyond the borders of one podunk town in New Jersey, so even the wider stakes weren't that big. The Grumbles posted:I'm just thinking in terms of pure storytelling, which often feels hamstrung by the obvious vested interest in their cast. Like, killing off the lead character half way through their series would have felt incredibly bold and exciting, and it did seem for a moment like that's where they'd gone with this. I don't really have a disagreement with this, but I would say that I think Sylvie's revelation last episode that all the TVA members are former variants means that pruned people basically had to survive in some fashion as is, so I didn't find Loki getting pruned and then waking up somewhere else surprising personally. I don't think the show was intentionally creating the impression that "maybe our Loki is dead and now Sylvie is replacing him", and that's why they were happy to reveal Loki woke up somewhere else so quickly after being pruned. I do hope it means Sylvie finds her Odin, her Freya etc. at some point and can have some slice of happiness back. I do think in a show about alternate timelines and alternate universes like this, maybe people were hoping it'd happen and that Tom Hiddleston would either be bowing out of the MCU finally, or stepping back to a smaller role in shows like What If...? that deal with multiverses, and that Sylvie would be replacing him since our Loki has been around so long, and already apparently died several times. Which is a pretty reasonable hope, I think and might still happen. It probably won't, but Sylvie or other variants might at least might survive in some fashion and pop up in other works beyond Loki's second season. Marsupial Ape posted:I suggested exactly what you are proposing a page or two back and immediately got shot down. Group consensus is that you have be biologically be Loki to be Loki in your timeline. I don’t make the rules, I just cynically enforce them. You were shot down because you suggested being a Loki could be a title rather than someone being born Loki. Which doesn't mean all Loki are genetically identically, only that a being is named Loki as a personal name (and probably have some similarities in their background) rather than a social title literally anyone could be given at any time. Squidster posted:Now that we've seen the other Lokii, it feels weird to believe that any of them started as the vanilla MCU version. If Variants are simply alternate realities, it conflicts with the show's themes of personal choice over destiny. Well, going by the trailers it appears that "President" Loki is a different Loki to our Loki, and that some Loki are more similar to our Loki than other Loki since that Loki is played by Tom Hiddleston, and appears to be divergent from him based on "what if Loki won in Avengers"; so the show appears to be doing both. Some Loki that are just divergent based on a given character's personal choice, while others diverged thousands or even millions of years ago based on other people's choices or minor inorganic variations continuing to butterfly effect out. Taear posted:I'll say what I said before again. When Sylvie was in the elevator this episode, on the way down to see the Timekeepers with Loki and Ravonna, she asks Ravonna what created the nexus event that flagged her to the TVA. It implies that a variant can exist benignly without triggering the TVA's alarms and it's only when some choice or other is divergent that the TVA step in. At a guess, it's possible that while many someone may look different to their otherworldly counterpart, they're all expected to act roughly similar (i.e. be the villain in Thor's story due to feeling inadequate in Loki's case) and that it's only when one of them makes a choice that takes them outside these boundaries that the TVA steps in. So you end up with lots of timelines that look completely different, but are virtually identical in terms of the things happening in them. It could just be a case of "don't think too hard about it" though. tsob fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 11:32
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Frankenstyle posted:See I think it's doing the exact same thing Tenet did. Being super vague and non-committal about the internal rules of the universe, and settling for that being a smokescreen inferring that there's more going on than what you can see. That way the writers don't have to do any real work to justify how they choose to kick the plot down the road. I guess for me it feels more like they can get away with it more here - to be able to just say like 'this place exists kind of outside but adjacent to time and the universe' because it's also a comic book universe that includes things like demons and wizards. Whereas Tenet's whole vibe is 'this is completely plausible in a real world context with the addition of this one technology' - and in Tenet there's a lot of moving about within the one timeline. Like, I don't think they're being vague, I think they're just keeping it super simple, for now. Everything in TVA-land moves in one direction, but from within the TVA pocket universe you can dip into wherever you want in the multiverse, however time in the TVA still moves forward at the same pace relative to you. If you muck about and change things when you time travel, you'll probably end up creating a new branching continuity. I think for me, if/when people start time travelling within the TVA's continuity, thing's will feel a bit more sketchy for me. tsob posted:It...does? Why? How? A more common compliant I can at least understand is "the stakes in these movies are so far beyond human experience they're alien", but the D+ shows are mostly human stakes, so I don't even see how you can complain about that in Loki. The stakes in the show are Loki literally being recognized as a being allowed to exist and to have a future of some kind, as well as now maybe having a future for Sylvie too. You could extend that out to whether Loki is allowed to be more than the villain of someone else's story, and have some self determination. That's some pretty relatable, human stuff though either way. The show also deals with a huge, time spanning organization it might eventually be destroying, but that's the kind of over the top stakes people complain about a lot, and a lot less important to the character than securing some kind of future for himself. I think we're talking in different contexts here - I mean in the sense that, like, of course all the plots are about 'saving the fate of the universe' or whatever, but this isn't Season 1 of Game of Thrones, and watching these characters in peril I never really feel like anyone's in any kind of genuine risk. It's just not that kind of media and it's a different kind of fun.
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Jul 1, 2021 11:46
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One thing to this show's credit is that it's not too concerned with the time travel mechanic; it is "we can travel anywhere in time" and "we can influence events by crossing paths with other travelers" and "one person can keep going back to the same time all the time" and "everything has to be handled in real time" all at the same time. But the show is not getting hung up trying to explain the details to us, so I feel it's a lot more acceptable. It's not trying to say "This makes sense," it's much closer to "Well these are the circumstances they're in, how do they deal with it?" So I'm very willing to just be along for the ride here. This show is worried about the consistency between its characters rather than its time travel. Whereas something like Tenet or Inception, due to how it's framed to the audience, I find myself constantly trying to poke holes in how it all makes sense, because those films keep assuring us that it does.
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Jul 1, 2021 11:56
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The Grumbles posted:I think we're talking in different contexts here - I mean in the sense that, like, of course all the plots are about 'saving the fate of the universe' or whatever, but this isn't Season 1 of Game of Thrones, and watching these characters in peril I never really feel like anyone's in any kind of genuine risk. It's just not that kind of media and it's a different kind of fun. I suppose I can understand that in Tom Hiddleston's case, but I don't feel like that extends to anyone else in the show and I wouldn't be surprised if Mobius, Ravonna, Hunter B-15 or especially Sylvie dies. She's a love interest for Loki and an other dimensional being, so I would be more surprised (happily so, but all the same) if she lived. I definitely felt a pang of fear this episode when B-15 lit her baton and demanded to be left in to see her, for instance. At the same time though, I think that's a bit of a weird complaint in a general sense, because most shows don't really ever treat their leads like they're in genuine danger and one of the reasons Game of Thrones hit so hard in the social consciousness is specifically because none of the main characters felt safe.
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Jul 1, 2021 11:58
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We also still need to see her postman
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Jul 1, 2021 12:04
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Special guest appearance by Kevin Costner
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Jul 1, 2021 12:10
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Martytoof posted:Is there any doubt that Mobius was a jetski dealer before TVA? It's going to be more about how he died than anything.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:11
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tsob posted:I suppose I can understand that in Tom Hiddleston's case, but I don't feel like that extends to anyone else in the show and I wouldn't be surprised if Mobius, Ravonna, Hunter B-15 or especially Sylvie dies. She's a love interest for Loki and an other dimensional being, so I would be more surprised (happily so, but all the same) if she lived. I definitely felt a pang of fear this episode when B-15 lit her baton and demanded to be left in to see her, for instance. At the same time though, I think that's a bit of a weird complaint in a general sense, because most shows don't really ever treat their leads like they're in genuine danger and one of the reasons Game of Thrones hit so hard in the social consciousness is specifically because none of the main characters felt safe. I mean, GoT is an extreme example, but the MCU is definitely on the other end of the spectrum to it for me. There are the good and there are the bad and the good will win given enough screentime. I think the various marvel bits play it safe to varying degrees - Infinity War was essentially a string of fight scenes in which character A is about to land the killing blow on character B before character C quips in in the nick of time - but it's broader stuff like even if a character dies they're not truly gone, a hero isn't gonna do a heel turn and turn into a villain for the sake of an interesting story, your expectations aren't really gonna get subverted too hard, etc. We're definitely in an age of TV where a lot of amazing stories are being told that do all that, and have for some time (see: every prestige/HBO style drama in the past 20 years). I don't wanna go down this path and completely take over the thread so you'll probs just have to accept that for me, MCU narrative is storytelling with the guardrails all the way up. I don't think that's even a complaint because these films and TV shows are largely designed for the broadest possible audience, but doesn't mean they can't also be fun to watch. Artelier posted:One thing to this show's credit is that it's not too concerned with the time travel mechanic; it is "we can travel anywhere in time" and "we can influence events by crossing paths with other travelers" and "one person can keep going back to the same time all the time" and "everything has to be handled in real time" all at the same time. But the show is not getting hung up trying to explain the details to us, so I feel it's a lot more acceptable. It's not trying to say "This makes sense," it's much closer to "Well these are the circumstances they're in, how do they deal with it?" That's a good way of putting it. And it helps so far that it's keeping it all relatively simple, too. Unlike things like Tenet or Primer, I don't feel the need to look up someone's ginned up diagram to figure out what the hell just happened or how it all makes sense - so I'm more willing to just go along with the ride.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:13
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The Grumbles posted:I don't wanna go down this path and completely take over the thread so you'll probs just have to accept that for me, MCU narrative is storytelling with the guardrails all the way up. I don't think that's even a complaint because these films and TV shows are largely designed for the broadest possible audience, but doesn't mean they can't also be fun to watch. I wouldn't have anything more to add or argue anyway and I can see where you're coming from. I don't even disagree in general, though, as I said, I think there's enough stakes with secondary characters that it never feels like an issue for me personally but I can definitely see where the observation that it never feels like "bad will win in some fashion" within a given work lies when you talk about stakes in that context.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:18
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Casting Richard E. Grant and making him wear that costume and play it 100% seriously is worth every dollar spent on the production of the show.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:49
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The Grumbles posted:I guess for me it feels more like they can get away with it more here - Yeah I didn't mean to sound so much like "That's an invalid cheap trick" as much as I did. Being vague to give yourself some wiggle room with the plot is fine if you're a bit clever about it and have some sort of internal logic going on. Honestly the time stuff isn't one of the things that bugs me too much with Loki, but it could use just a slightly more clear framework to hang the story on.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:11
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A few things occured to me, not sure if they've been mentioned already but that's clearly not the first time Mobius has been erased, he's figured out before that he's a variant. . Also President Loki is going to end up being behind it all, and he's the one who sent Ravonna and the other hunters after Sylvie and the other Lokis to wipe out potential competition.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:31
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Zzulu posted:How the heck did Mr.Strange view 14 million timelines. Was he in time-stasis-shenanigans for 1000 years looking it up? It'd take so long to study that many versions of events MS Excel. The Eye of Agamotto lets you do some sick poo poo with pivot tables.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:33
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Mooseontheloose posted:It's going to be more about how he died than anything. *slaps seat of jet ski* You can start so many nexus events on this bad boy
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Jul 1, 2021 13:40
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:A few things occured to me, not sure if they've been mentioned already but that's clearly not the first time Mobius has been erased, he's figured out before that he's a variant. . Also President Loki is going to end up being behind it all, and he's the one who sent Ravonna and the other hunters after Sylvie and the other Lokis to wipe out potential competition. The only shots we get of [trailer spoilers for unreleased episodes]President Loki make him seem like he's the fading ruler of a crumbling empire; he's wearing clothes with some kind of fabric spilling out of them, like they're fairly old and worn, he only has a dozen or so people supporting him in one scene, all of whom are in fairly disparate and mismatched outfits and who immediately turn on him and if he's ruler of the apocalyptic New York we see then his world's not going to great. Which doesn't imply great things for him. It all makes him look pretty small time. That said, there are shots of a Loki in the throne room of Asgard and I swear I remember a shot of him approaching something like the UN with delegates lining either side of an aisle (though I can't recall from what), so he might have started out in a better shape and his selfish rule has just hosed the world and left him stranded on Earth with no way home to Asgard. If it even survives. Hela may have won in that timeline. That said, I just re-watched the latest Shang Chi trailer and I'm still really curious if the woman that is now revealed to be his mother is going to be an Iron-Fist. The yellow color scheme in her scenes really seems like it's calling to it, even if they don't go with her being related to Kun Lun. It'd be pretty dope if they did though, since it'd tie Shang Chi into that whole 7 Cities of Heaven thing if they wanted to explore that at some point too. I know the dragon at the end is probably Fin Fang Foom, but Iron Fist is so prevalent on my mind after the first trailer that I thought it was Shao Lou the Undying initially. tsob fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 13:43
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I got the impression that Sylvie's going to be the main character now. Loki and the Lokis will ultimately play a role in her plan to bring down the TVA. And maybe this teaches our Loki to be more humble or something.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:36
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I think I figured out a thing. The redline? It's Loki's death. That's why it spiked so suddenly when they accepted Armageddon, and that's why pruning isn't erasure from existence A little more tenuous, but the reset charge doesn't seem to destroy the entire timeline branch, just certain things in it. Maybe someone is trying to replace Loki as part of the ongoing timeline wars?.. Come to think of it, they very conveniently didn't show if a reset charge was set during the Armageddon even though it was hurtling toward redline
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Jul 1, 2021 14:42
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tsob posted:That said, I just re-watched the latest Shang Chi trailer and I'm still really curious if the woman that is now revealed to be his mother is going to be an Iron-Fist. The yellow color scheme in her scenes really seems like it's calling to it, even if they don't go with her being related to Kun Lun. It'd be pretty dope if they did though, since it'd tie Shang Chi into that whole 7 Cities of Heaven thing if they wanted to explore that at some point too. I know the dragon at the end is probably Fin Fang Foom, but Iron Fist is so prevalent on my mind after the first trailer that I thought it was Shao Lou the Undying initially. That's just Michelle Yeoh being Michelle Yeoh.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:47
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jassa posted:Sylvie saying she was "born the Goddess of Mischief" was a big oof moment for me. Sure, there's a way for that to be interpreted as a trans-positive statement, but given this is Disney I highly doubt that's what was intended. I feel like this is a stretch. They never flat out said or even heavily implied Sylvie was trans. We nerds like to try to insert deeper meaning into stuff, and occasionally it bites us in the rear end. Even what we thought was deadnaming could have just been a classic trope 1 2 The fact that she was born a she may have been what caused her to be a variant. It just took a while for it to show up on the TVA's radar (likely due to young children effectively being genderless)
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Jul 1, 2021 14:57
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Technowolf posted:That's just Michelle Yeoh being Michelle Yeoh. Michelle Yeoh being Michelle Yeoh is why she's dressed in yellow and the scene is draped in yellows and greens?
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Jul 1, 2021 14:58
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I had no idea Michelle Yeoh is going to be in Shang Chi, thats great! Does that make her the first person to play two different characters in the MCU?
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Jul 1, 2021 15:06
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The Saddest Rhino posted:We also still need to see her postman I was so proud of my non comic reading but MCU-obsessed wife getting her very own Mephisto moment when she asked “wait, isn’t the silver surfer a messenger who visits apocalypses?”
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Jul 1, 2021 15:12
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Floppychop posted:I feel like this is a stretch. I agree. It's giving Disney way too much credit. They're the company that won't even acknowledge it's own massive gay fanbase.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:12
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tsob posted:Michelle Yeoh being Michelle Yeoh is why she's dressed in yellow and the scene is draped in yellows and greens? It's Michelle Yeoh being Michelle Yeoh being Asian female Loki obviously
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Jul 1, 2021 15:14
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