Nuggets: Thor

Minor spoiler warning.

Last evening I took a dip into the "second-rate" world of comics. And yes, I found that even in movies adapted from comics, nuggets can be found. 

Elements I liked:

1. Thor––his super-cuteness.

2. That the movie actually had some redeeming value (I've heard debated that Iron Man has redeeming value because Pepper totally shuts Tony down in the end, but that doesn't count because she turns around and gives in at the end of the second movie. Ahem).

3. Loki. Loki, Loki, Loki!

I loved Loki! What an amazing bad-guy! He is a brilliantly devised character that actually has some real depth, despite the time-limited lack of attention he receives.  Unlike Thor's three-day "transformation", Loki's actions are something we can understand. We can see where he came from, why he feels the way he does, and where that leads him. 

Let's break him down into the elements of the movie.

Dark green cape ––Yeah, you can't go wrong with this color. It's not only my favorite, but it's not black. Anything that's not black for a bad-guy is good.

Name –––Love his name! How inconspicuous is 'Loki'? It sounds like a child's nickname. Which works nicely into the next point...

Little brother ––Aww, Loki fits this role nicely. He commiserates with Thor when Thor's down (or downright wrong); he walks in Thor's big footsteps, shadowing him without overtaking his glory; he struggles with feelings of difference (rightly so, as we learn) and lack of acceptance. One of my favorite things about little brother Loki, is the role reversal here. I mean, having the youngest son be evil is not unheard-of, but not as common as the poor, picked on younger son and the arrogant, domineering elder brother (hmm, that does sound like Thor). What I like so much is that Loki is the younger, over-looked, lesser son, and still the bad-guy. It makes him so much more understandable.

Vulnerability ––Yes, so Loki isn't really vulnerable, but he appears to be. One of my favorite parts of his scenes in the movie is where the...big blue thing (frost giant?) backs him up against the edge of the cliff. Loki looks nervously off the edge, apparently helpless. The frost thing charges at him, attacks, then goes straight through him and off into the abyss––because Loki isn't really there. 

Super-awesome powers ––Loki is, after all, the god of mischief. That's kind of an awesome thing to be god of, honestly. He can make false images of himself, hear everything all the time (not sure what that has to do with being the god of mischief...), appear anywhere anytime (wearing cool suits––they couldn't have him wearing that absurd antenna helmet the entire time!), become invisible (except in mirrors?), turn his eyes red, and freeze people.

Frost Giant ––As we learn, Loki is really a sort of changeling frost giant. Aka, he's really a large avatar-looking blue person with flaming red eyes, but he was taken in by Thor's father when he was a baby and has grown up thinking he's like everyone else. No wonder he had problems! That's like the story of the Lion who was told he was a Lamb! His parents have very honorable intentions in not telling him who he really was (and I don't really disagree with them––telling the poor boy he was really a monster wouldn't have done any good for his self-esteem), but when Loki finally realizes the truth we get some of what defines Loki's evil actions. He wants to prove that he can be his father's son despite his alien nature. 

These are the elements that make Loki the excellent character that he is. We see how his over-bearing, over-achieving, domineering brother bred jealousy in little Loki, we see how his true nature must've bred insecurity because he probably didn't feel, think, or even look the same (underneath his father's magic) as those around him. We sympathize or even empathize with his plight. In short, we see and understand what drove him to make the wrong, manipulative choices that he made. 

If Thor weren't so darn cute, I'd have probably been rooting for Loki to win! 

Watch out Avengers!

To close off this long-winded analysis, this is the kind of bad-guy I want in my stories (minus the aforementioned absurd antenna helmet). Too often in books we read of bad-guys that are evil simply for the sake of being evil. I've scrapped stories of my own because I couldn't relate to my own enemy characters. I'm sick of psychopaths and evil geniuses that want to destroy the world for no good reason. True, those who are miserable want nothing more than to make everyone else so (I've experienced this on a personal level), but there are bad-guys that have logical origins as well, and these are far too infrequent in the stories of today. Loki is a rare nugget.