One thing I find to be extremely unnerving (and heartbreaking) about Thor’s (unsuccessful) attack of Thanos is the sheer joy he took in inflicting pain on the Titan.
The act was also terribly intimate, especially with the way he cradled Thanos’s neck as he plunged the Stormbreaker into his heart.
Some people said it mirrored his way of cradling Loki’s in the past. I, however, disagree.
After rewatching it, however, I realize the intimacy was done to mirror a much earlier death…
Loki’s.
Notice the parallel in terms of camera angles?
❌I will not put the direct shot of Loki’s face here. 😭 We all know he was suffering there.
When Thanos was torturing Loki, notice how his gaze shifted from Loki to Thor. He was flaunting his victory there, mocking Thor for being trapped and powerless as his brother was slowly drained of his life. He took pleasure from watching both brothers suffer, one physically and one emotionally. This seemed to be a favourite kink of his, look at Nebula and Gamora/Vision and Wanda.
And here, It is time for Thor to return the favour.
Thanos’s way of dispatching Loki clearly showed his sadistic joy in watching another suffer.
Thanos seemed to have unleashed a side of Thor that we have never seen before. He gloated because of the suffering of his enemy, and took his time savouring every single second of it.
If I were Thor, I would have done the same.
Some people argued that Thor had tried to avenge Heimdall, since he told Thanos right after Heimdall’s death, “you will die for that”.I do agree that plunging the Stormbreaker into Thanos’s heart was for Heimdall and the dead Asgardians. Giving Thanos a fatal wound was for Heimdall and his people.
However, the way Thor took pleasure in observing Thanos’s demise, was for Loki. After all, his brother died a long drawn out death and he made sure Thanos wouldn’t die a swift one. The camera angles also have the impression that Thor was mirroring Thanos in that scene.
Thor also made sure that Thanos could not look at anything other than his face of hate when he perished, like Loki who was forced to look at Thanos’s face as his neck was snapped.
The Russos seem to believe that Thor’s failure to kill Thanos and save the Earth is because of his refusal to “aim for the head” and give Thanos a swift death. He let his emotions get in the way.
We wouldn’t blame him though, would we?
Well said! Thank you!
Well, I think there’s another layer here actually.
Because yes, it was for Loki, and yes, Thor wanted to mirror Loki’s pain unto Thanos while he died. But while watching the movie, it’s very clear that Thor didn’t enjoy doing this.
Maybe he thought he would enjoy it, maybe he thought it would make him feel better to get this specific kind of revenge. And that’s why it’s so heartbreaking to see this scene–because Thor obviously doesn’t feel better by making Thanos suffer. He just looks tired… 😦 Bc getting revenge doesn’t bring Loki back to life.
But he still goes through the motions. He forces himself to summon that anger for Loki’s sake. Even though he’s getting no satisfaction from it, even though it’s against his nature to draw out a killing blow, he’s doing this on behalf of his brother and on behalf of his brother only.
There’s no fun in it for him. There’s nothing in it for him.
Getting exactly what he wants only to feel nothing is that familiar portrayal of a severely depressed person, and this time, it’s Thor
hurts T___T
fun fact, Thanos’s clear enjoyment of others’ pain is what prompted my fix-it fic! the Russos are now saying some bullshit about how Thanos changes after the Statesman because now that he has a couple Infinity Stones, he’s no longer killing indiscriminately, just relentlessly pursuing his goal and only killing people who strike him as serious threats (which means: yes, Tony, because everything always comes back to Tony somehow), and somehow that’s symbolized by him taking off his armor buuuuuut
he took off his armor before he killed Loki, for starters, and also he did not have to kill Loki, he easily could have just smacked him aside and left but instead he took the time to do it like that and to make very sure Thor was watching and if that wasn’t enough, he walked over to dump Loki’s body right in front of him just to make even more sure to rub it in. so I guess the Russos theoretically mean after that Thanos set aside his obvious sadistic pleasure in watching other people suffer so he could focus on his ~noble goal~?
OH BUT WAIT, I guess we’ve just decided to forget about Knowhere? “but we didn’t actually see him kill anybody there” right well I think it’s highly unlikely that he basically destroyed the entire place and was careful not to kill anyone but sure, for the sake of argument let’s go with that, so HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPLAIN THE BIT WHERE HE PRETENDS HE’S GOING TO LET PETER KILL GAMORA. just like on the Statesman where he wasted time making Thor and Loki (but mostly Thor, arguably, without actually-for-sure killing him to remove an enemy so that justification is still bullshit) suffer, he had what he wanted. there was absolutely no reason for him to wait around just so Gamora could beg Peter to kill her and Peter could finally make the horrible decision to do it, unless Thanos was waiting deliberately because he likes making people suffer. hell, he even pushes Gamora closer to Peter but doesn’t otherwise interrupt, making extremely sure they both have time for this awful, awful moment that ended up not accomplishing anything anyway. so as much as the part with Thor and Loki stands out to me for obvious reasons, that’s just the first time his sadism is on full display in IW, not the only time.
in conclusion Thanos is fucking lying to himself because he pretends to be pragmatically, ruthlessly pursuing his ~very noble goal~ but in fact he is a punk bitch who gets off on others’ suffering and I hate him for all the wrong reasons, okay thanks for coming to my TED talk
marvel characters as my favourite tumblr posts except in most of the cases you guess who says what
I keep meaning to do an Infinity War reaction post and not finishing it because like, I have too many Thoughts and not enough time, so obviously the smarter thing is to just start posting shit instead of trying to cram it all into one post (Infinity War spoilers after the cut, obviously)
I expect a formal fucking apology from every chucklefuck who was like “lol dumb fangirls of course Loki’s gonna betray Thor in IW”
I’ve seen multiple people say that the distress call at the beginning was Loki but I’m…not sure? idk it didn’t necessarily sound like him to me, although I suppose we won’t know for sure until/unless the script is released
uh also obviously I have a lot of thoughts/feelings about Loki but I think I’m just gonna put all of it in another post
Thanos was okay for what they were trying to do, I guess, but also a huge disappointment because he was so much creepier and more interesting in so many fics I’ve read, and now I’m just irritated because Marvel gave us almost nothing on MCU Thanos for six years which is a long fucking time to come up with a lot of interesting stuff and it was all better than what ended up being canon
that said, fuck Thanos and the ship he rode in on
especially for killing Gamora and feeling sorry for himself about it
although I guess there’s some interesting things here about how love and horrific abuse aren’t mutually exclusive, but like…there are ways to do that without a) acting like his love, real or otherwise, is anything but toxic or b) actually having an abuser kill the abused person who got away from him…
(btw Gamora you can still do so much better than Peter Quill, come on, I’m glad you’ve found somebody you love but you can do so much better)
Peter Quill is a bonehead and I still don’t like him. I don’t exactly blame him for punching Thanos but like. come on. if you could have kept your shit together for ten more seconds everything would have been fine. you could have even USED THE GAUNTLET TO BRING GAMORA BACK, PROBABLY.
there were actually a lot more genuinely funny moments than I expected, a lot of which were because of precious baby Peter Parker but not all of them
SQUIDWARD. okay that moment alone made me forgive Tony for like…nearly everything he’s done that irritates me
I liked Tony better than I have in a while, actually, partly because of playing him off Peter Quill and Dr. Strange, and partly because he was forced to be the adult in the room for once
although I’m still sort of bitter that he once again got more screen time (and like…more attention to his emotions?) than, say, Steve or Natasha
in fact Steve and Natasha really did not get to do enough in general except fight
however, the Natasha/Okoye/Wanda team-up was super great
Bucky/Rocket team-up was also great
I’m pretty sure nothing Strange does will get me to like him, because even when he does stuff that looks really cool (which, sigh, is nearly everything he does in this movie), it just makes me resent him even more because he’s getting to do cool magic stuff AND LOKI ISN’T
LET LOKI DO ACTUAL IMPRESSIVE MAGIC YOU COWARDS
yay Tony and Pepper are actually getting married 😀
what…happened…to Wanda’s accent…
I mean occasionally she had the Sokovian accent but mostly she just sounded American? even though she has…apparently been living mostly in Europe for the last couple years, most recently in Edinburgh? with a guy who speaks in a British accent, which he definitely has not swapped for an American accent in the same timeframe? NO PART OF THIS SCENARIO WOULD LEAD HER TO DEVELOP AN AMERICAN ACCENT
(side note, the title screen only said Scotland but I was pretty sure it was Edinburgh because I remember a tour guide pointing out the weird glass-roofed train station, so as usual I felt disproportionately smug when I saw it identified elsewhere as Edinburgh)
god, poor Wanda though
CAN WANDA PLEASE STOP LOSING EVERYONE SHE LOVES
Thor was pretty badass
(also can Thor please stop losing everyone he loves)
although it occurred to me today that if he’d used Stormbreaker to open the Bifrost in the middle of Thanos’s fucking chest instead of just kinda grinding it in there, that probably would’ve been pretty effective without having to go for the head
I am POSITIVE that Gamora was previously introduced as the LAST SURVIVOR of the Zehoberei race because Thanos killed HER ENTIRE PLANET. (lol yep the MCU wiki quotes Gamora’s original rap sheet as her being the last survivor of her race.) but as of this movie I guess it’s “just” half and everything there is super cool now? like…Marvel, come on, it’s hard enough out here for us fic writers without you literally retconning stuff because you decided partway through that you wanted to go a different direction instead. like. fic writers are more careful about this and we don’t even get paid for it. do you know how much time we spend poring over canon to make sure our shit makes sense? and then you decide to change your minds midstream and do things that make absolutely no sense with previously established canon, like Gamora’s planet, or EVERYTHING ABOUT THE INFINITY GAUNTLET.
oh yeah that’s another annoying thing. he JUST had it made? but he puts it on in the AoU post-credits scene, which is AT LEAST a couple years before Infinity War? and let’s not forget the one in Asgard’s vault, which Taika Waititi handily dealt with by saying it was a fake except HOW/WHY WOULD ODIN HAVE A KNOCK-OFF REPLICA OF SOMETHING THAT HASN’T BEEN MADE YET. even a line about how, idk, there are legends/theories about people who have tried to collect and use all the Infinity Stones and even some prototypes but nobody’s ever managed to do it successfully before–it wouldn’t make everything make sense but it would make a lot MORE sense, you know? but nooooo, when you’re canon I guess you get to just IGNORE CANON THAT ISN’T CONVENIENT FOR YOU NOW
like ffs if you’re going to change shit or retcon other shit you should at least TRY to make it fit
THE MCU ISN’T ACTUALLY COMICS, THERE IS SHIT YOU CAN DO IN COMICS THAT WILL NOT FLY IN A REASONABLY SELF-CONTAINED CINEMATIC UNIVERSE THAT IS TRYING TO BUILD A COHERENT WORLD
I know a lot of people expected older characters like Tony and Steve to die to make room for newer characters, and I did too, so I was pretty surprised when instead it was basically all the newer characters who got turned to ash and the original Avengers (plus a few others) who survived. this part made more sense after I thought about it a little, though, because–I’m guessing–it’s setting up Avengers 4 to focus primarily on the OG Avengers (while literally retreading some old ground through time-travel stuff, I guess?) because it’s likely to be their last hurrah, and THEN the MCU will transition to newer characters. in hindsight I guess this is pretty obvious but I didn’t think of it at first. which…kind of does give me more hope that Loki actually will have a bigger role in some way, because if the intent is to bring everything full circle with Phase 1, well, he’s the other major character in The Avengers and the whole reason they came together in the first place.
(apparently Coulson is going to be in Captain Marvel. maybe they’ll bring him back in for Avengers 4 too? idk Agents of SHIELD varies wildly in quality and my level of interest but I do think it would be cool if at least one part of the TV MCU got, like, a cameo in one of the movies.)
where was Nakia. where was Valkyrie. what happened to Shuri after the lab got destroyed.
why did some people get more of a delay before turning to ash than other people did, and once it started happening, why did the process take longer for some people than others
I mean obviously the answer is Angst™ but like. why
specifically, why did precious baby Peter Parker have to suffer more than everyone else who got ashed
that post-credits scene sure was some Left Behind shit, huh
(tbh the whole Left Behind phenomenon was fucked up but the basic concept is also pretty good for a horror story if, you know, that’s what the writers were trying to do, instead of like…masturbatory persecution fantasies for middle-class white Republicans, with some bonus torture/death porn)
(I grew up in that fucking culture, remember, I read the entire series as a teenager and thought I liked most of it but even at the time I remember side-eyeing some parts pretty hard)
(also Left Behind: The Kids was absolute shit, like the laziest possible example of “literal fanfic that some asshat got paid to write except the vast majority of fanfic I’ve read is better than this shit” and even then I knew it was shit)
I really hope that we see Gamora with the two Peters cause’ what I’m imagining is a little scene where she screams “PETER YOU IDIOT” then bby boy Parker just pops his head from some rubble and ever-so-innocently says “huh?” then Gamora’s expression turns soft and says in a really sweet voice “no, not you sweetie :))”
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 