Episode
3: “What if one superhero fought a different superhero?”
At
last, an episode that answers the timeless question Marvel fans have been
pondering for years—what if Marvel made a show about the Avengers?
Truly
groundbreaking stuff.
This
is one of those episodes that is all about superhero X getting into a fight with
superhero Y because, c'mon, Marvel has never been that great about creating
villains so having the heroes fight each other is about the only way to
generate any excitement or tension. Of course such fights always have to be
justified with a bit of narrative magic, so first we get The Pledge where it
seems like we’re getting a replay of the first Avengers movie, then The Turn,
in which all the Avengers suddenly start dropping dead in various unlikely
scenarios, then The Prestige, when it turns out to be some guy I don’t know
about because I never watched the Ant-Man movies.
All
of this is therefore leading up to the goofy fun of Loki beating up some old
man who is by turns extremely small and then extremely large.
There
are some jokes along the way about Chris Hemsworth having great hair and
smelling like lavender and sight gags like one superhero doing an impression of
the exploding ninja in “Big Trouble in Little China”, all of which kind of
undercuts any sense of seriousness or tension when superheroes start keeling
over faster than anti-vaxxers at a biker rally. Marvel is as quick as ever to
reassure you this is all just a bit of fun and not to take it too seriously.
Q:
What if one of the actresses asked for too much money to use her likeness?
A: Then
Black Widow would stand out as the only one that looks or sounds nothing like
her live action counterpart.
Q:
What if it was super-easy to kill all these superheroes?
A: That’s
the only thing that really stuck with me about this one to be honest. Like man,
Marvel villains must be incredibly incompetent. One old dude wiped the whole
team out in less than 30 minutes.
Q:
What if you did a comedy episode in which a bunch of people die?
A:
Huh. Then the way they die better be pretty amusing or darkly humorous, otherwise
the jokes are going to seem wildly out of place. Poisoned? Shot with an arrow?
Um, hate to tell you show, I ain’t laughing yet. Ironically the Hulk popping
like a giant grape was about the only funny one AND THAT WAS THE ONLY DAMN ONE
WHERE YOU HAD PEOPLE REACT WITH HORROR AND SADNESS.
Q:
What if two superheroes fight?
A:
Then you’d better have a damn good build-up to that fight or lots of fun
interaction between the characters, because as a plot that’s about as tired as
it gets. This one doesn’t do a half-bad job of it—the cracks about Chris’s
pretty-boy image aren’t bad even if tonally bizarre—and Tom Hiddleswagger is as
waggishly charming as ever. But it is, in the end, still just two guys
fighting, and “who would win” questions are the dullest possible ones to ask in
this genre.
Q:
Okay but what if Wolverine fought the Hulk?
A:
Did you even read … I can’t believe you … Wolverine, and it wouldn’t even be
close.
Q:
What if entertainment properties generally face a choice between Exploring
their concept and Exploiting their popularity, and the more the concept gets
tired and played out the more they lean on Exploiting it, such as by endlessly
rehashing old story lines with minor tweaks or bringing back Alfred Molina?
Episode
2: “What if Chadwick Boseman was awesome?”
Well,
any discussion of this episode is probably going to be overshadowed by the fact
that it was the last performance of beloved actor Chadwick Boseman, appearing
here as the beloved superhero T’Challa, prince of the beloved fictional kingdom of
Wakanda.
While
I remain deeply suspicious and cynical about the type of person who has the,
hm, immense self-belief it must take to become a famous actor, I won’t try to
deny the online outpouring of love that met the news of Mr. Boseman’s death.
Again, the Internet does love to go crazy over its Keanu Reeveses and Brendan
Frasers, its Bob Rosses and Steve Irwins, so I take the flood of messages with
a grain of salt, but I figure there’s still gotta be a grain in there
somewhere, and that’s no small thing.
It
does mean that T’Challa, the character, has been utterly overshadowed by
Chadwick Boseman, the actor, probably to the detriment of the character. T'Challa is
awesome because Chadwick Boseman is awesome. To be anything less would be an
insult to the dead, but honestly, that does not make for interesting writing or
a great character. T’Challa cannot fail or be afraid or get angry or make
mistakes or doubt himself, because he isn’t T’Challa he’s Chadwick Boseman.
That
said, this was a fun episode, at least at the start, as it kind of leans into
the meme of Chadwick Boseman’s awesomeness with a replay of the opening scene
of the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie between Star-Lord (now Chadwick
Boseman instead of Chris Pratt) and Djimon Hounsoun’s character: When Star-Lord
introduces himself, instead of asking "Who?" Djimon instantly
recognizes him and falls over himself fangirling over Chadwick. “Should we be bowing? I feel like we should be bowing.”
Similarly,
there’s a kind of cute scene where we learn Thanos the Mad Titan decided to
give up his plan to wipe out half of all sentient life in the universe after
talking to Chawick Boseman for five minutes. Ha ha. Chadwick Boseman is
awesome, am I right?
The
rest is just kind of filler, tbh. Once they’ve set up and made the joke about how
awesome Chadwick Boseman is, there isn’t much point to the rest of it except to
reiterate how awesome he is a couple more times.
As a
tribute, it’s nice. Touching. Just the right send off probably, as fitting a curtain-closer as one could hope for. Raul Julia's last film was "Street Fighter" and if I had to choose between going out as a martial artist who is awesome and a martial artist in a 90s video game, I pick the awesome. As entertainment, the episode is, well, it’s not really answering any
of the questions it appears to raise.
Q:
What is more important, your nature or the nature of your environment?
A:
Your nature.
Q:
Wow, you didn’t even hesitate. Which is odd because this is an ongoing and
complex debate within a number of scientific fields such as psychology, genetics, and neuroscience. Are you sure?
A:
Yep.
Q:
Oh come on, not even a hint of doubt?
A:
Nope.
Q:
So you’re saying that a man raised as the son of a king, accustomed to
authority and obedience, pampered in comfort and luxury, destined for absolute
rule over a peaceful and highly advanced kingdom would have turned out exactly
the same had he been an orphan raised by space pirates?
A:
Exactly.
Q:
Well, that’s, ah, very. Okay, explain.
A:
Easy. He’s Chadwick Boseman.
Q:
And?
A:
That’s it. That’s all. He’s Chadwick Boseman.
Q:
So, the original Star-Lord (Peter Quill, played by Chris Pratt) was kind of a
roguish asshole in the Han Solo mode not because Peter Quill had been
raised by a single mother crazier than a sack full of weasels who then died of
cancer leaving the young boy wholly and utterly bereft and alone and then in
that single moment when he was at his lowest he was kidnapped by space child
traffickers who intended to sell him to a godlike planet-being as psychic food, not any of that, but because Peter Quill was a dick?
A:
Well, he was no Chadwick Boseman, am I right?
Q:
I see. Okay, try this then: Is there any conflict or tension between one’s
loyalty to the family one creates through friendship and shared experiences, and
loyalty to one’s genetic family, who have not shared those experiences?
A:
No.
Q:
So if you lived most of your life believing your family was dead, then 20 years
later found out they were still alive, you would not feel torn between staying
with the family you had built for yourself on the one hand, and returning to a
family you barely know or remember on the other?
A:
Nah. They'd love each other.
Q:
Because…?
A:
Because he’s Chadwick Boseman.
Q:
Uh huh.
A:
Chadwick Boseman is awesome.
Q:
Not to disagree here, but it seems to be we’ve set up two juicy sources of
potential conflict that might actually explore the concept we’ve introduced
here, then immediately resolved both of them without even the slightest pause
because …
A:
Chadwick Boseman is awesome.
Q:
… because Chadwick Boseman is awesome, exactly. And—not to take away anything
from Mr. Boseman’s state of awesomenity, awesomeitude, awesomeosity—perhaps
also because Marvel is nervous about its viewers being even slightly
uncomfortable or conflicted or thoughtful for even a sliver of a nanosecond?
A:
These are kids’ shows, you know.
Q:
The way children’s entertainment has gradually overtaken more and more of the
market as western society psychically retreats for the hellworld we have
created into comforting nostalgia and fantasy has not gone unremarked, no. Nor
has the fact that the actual target audience of such entertainment is most
definitely and emphatically not kids entirely escaped notice. Yes, these are
fun little throwaway morsels designed to do nothing more than distract us for a
moment and fill the idle times in our lives, but I think it’s fair to sigh over
the way they steadfastly refuse to even hint at any kind of conflict that does
not involve punching things.
A:
Chadwick Boseman punches Benicio del Toro in this one.
Q:
He sure does. He also exhibits an awareness of the history of slavery in the
United States despite never having visited there, being raised in a position of
incredible privilege from a young age, and then spending the overwhelming
majority of his life hundreds of lightyears away from Earth.
A:
What are you talking about? Chadwick Boseman knows all about the history of the
United States.
Q:
We really have conflated the character with the actor haven’t we?
The
Marvel movies have always been children’s entertainment dressed up in their
parents' clothes, and that goes double for the new “What If...?” animated series.
Each episode is supposed to present a new and interesting twist on one of the
established Marvel characters or movies. It’s an inherently incestuous premise
for a series, doubling down on the MCU’s tendency for every bit of
entertainment to point towards a different bit of entertainment rather than
being content with being entertaining in and of itself.
Look,
intellectually the whole MCU was about as serious as clown shoes to begin with, so there
isn’t much point in belaboring the silliness of it, but then there isn’t much
point to anything in this blog anyway, so why not?
I’ll
say this for it: I liked the art direction and animation style. In an age where 90%
of western animation seems to be deliberately crafted to be as visually
grotesque as possible, it’s kind of refreshing to see something along the lines
of a “Breath of the Wild” take on animation, clean and simple, almost elegant.
Perhaps it isn’t overly innovative or arty, but it looks good dammit. It’s nice
to watch. Nice.
Otherwise,
I feel we’re not really exploring the potential of the concept. Our first
episode in the series dares to ask some truly thought-provoking questions, such
as:
Q:
What if Captain America wasn’t American? And a British Woman? And Steve Rogers became
Iron Man because this premise is pretty thin okay we needed to pad it out a little?
A:
Red Skull would be really into tentacle porn.
I
won’t explain further.
Q:
Is there any difference between a man given superpowers and a woman given
superpowers?
A:
No.
Ep 1
is about “What if Steve Rogers’ love interest Peggy Carter became the superhero
instead of Steve?” Well, she puts on a uniform just like Cap’s, uses a shield
just like Cap’s, punches Nazis just like Cap, rescues ‘Bucky’ Barnes just like
Cap, fights Red Skull just like Cap, and gets trapped in time until the modern
era just like Cap.
Basically,
the only difference is antagonists say something about her just being a girl
before they get their clock cleaned. Which is perhaps cathartic for anybody who
didn’t watch “Captain Marvel” or the Enola Holmes movie or the original “Alien”
or “Terminator” movies or any one of the other movies released in the last 30 years
with women protagonists. It's about as daring and original as mayonnaise.
Q:
But doesn’t this show the possibilities of the multiverse now that “Loki” has
opened it up?
A:
Shut up. Just shut up. God damn it I despise people like this. Shut the fuck
up.
First
off, the idea of alternative universes existing is not something I or anyone
else who is event slightly, vaguely familiar with SF needed setting up or explaining. That’s
like, a default. We all just kind of assumed it.
Stop
parroting the fanboy line about how great it is that the MCU is “finally
exploring the multiverse” or something. Nobody blinked when alternate realities
were mentioned in “End Game” or the last Spider-Man movie. It’s not a new or original
concept. This incessant need to defend and praise or otherwise stan whatever niche hobby or celebrity you've decided to make a core part of your online identity just drives me nuts.
Second,
as mentioned above, it’s a self-cannibalizing concept, tempting Marvel to make
movies about its own movies in endless recursive iterations until it disappears
up its own arsehole. Which would be less of an issue if Disney wasn’t three-quarters
of the entertainment industry.
Finally,
this is a hella bland way to go about exploring it. “What if we made a tiny
change to look more feminist but otherwise did nothing?” Yeah. What if you fucked right off.
Q:
Can we show violence in a cartoon?
A:
No.
Guns
fire, then we cut away before the bullets hit. Peggy/Captain Britain throws a
hand grenade into a tank, doubtless turning the crew into hamburger helper, but
all we see is a bang.
That
said, I’ll give them a point back for the sheer over-the-top lunacy of some of
the action sequences, especially the one where Captain Peg leaps off the back
of Iron Man in midair, through the cockpit glass of a German bomber, beats up
the crew one by one, in order from nose to tail, jumps out the back, lands on top of a
Messerschmidt, kills the pilot (implied) and then leaps back onto Iron Man
again.
Q:
What if you never saw or don’t remember what happened in the first Captain
America movie?
A:
Then none of this will make any sense.
Q:
What if the first Captain America movie was basically the same but just a tiny
bit different?
A:
The ending would be basically the same, but just a tiny bit different.
It’s
the Marvel equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho” remake, pretty much a shot for
shot copy of the original.
The sky is the limit here, we could actually do
something even a little thought provoking about the superhero genre or past Marvel movies (like, maybe a
British woman would use her abilities differently from an American man? Even
just hint at how gender or culture affects our conception of heroism? No? Okay then).
This
came out in, what, 2015, maybe 2016 I think (no I can't be bothered to look it up what do you think this is, a reputable blog or something?), anyway breaking news, really securing my rep as a writer
and critic on the cutting edge of the scene. It’s a kind of docu-drama I guess,
a fictionalized re-enactment of key moments in the life of Colombian 70s-80s
cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.
First
off, let me confess I only watched this because I kind of liked Boyd Holbrook’s
performance in “Logan” and I’m kind of burnt out on any and all things Disney (Am I going to watch the next Marvel D+ series coming out next month? Oh you bet I am).
Or serialized shows generally that aim to just go on forever, like the Simpsons,
shows that exist only to go on existing.
It’s
nice to have a show that has a definitive endpoint in mind.
Second
off, great mustache work all round. Really, hats off to the mustache wrangler.
Amazing stuff. Everybody rocking the 80s porn ‘stache, the pencil, the
handlebar, the horseshoe, the Miami Vice stubble, you name it. First-class
follicles.
Third off, watching
this is almost exactly like watching the old “Unsolved Mysteries” TV show from
the 80s, which might be a deliberate nod given the time period, look it up on
YouTube if you don’t know what I’m talking about, anyway where Robert Stack
would narrate a re-enactment of some crime or mystery or other. Narcos has
almost the same format, stretched into 10-episode seasons: Boyd Holbrook does a
bit of serious narrating, cut to 5-minute re-enactment of the life of Pablo
Escobar, cut to archive news footage from the period, rinse and repeat.
Especially
in the first half of season one, this gives the show a kind of jerky
stop-and-start pace, with the years just racing by, pausing only for three
lines of dialog between Pablo (hands on hips, joint in mouth) and his cousin
Gustavo (hands on hips, cigarette in mouth, hunter cap on head).
Boyd
is a DEA agent, Pedro Pascal his partner, and the two are ostensibly main characters
but they don’t do much other than angrily swear to take down Escobar about
twice per episode. That’s on the powdery side of thin for characterization, and
gets old pretty quick, particularly when you realize these boys have been
sniffing too much of their own product and ain’t got a hope in hell of actually
catching the man—it’s all just so much hot air.
The
show is set almost exclusively in Colombia, so on the one hand it provides a look
at America’s War on Drugs from the outside, as it were, from the viewpoints of both
the drug dealers and the government that had to deal with them. I think this
format lets the USA off a little lightly, okay a little very extremely lightly,
as the market whose combination of ravenous, insatiable appetite for cocaine
and flailing, desperate attempts to squash the consumption of cocaine helped
create people like Escobar.
It's also good though to move away from the US as the center of all creation and see how all the flailing affected people in the country it all started in, caught in the crossfire, kind of double victims here, of drug lords empowered by American money and pawns in a war waged with American money, victims of the consequences of both America's hypocritical love and hate of drugs. The insights into the internal workings of Colombia's politics and attempts to deal with Escobar wound up being the most interesting part of the show.
Haha,
hoho, here’s what I said at the end of my review of last week’s episode:
“In
many ways then, with only one episode left and having only barely scratched the
surface of its premise, this is starting to
feel like Marvel’s version of Netflix’s “Jupiter’s Legacy”, an entire season
whose raison d'être is
setting up either a sequel or some other piece of the MCU.”
Boy, when I am right, I am
right.
The whole thing did indeed turn
out to have been an exercise in scene-setting, shuffling pieces into position
and revealing the MCU’s next Big Bad:
Some Guy.
Yes, yes, I know, comic book
fans tell me he’s supposedly “Kang the Conqueror” who is apparently not related
to Kodos haha still killing it with the Simpsons references 20 years later, but
within the context of the show itself, he’s Some Guy. He does no conquering, kanglish or otherwise. If you know nothing about the character, just as I don't, then there is nothing within show itself to make the reveal anything other than a baffling non-event.
We spent six weeks building up
to Loki and Other Loki meeting:
Some Guy.
The two journey to the castle
at the End of Time, and meet Some Guy. They sit down across a table from Some
Guy and for the next 15 minutes he explains what exactly the TVA is and why he
created it. To whit: If you have infinite (or nearly infinite) universes, then the bell curve and normal distribution of human experience says you will always have universes in which a ruthless, ambitious conqueror will
arise and seek to dominate all of reality. The only way to prevent this from
happening is to have only one universe, where said conqueror does NOT arise,
and ruthlessly eliminate all other realities.
Some Guy then gives the two Lokis a
choice: Let him live and go back to their lives in the one and only reality, or
they can kill him, in which case multiple realities will emerge, and the law of
probability says a power-crazed dictator will arise again. Boy Loki wants to
let Some Guy live, revenge-crazed Girl Loki wants him dead, they fight, because
the only people in the MCU who can threaten superheroes are other superheroes,
Boy Loki sems to win Girl Loki over with the power of luuurve, but
doesn’t really. She kills Some Guy, thus spawning the creation of multiple
realities, a conclusion that everyone who knew the titles of the upcoming
Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies was already expecting. Credits end with
the announcement of season 2.
How to evaluate this then: As
an episode, as a series, as part one of a larger story?
As an episode it is, quite
frankly, one of the worst cases of tell-don’t-show I’ve witnessed in recent
televisual entertainment. It’s mostly Some Guy sitting at a desk and telling
his life story, only cutting away to inconsequential scenes with other
characters every once in a while to obscure the fact that it’s mostly Some Guy
sitting at a desk and telling his life story.
As the end of the series, it’s
a startlingly dull climax. I know comic book fans are losing their minds over
the introduction of Kang the Conqueror into the MCU, but for those of us
unfamiliar with his kangic conquering, he’s just Some Guy. Yay, the MCU is
finally going to feature Some Guy. By which I mean the Big Bad has been absent
the entire series so the only thing we’ve seen him do is sit at a desk and tell
his life story. Which by my reckoning is not, though I may be made of sterner
stuff than the average television viewer, especially big, nor bad.
The basic concept, I dig, a
sort of Darwinistic survival-of-the-most-ruthless multiverse in which wiping
out other realities becomes not evil, but a simple matter of self-defense. Free
will must be limited in order to ensure there is any free will at all. That’s
an interesting moral dilemma, which is a shame, as we’re only introduced to it
about 10 minutes before the end of the season.
As a result, it’s not a
dilemma we’ve seen dramatized in any way shape or form on our screen. We’re
just told that this dilemma exists. One revenge-crazed person gives it
precisely zero thought and kills the guy preventing it from happening anyway.
So the climax doesn’t even really work as the climax to the season.
As part one of a larger story?
Hm. Television shows with story arcs that span multiple seasons are nothing
new, so I suppose in hindsight it was maybe unfair of me to criticize the show
for lack of direction and clarity, but this is the Internet so there’s no way
in hell I’ll admit to that. Double down, my friends, always double down.
In all seriousness (okay, in a
modicum of seriousness), one would not fault, say, “The Fellowship of the Ring”
for not getting even halfway to Mordor, or to use more recent examples, season
one of “Game of Thrones” for not giving us a winner to the thronic game, or
season one of “The Witcher” for not resolving everything about Geralt and his
adoptive daughter, Ciri.
Taking the analogy further, one does not get angry at a chapter for not concluding the story, nor irritated with a paragraph for not ending the chapter, nor disappointed with a sentence for not ending a paragraph.
I suppose the difference is framing and expectation—the way a storyteller begins to tell their story determines the boundaries we set on that nebulous concept of a "story", and sets our expectations for how much story we will get, and at what pace or speed. If you begin
watching in the expectation the show will deliver an ending, at least to this
particular arc if not the Lokis’ whole story, in six weeks’ time, then finding
it was all just piddling about before the story actually gets going will feel
like a bit of bait and switch.
In retrospect I find it
renders the whole season rather hollow. It was all a bit of screwing around,
stalling for time until the cliffhanger so that Marvel could reveal:
Some Guy.
Bad enough that the titular
main character, Boy Loki, has been reduced to second fiddle tagging along with
other, more interesting characters, but then even his more interesting Girl
Loki self is revealed to also have been no more than a prop, a way of
maneuvering this fictional universe into position to reveal:
Some Guy.
I’ve found this to be a trap
some longer-running shows seem to fall into. “Vikings” didn’t seem to be about
anything, just stuff happening to a bunch of Vikings (the Siege of Paris
storyline being the one exception, and a standout because of it). I tried
watching Netflix’s “Travelers” recently too and it had the same problem—time
travelers from a “12 Monkeys”-ish dark future travel to our time to change our
future/their past, and just, kind of, do stuff. They seem to accomplish their
main mission halfway through the first season, but then the show just keeps
going for another two and a half seasons as far as I can tell. Stuff keeps
happening. Not stuff with any greater direction or point, just. Stuff.
You know what? I don’t buy it
anymore. Maybe this makes me the old man being angry at the cloud, two Simpsons references in one post I'm just killing it here, but no, I don't buy it anymore.
An entertaining story should have some kind of point to it. A
satisfying, entertaining story should not rely on half a dozen other bits of
future, unreleased entertainment in order to be entertaining. Yes, season one of “Game of
Thrones” was setup for the quasi-Wars-of-the-Roses style Lannisters versus
Starks battle, “The Witcher” was setup for Geralt reuniting with Ciri, but they
delivered clear conclusions to their mini-arcs. Likewise, “Dune” ends with Paul
becoming emperor, “Star Wars” with the Death Star blowing up, or even “Phantom
Menace” with the trade route taxation or whatever tf it was getting worked out.
Entertainment can be part of a larger property yet still deliver a satisfying
arc that has a definite conclusion.
It should not, in other words,
be a six-hour intro for:
Having
exhausted all possible criticism, I find myself forced to choose between either
repeating myself or actually being nice about the show.
Having
exhausted all possible criticism, I find myself forced to choose between either
repeating myself or actually being nice about the show.
Having
… okay, well you get the joke.
Instead
of recapping the show, let’s talk about what’s really important here: Me.
And
my opinions.
To whit, my main trouble with the show is its kind of flabby
structure, sort of aimless meandering between plot points without clear
conflicts or objectives that would provide tension and suspense, favoring
instead to keep the audience in a state of perpetual bewilderment in the hopes
that people enjoy being outsmarted by their entertainment choices.
Even
as a mystery I find it unfulfilling, as the show presents not one mystery, but
a kind of series of Russian matryoshka nesting doll mysteries, in which
mysteries are presented and then immediately solved in the next episode, only
for another one to be presented.
This
most recent episode was a case in point. When we left off last week, it was
suddenly revealed that getting dematerialized by the time cops of the TVA
doesn’t actually kill you—Boy Loki is supposedly disintegrated, only to wake up
in a post-apocalyptic New York and find himself facing four different
incarnations of himself: Homemade cosplay Loki (Richard E Grant), kid Loki (not
Richard E Grant), black Loki with a hammer (still not Richard E Grant) and
literally an alligator Loki (could be Richard E Grant, who knows, the man has a
formidable range). So we are left with two mysteries: Where or when is this?
Who are these other guys and what are they doing there?
Well
we get our answers in the first ten minutes or so: It’s the “Void” at the end
of time, which we didn’t know was a thing until we were suddenly introduced to
it just now so there’s not much you can say to it except “oh, huh, okay”. It’s the place where everything the baddies at the TVA want banished is transported to, so that
whoever it is can’t muck up the timeline anymore (being at the end of time, and all). The end of
time apparently involves a beastie that’s kind of a cross between the balrog
and the smoke monster from “Lost” that devours everything, which is also not a
thing we were aware existed until just now. Eliciting another rousing, “oh,
neat, I guess” from the audience.
The
other Lokis are all, like our main Loki, “variants” that somehow accidentally changed
the canonical timeline, got caught and packed off to the Void. What are they doing? Not a
lot. Hanging out in an underground nuclear shelter, basically. Quite how they managed to find our Loki whilst evading an all-devouring smoke monster is a bit
of a mystery, but whatever keeps the plot going I guess.
My
point being, all the questions you had at the end of last week have now been
answered. Since none of the answers have any grounding in anything that’s come before,
you’re just left with a kind of dull acceptance. Sure. Why not.
During
the meanwhilst, Girl Loki captures TVA Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and
demands to know what’s really going on with the TVA—who is in charge? Renslayer
(Gugu Mbatha-Raw) appears to change sides, but doesn’t really. Cornered and
desperate, Girl Loki disintegrates herself rather than allow herself to be captured by Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)—supposedly in the hopes that this
will enable her to find Boy Loki, though she would have no reason to suspect
disintegration does anything other than what it says on the tin, unless she’s
read the script.
She
meets up with Mobius (Owen Wilson) and then with Boy Loki and his merry men (viz
himself, himself as a kid, himself, and himself as an alligator). There follows
the one stretch of the show that’s actually pretty good, including some humorous
bits between Mobius and Old Loki about whether or not the alligator is really a
Loki (“Well, he’s green,” observes Old Loki, “although he could be lying.”)
There’s also a nice quiet bit between Boy Loki and Girl Loki as they
contemplate the future and what will happen should they win.
So
I’ll give the show two points: One, the structure for this episode is clear and dramatic, the struggle to subdue or kill the smoke monster and escape the Void. Two, it really nails the character bits when it isn’t
trying to push the plot from twist to twist. Owen x Tom has been gold from the
get-go (though the sudden shift from hostility to best friends has been a bit
sudden, but we’ll let that slide and assume a lot of time has passed
off-camera), and here both Owen x Richard and Tom x Sophia are amusing and,
dare I say it, even a bit touching. Though the beats between Tom and Sophia
probably should have come in episode 3 and thus feel like a rehash. But I’ll
take what I can get.
We
end on a climax that is a bit of a repeat of the climax to the first Guardians
of the Galaxy movie, in which our heroes join hands in the midst of purplish-black
CGI smoke and use the power of friendship (or twu rub in this case,
perhaps?) to make some glowing fireworks, find the emotional fortitude to
overcome the enemy, and then triumph. The smoke dissipates, revealing a portal
to a castle at the end of time and, presumably, the lair of who- or whatever is
behind the TVA.
It’s
a serviceable cliffhanger, I suppose, and probably the only one the writers
could have gone with, since “Who really runs the TVA?” is the only mystery left
unexplored. It’s not a particularly compelling one to me, as we weren’t even
aware that was a mystery until last episode, so we’ve had all of 40
minutes buildup to it, and while we’re on the subject, from a structural
standpoint not introducing your villain until the very last episode of the
series feels like an extremely odd choice.
We
are left with a main character who sort of staggers through the story, repeating
the same beats, constantly bewildered, never exercising any real agency. It’s
Girl Loki’s story, and the show would probably have been a thousand times
better if it hadn’t been bogged down by the need to focus on a character (viz
Tom Hiddle starring as Boy Loki) who isn’t all that central to the story,
really.
In
many ways then, with only one episode left and having only barely scratched the
surface of its premise, this is starting to feel like Marvel’s version of the Netflix
flop “Jupiter’s Legacy”, an entire season whose raison d'être
is setting up either a sequel or some other piece of the MCU.
I know Marvel is addicted to trying to interconnect anything and everything so people feel
obliged to watch every bit of product the content manufacturing machine churns
out, but this is the first time I’ve felt that was the only reason for
one of their properties to exist.
Let
us begin, as the show itself does, with a quick recap of the story so far:
Avengers
Assemble Loki (Tom) breaks the MCU continuity and picks up the magic Tesseract stone
during Avengers Endgame, thus escaping Thor 2 and 3 as well as Avengers Infinity
War but not escaping a black-clad SWAT team from the Kafka/Gilliamesque Time
Variance Authority (TVA) time cops who Don’t Approve of That Sort of Thing.
Tomki
is saved from callous and disinterested disintegration at the last minute, by
TVA Agent Mobius (Wowen Wilson), who needs his help to track down another MCU
canon-unfriendly Loki.
This
they then do.
Said
Loki turns out to be… dun Dun DUN… a GURL (Sophia).
Sophki
and Tomki escape the TVA by fleeing across time and space to a purple-grey moon
called Lamentis where, in a refreshing break from the SF trope of things
crashing into planets, a planet is about to crash into them.
This it then does.
Cue
cliffhanger ending.
While
the back and forth between Owen and Tom has been fun to watch, thanks mainly to
both actors’ ability not to overplay their hands and let the vulnerability and humanity of the
characters shine through, I’ve found the plot a bit shapeless and meandering,
probably because the writers’ instincts seem to be to treat the narrative like
a mystery that must be kept from the audience, rather than a superhero action
flick where all is on display.
Given
that Disney-Marvel-Pixar-Lucasfilm is three quarters of the entertainment world
these days, I think it’s great that shows like Wandavision and Loki are
starting to experiment with the boundaries and possibilities of the superhero
genre. However. I think mysteries have their own conventions. To put it as
stupidly and crudely as I can (and I am exceptionally stupid and crude), in act
one you set up the mystery, act two allow your protagonist to follow the clues
and decode the mystery, then in act three reveal and confront the antagonist.
This
they have not done.
Instead
of being upfront with the mystery or conflict or issue it is trying to resolve,
each episode of Loki answers one mystery, only to immediately set up a new and
completely different mystery, meaning I don’t feel there’s any forward momentum
or progress being made. Instead, we get a similar set of plot points and near-copies
of various scenes cycling around and around like the show is its own little
time loop.
So
as we open on the doomed moon, Sylvie (Girlki) gives us her sad, touching
flashback origin story (which probably could have fit into episode 3 instead of
the pointless toing and froing), in which we confirm that the TVA are actually
the bad guys, not poor Sylvie. Boyki is touched. They hold hands. And Wowen
appears at the 11th hour to rescue Tom. Again.
On a
side note, I think the show breaks its own rules in order to get the couple (does
falling in love with yourself count as narcissism if it’s technically a
different person, or incest? Hm) out of a jam, as the whole point of going to
an impending apocalypse was that, since everyone is about to die, non-canon
people can do literally anything without affecting the timeline. Here, we are
told that two gods of mischief potentially making a bit of mischief beneath the
sheets, wink wink, would create a “Nexus event” though quite how—since
they were 2 seconds away from a fiery death—I do not pretend to understand.
In
any event Loki is captured, again, and interrogated by Mobius, again.
Tom reveals Loki’s bad-boy brashness is a cover for his insecurities, again (actually
for about the third time so far, I think). Tom also tries to convince Owen that
he’s working for the bad guys. Mobius goes to talk to his boss, Judge Renslayer
(Gugu Mbatha-Raw and that’s too good a name not to spell out in full), again.
She informs him Tom and Sophia are scheduled for execution.
Which
seems like another one of these pointless scenes to me. Instead of saving
people you intend to kill from certain death, you could, and I apologize if my
reasoning here is a little complex but bear with me, you could—you know. Just. Not.
Anyway,
the chat with his boss is enough to raise Owen’s suspicions, so he decides to
do a bit of snooping.
This
he then does.
With
astonishing speed Owen discovers his entire life is a lie. He saves Tom only he
doesn’t—instead Own gets caught and disintegrated by Renslayer’s goons. OR DOES
HE?
That’s the trouble with killing off characters in a show entirely built
around time travel, particularly a post Endgame Marvel show about time travel:
We all know the show is going to cheat. Sure, sure, show, Owen Wilson is dead.
Sure, we believe you.
So
the net effect of this sequence is to subtract one Owen from the show, but
Tommy and Sylvie are still destined for the chop. They are brought before the
Time Keepers, the supposed leaders of the TVA, break free thanks to an oddly
useless bit of help from one of the time cops now sympathetic to Sylvie
(earlier Nice Cop breaks Sylvie out of prison, only to put her straight back in
again, only to throw her a weapon at the dramatically appropriate moment), and
a rather awkward stick fight breaks out.
In
the fight, one of the Time Keepers gets their heads knocked off, revealing they
are actually a brainless android. “But who created the TVA?” cries Tom. Ooh a
new mystery, how lovely, how delightful not to know who the antagonist is two
thirds of the way through the series. Certainly this has never happened before
in a Marvel show and certainly not Wandavision.
Anyway,
Tom is about to confess his feelings for Sylvie, again, when he gets
disintegrated. OR DOES HE?
No.
No he doesn’t.
Cut
to a mid-credits scene that I nearly missed because none of the first three
episodes had ones (yes, very sneaky, fuck you too show), where Tom awakes in a
post-apocalyptic New York and finds himself face-to-face with Comic Book Loki
(Richard Grant), Kid Loki and His Pet Alligator Loki Complete With Horned Crown
and Hammer Loki Or Something Look I Don’t Know He Was On Screen For Like Two
Seconds. Another mystery. Great.
It
may be that when all of this is over and the final shape is revealed everything
in this show will turn out to be perfectly placed and paced and all fit
together as seamlessly as Tom Cruise and his Motorcycle, but the actual process
of sitting through it is just a tad frustrating. Unless audiences have been
conditioned to spend the entire time not quite understanding what the fuck is
going on.
The
mid-credits scene is a pretty good encapsulation of my beef with the show. No
warning or foreshadowing or set up we were going to have a mid-credits scene.
No hint that being disintegrated by the TVA means anything other than being
wiped out of existence. Not even a whisper as to who all these other Lokis are
and what they’re doing hanging out in the ruins of a New York City. You’re just
presented with a series of baffling moments and expected to be happy because
this show thinks that pulling the rug from under your audience and going
“TADAAA!” is somehow synonymous with good TV.
There’s
a danger in playing too much to the audience’s reaction, I think. As someone
much smarter than me once remarked—and I won’t credit them because nobody likes
a smarty pants—it’s the difference between Olympic wresting and WWF wresting.
Olympic wresting can get the audience on their feet, but that’s not its sole
objective. Whereas the only reason anybody in WWF does anything is to get a
reaction. Now call me an elitist snob or whatever you will (it’s okay it’s the
Internet I can’t hear you) but I for one do not think it’s healthy if all your
entertainment is as hollow as professional wrestling.
The
phrase ‘subverting expectations’ has much to answer for. Our current Lost/Game
of Thrones/Rise of Skywalker fetish for keeping people guessing at every point
in the story means the audience is reduced to vegetative spectating, a kind of lumpen
potateriat.
Even
a mystery, I think, has to be clear about what the friggin mystery actually is. Be clear about what is unclear. We in the audience have to know what it is that we don’t know, so that we can
look forward to knowing. Suspense requires anticipation. I can’t anticipate
this show because I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen from moment
to moment. So there’s no suspense. I have no idea what mysteries are going to
be solved because I don’t even know what the mysteries are.
Ah,
makes me want to get a stiff drink and watch Mad Max again.
That’s
a nerd joke for you. The rest of you just skip to the next paragraph.
There’s
a sequence in this week’s episode that perfectly captures this series’ sense of
plot progression:
lBoy Loki and Girl Loki have
snuck aboard a train heading to Location A
lB & G Loki are discovered
lThere is a Fight
lB & G are thrown from the
train
lDuring the scuffle a device
is broken which means the Lokis’ plan is in SHAMBLES and they are DOOMED
lAfter a brief discussion they
decide ... to walk to Location A
So
everything that happened was kind of pointless. They didn’t need to sneak onto
the train at all, they could have walked. The consequence of the device being
broken was that they decided to do the thing they had already decided to do.
All
we get out of the entire sequence is a bit of banter between Tom Hiddleston
(Loki One) and Sophia Di Martino (Loki Two) and her Mancunian accent. Tom gets
to rehash his character backstory about being quite close to his adopted mother
while Sophia gets to drop vague hints and tell us precisely nothing. This is
also in line with the show’s penchant for repeating plot points we’ve already
been over.
Fans
will squeal about the character development but no it bloody well isn’t don’t
be so daft, it’s a reiteration of things we already knew about Our Loki (mama’s
boy) and deliberate obfuscation about Other Loki. Oh, and iTs CaNoN tHaT tHeYrE
bIsExUaL jesus this era is going to look pathetically fixated on people’s
sexual orientations in 10 years’ time isn’t it.
(I
wonder if Sophia’s offhand remark she has a post-apocalyptic relationship with
a postman is a reference to the Kevin Costner movie/David Brin novel of the
same name? IT’S CANON SHE’S FUCKING KEVIN COSTNER doesn’t get you Twitter
retweets though so probably not.)
Otherwise,
it’s Tom reenacting his relationship with Owen Wilson, only now it’s with
Sophia. Have Tom bicker with someone he’s supposed to be working with, how very
original. To be sure there’s sparks there, a bit of fireworks even, and Tom can
play charming yet vulnerable like nobody’s business so the interplay is fun to
watch, but I can’t help the nagging feeling it’s not actually in the service of
anything related to the story.
And why does Sylvie, who is supposed to know all about the planet in question blowing up, not know where the Ark is? Whatever.
We
still don’t know quite what Sylvie/Sophia is aiming to do or why—I THINK that
as an unwitting “Variant” much like Tom she has been hunted by the TVA and has
decided to strike back and destroy her pursuers rather than quietly submit to erasure, but that’s kind of conjecture
on my part. As I keep saying, some clarity with regards to your antagonist (or
perhaps deuteragonist at this point in the plot) would really help grease these
narrative gears.
The
only progression or new information that we get is that the TVA is also staffed
by Variants, meaning they’re all kind of witless dupes too, including
Owen/Mobius. So the TVA is pretty well solidified as the “real” bad guys of the
show and a jet ski future for Mobius is looking more and more likely. Though it
does make Sylvie/Sophia murdering all those other TVA guys kind of gross—look,
the baddies can either be “mooks” that are just obstacles your hero can
vanquish without worrying about morality, OR they can be real, live humans with
their own hopes and dreams, but suddenly switching from one to the other is going
to make half your story feel very, very odd.
See
also: Stormtroopers are just brainwashed kids, now let’s go murder-fuck a
couple thousand of them.
At
least we got to see where the entire special effects budget went: on a kind of
grey-purple planet that could be Vormir but isn’t, with an astonishingly
fake-looking planet in the sky, plus a kind of “Snowpiercer” train that also steals
the save-the-rich premise from the same movie, and a single cut action sequence
lifted from “1917” only the people are patently just running around in a
circle while the camera spins on a tripod.
It
all ends in a kind of cliffhanger which gives Tom yet another chance to strike
almost exactly the same pose he held at the end of episode two.
I
think I joked about this time-travel show ending up being kind of a time loop
like Tenet or something, but this repetition and recycling of scenes and
conversations ain’t funny.
The
highs, or singular high really: The relationship between the two leads. Part father versus son, part by-the-book veteran
versus young maverick, part crook working with the cops, it’s comfortingly familiar but that’s exactly what gives
the actors room to play. Owen
Wilson’s Agent Mobius and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki have one or two nice moments,
one in particular that is revealing of Mobius’ character in a clear yet
unvoiced, understated way:
See,
company man for life Wilson keeps a Jet Ski magazine on his desk. He’s never
ridden one, being a lifer, living to work rather than working to live. Loki
presses him on it. Why jet skis? Well, they look great. The conversation then
elides into the nature of Wilson’s job, and more to the point, what happens if
he is successful: Order. Eternal, predictable order. Wilson really captures the
air of a man repeating the company line with his best smile while
simultaneously showing us how it’s crushing his soul.
Great
scene, loved it, nice character-building work there. Hope it pays off at the
end and Mobius gets the freedom he secretly craves.
The
rest of it I’m less enthused about it, precisely because it lacks the clarity
of the character byplay.
We’re
two episodes in to this six-episode series, a third of the way through, and
here is the sum total of what we know about our antagonist:
It’s
a chick.
Motivations?
A little fuzzy. Methods? Ya got me there. Goals? Search me, pal.
All
we got is the surprise twist reveal that it’s a woman, which might have been
more surprising or impactful if people related to the show had babbled a little
less about Loki being genderfluid and thus given the game away to such an
extent that even I was able to predict the twist.
What
does Bad Loki do? Attacks a bunch of Minutemen, which incidentally is exactly
what she did at the end of episode 1 so a bit of repetition there, huh show.
Not really advancing the plot ya know. Anyway, she steals a time charge thing
that erases stuff in a radius around it and kidnaps one of the time cops. She
had also left a stick of “Kablooie” gum with a kid in medieval France in Ep 1,
which now turns out to be part of a plan to lure the time cops to find her in
2050 Atlanta.
Wilson,
Hiddleston and one of three women of color cast in secondary roles to make up
for having two white men in the lead show up. Naughty Loki beats up Nice Loki.
Then sends the time charge thingies to various points in history, which apparently
screws up the timeline for some reason. Then she escapes.
Why
does she need to lure the team to her hideout? Why do the time charges screw up
history? Why does she even want to screw up the timeline in the first place.
Dunno.
Compare
this to, say, InfinityWar: Boom, scene one, here’s the bad guy, here’s what he
wants to do, here’s how he’s going to do it, let’s rock. Clear stakes, you know what the good guys need to do, I can now focus on the scenes before me rather than wasting time trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Good
Loki is also a bit confusing. He gives every indication of thinking he can take
over the TVA from the inside, in which case what is with the scenes of him
moping over his dead mom, friendship with his brother or destruction of his
homeland (another bit that is kind of a retread of character development from
ep 1)? One more thing I’m hoping will have a payoff somewhere along the way,
because as of now he goes from sobbing over the death of his people to putting
salt on a salad in five seconds of show time.
So,
for the second episode in a row, I mainly feel that the story is spinning its
wheels, playing for time just as Loki does, trying to delay for as long as
possible telling me what is actually going on. Repeating beats we already had
in episode 1. There are a number of scenes were you just have to wonder what
the point of it was—like Evil Loki beating up Good Loki, nothing is achieved
other than wasting two minutes of show time and letting Tom Hiddleston pose dramatically under Red Alert lighting. Doesn’t move the plot forward or reveal new
information. Just there to provide a bit of action since, as I mentioned last
week, the writers feel the need to have a guy walk in with a gun every once in
a while just to keep things moving along.
Another
culprit is the character of Judge Renslayer, whose role in the series so far
has been to pad out the timing and give Wilson somebody to react to for five
minutes each week.
As a
result, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be looking forward to next
week. Girl Loki seems to have already executed her plan. Boy Loki has escaped
the TVA but I’ve no idea what he means to do with his newfound freedom. Don’t
know about you guys but a third of the way through a story I’m not sure I
should be drawing a blank as to what happens next.
As
for the rest. Well, the less said about the terrible, tiny, tiny set for
“Pompeii” the better. Green screen work on par with the opening shot of the
“Gobi Desert” and that’s not a compliment. Loki and Mobius figuring out Other
Loki is in Atlanta makes zero fuggen sense. Kidnapped space Nazi going “It’s
real, it’s real,” just more mystery boxing of the plot. Stop it, just stop it.
Well,
it’s a setup episode, like they used to do at the beginning of each season of “Game
of Thrones”, and spends the bulk of its time reminding you who people are and
what they are trying to do. I can foresee we might reach some kind of terminal
endpoint with this, where each Marvel movie or show has to devote increasingly
long stretches of time to the backstory before it can move forward. A bit like
that subplot from “Hyperion” with the girl living her life backwards and her
family makes longer and longer videos to explain what’s happening to her until
she loses it and screams at them to stop.
Marvel,
I beg of you: Stop.
So.
Yes. We’re re-introduced to Tom Hiddleston’s Loki in all his brittle
egotistical glory, a pre-End Game Loki who skipped over the last five or so
Marvel movies and landed right in the middle of the Gobi Desert only it’s quite
clearly a green screen and hats off to people working under pressure during a
pandemic but really, the light doesn’t match at all and it was quite jarring,
sorry.
NuLoki
is promptly arrested by jackbooted quasi-Nazi time cops emerging out of Quantum
Leap doorways (er, Minutemen from the Time Variance Authority, sorry this is a
crowded genre and the tropes are everywhere) so we can have both Loki’s life
story and The Premise explained to us.
To
whit: There is only one timeline, and a bunch of time cops arrest and execute anyone
who tries to change things or create alternative timelines. Though some time
travel is apparently allowed. But deviating from your “path” is not. I don’t
think it’s supposed to make sense—the arbitrariness of the TVA is probably the
point. Anyway, somebody with a grudge against the time cops is going around
killing them.
NotLoki
is frog-marched off to his Kafkaesque trial in a sort of 70s style version of
the dystopian bureaucracy from Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, replete with black
jokes about the absurdity, inefficiency and unfairness of it all, before Wowen
Wilson’s Agent Mobius saves him from imminent erasure.
There
follows the narratively demanded refusal of the call to adventure that
literature professors have insisted every protagonist must go through. Mobius
wants !Loki’s help, but he’s not having any of it. To convince him, Mobius
shows a highlight reel of past Marvel movies, plus a rather long anecdote where
it is revealed Loki was mysterious hijacker “D.B. Cooper” back in 1971 which is
a real thing that happened. TIL. (I hope this becomes relevant again—Loki does
tell the stewardess he’ll see her again which is foreshadowing 101—otherwise
that was a hell of a waste of time).
This
gets to the one part I thought was poorly written in an otherwise slick script,
where the writers couldn’t seem to settle on a motivation for Loki2’s turn and
gave him ALL the motivations: He got his own mom killed and regrets it; He
realizes how pathetic his ambitions were next to the power of the TVA; He sees
the future in which he reconciles with his brother, and how it leads to his own
death.
They
also threw in a rather pointless chase sequence, written presumably out of the
instinctive realization the episode was 90% exposition and they needed some
action to keep people’s eyes open. So Loki escapes, then immediately goes back
to the place he escaped from. It’s writers like this who scrap the Council of
Elrond in favor of people screaming at each other. Trust your audience, folks.
There seems to be this tug of war between the needs of episodic television,
where each 50-minute chunk needs its own climax and resolution, and the needs
of a miniseries, where the action can rise over the course of several episodes.
There might be a happy medium, but this isn’t quite it.
As a
result, I’m not quite sure what Loki’s motivations are. Is he determined to
change his life around, or just sees the TVA as a way of getting what he wants?
Leaving it vague and confusing might be a deliberate choice but if so, probably
a mistaken one. We just had one series—Wandavision—that was all about
obfuscating what was going on in the plot. We don’t need another one. Show me
what your protagonist wants to do and let me enjoy the ride with them.
The
episode’s ending does not inspire confidence in the writers’ desire to let the
viewer in on the plot. There’s a twist reveal that was fairly obvious from
Mobius’ line of questioning to Loki, so I give them credit for a proper setup
there, but it is then immediately followed by a cloaked figure doing a bit of
murder. Having just revealed who the antagonist is (supposedly), not showing
their face in the very next scene is a dead giveaway you aren’t being entirely
straight with us, show.
I do
so very much hope they aren’t going to play J.J. Abrams Mystery Box keepaway
with the plot all season. No more three-quarters reveal of who the real
antagonist is. Here’s the protagonist, here’s the deuteragonist (Wow!), here’s
the antagonist, these are the stakes, let’s get to it. Boom. That’s all you
need to do, show.
Wither
next for the series? Well, I’m not keen on the initial setup’s assertion that
the entire history of the universe is already known, as that doesn’t leave much
room for free will. Personal taste there, but Loki does voice objections to
that thinking, so although it might be wishful thinking I do hope the whole
idea of a deterministic universe gets a little exploration. Maybe the
conclusion of the show will be that there is not one timeline, but many, and
the TVA was wrong to try to police it in the first place? Like I say, the TVA
do wear a little too much black to be the good guys here.
Side
note: Not a fan of criticizing writers for everything their characters say, as
some characters are SUPPOSED to say shitty things, but telling the villain the
purpose of his existence is to help people be their better selves is, however
narratively true, kind of a big middle finger to everyone Loki ever killed. I
mention this because Marvel does kind of have a thing where the lives of
normies don’t really matter, they’re just props for our heroes, and the line is
said by Mobius who I think is supposed to be kind of sympathetic, a put-upon
middle manager fighting against red tape in his own organization.
As
for the cloaked figure at the end, I’m betting that presages a more radical
variant of Loki than the one we’ve gotten to know. There’s been a lot of talk
on social media about Disney and Tom confirming Loki is “genderfluid” so I’m
betting the antagonist is a female version of our antihero. Either that or the
show is a perfect loop and Tom ends up pursuing a future iteration of himself.
