Loki Season 2

Loki Cokey

Loki Season 2
USA 2023
Marvel/Disney
6 episodes 

Okay, so I’ve finally caught up with Loki Series Two and the good news is... it’s markedly better than the first series. It might be because all of the episodes here are directed by the great Benson and Moorhead but, given the absolute state of Disney’s Marvel TV shows (not to mention the Star Wars franchise they’re also currently ruining), it counts for a lot, I think, that this follow up series is any good at all.

Once again, this one stars Tom Hiddleston, reprising his role as the multiversal variant of Loki who split off from the regular timeline in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here) and, also returning are most of his co-stars. These include the brilliant Sophia Di Martini as a female variant Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius, Wunmi Musaku and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and... Jonathan Majors as ‘the big bad’. We also have a new regular, the delightful time scientist OB (aka Ourouboris) played by legendary actor Ke Huy Quan… aka a grown up Short Round from Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, who also won an Oscar last year for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (reviewed here).

Now, if you remember my review of the first series of Loki (reviewed here), you will remember I said it had one weakness which was to introduce or re-enforce Jonathan Majors (from Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania, reviewed here) as the ultimate threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so all the episodes seemed ultimately to play second fiddle to that idea. And the post credits on one of the Marvel movies featuring that actor along with Loki and Mobius, I forget which one now, dovetails into an episode here.

Well, there’s a similar weak point here. Now that Majors has been found guilty of spousal abuse and effectively cancelled, it’s pretty clear that he can no longer go on to be the future lead villain of what, I assume would be, a future Avengers movie. So, although Majors is in this a lot, mostly playing a much nicer template variant named after the original comics company that became Marvel… Timely… this series is very much involved in a single story arc to eradicate him as the big bad of the future, effectively writing him out of any future Marvel movies and TV projects. So the whole of the series pretty much just serves this resolution… albeit in the most twisted way imaginable.

That being said, it’s certainly a very fun and fast paced series despite, like the first one, not having many action sequences… even less I would say. But it doesn’t matter because it’s lightning fast and though a lot of it is expository dialogue, most of which I didn’t understand a word of by the final episode, it never gets dull and the performances of the high calibre actors involved certainly carries it. Also, although I clearly should have watched this before going to see Deadpool And Wolverine (reviewed here), it didn’t really matter that it includes one of the lead characters in a position of Time Variance Agency authority, which she hasn’t yet attained here.

Ultimately, then, I really enjoyed this second series of Loki way more than the first and, though I’m sure it’s almost certain that Loki himself will return (in films for sure and maybe even a third series), this one doesn’t leave things on a cliff hanger… it has a definitive ending. Which is a bit unusual for modern Marvel I must say. And no episode here has any kind of post credits sequence attached to it… so I am grateful to latch onto those small mercies while I can.

Loki

Low Key Ending

Loki - Season 1
June 9th to July 14th 2021
6 episodes

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Wow, you know, this one was almost a great TV show, it has to be said. It has one huge problem which, at least temporarily, kinda puts a damper on things but, yeah, for the most part this was highly entertaining and a much more interesting, if paranoid, take on the Marvel Cinematic Universe... or, you know, the Marvel Dodgy Internet Streaming Universe as it’s now become, as Disney try and milk and dilute all their newish acquisitions to squeeze the maximum profit out of them (although I did appreciate the oblique reference to Captain Hook in one of the episodes in this show).

Loki follows the further antics of the ‘split away’ variant version of Loki, played once again by Tom Hiddleston, after he diverges from the established timeline during the addition to the epilogue scene, so to speak, of The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble, reviewed here), as shown in the time heist sequence in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here). It reruns some of that scene and then continues after Loki escapes, thus branching off into a new variant timeline, before his future adventures leading to his ultimate demise at the hands of Thanos ever happened. But then, straight away, he is captured by agents of the seemingly all powerful TVA (the Time Variance Authority) and it gets all ‘Brazil at it’s most Kafkaesque’ for a while as he is processed and, unlike many of his allies, instead of being disposed of in ways I won’t mention due to spoilers and things we find out later in the story, he instead gets recruited to help Agent Mobius, played by Owen Wilson.

So a ‘dangerous variant’ of Loki, one of many it turns out, is taking out various TVA agents through time and stopping them from fulfilling their ultimate purpose... which is to police the one true timeline and prune any variances which might branch off into alternate timelines. After working through some trust issues, Loki and Mobius team up with the wonderful, troublesome variant they have been pursuing... Sylvie, played brilliantly by Sophia Di Martino. The chemistry between these three actors and their co-stars is absolutely amazing, I must say and the writing on this show is, mostly pretty good too... with a caveat.

Okay, so one of the things I liked about this is that it’s a heavyish look at the concept of time travel and how you would police such a thing. It’s pure science fiction and, unlike a lot of the Marvel films, which to be fair aren’t always all out explosion fests, this one doesn’t have a heck of a lot of action. Which is not a bad thing because this still has some pacing to it and there’s usually one fight or chase per episode, for those who crave such things.

There are also some very nice moments which depict other variants of characters in different guises... so there’s an alligator Loki, for example and, if you look at a small part of the screen in a particular digital tracking shot in one episode, when Thor’s hammer has just left the top of the screen it’s followed by a little ‘jumping frog’ version of Thor. Another great inclusion for, mostly just one episode apart from an epilogue and also a flashback recap, is Richard E. Grant who plays yet another variant of Loki and... this version of the character is costumed very, very closely to the version of him in the original Thor comics from the 1960s. Which was a nice thought. Also, it took her a while to get back to the franchise after her appearance in a couple of early episodes of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D but Jaimie Alexander returns to the franchise as Lady Sif (apparently she’ll also be in the upcoming Thor - Love And Thunder movie too, which is good that she’s rejoining the series of films where her character debuted). So that was a nice surprise.

And then there’s the big problem with the series... the last episode. Things build up to a revelation and climax and... well... the answer to the whole plot of the thing takes forever and involves a lot of boring expository dialogue which I could really have done without. We already knew at this point that the series was being renewed for a second season and that may or may not be where this one continues but, certainly, it might also continue in the upcoming Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness movie and, quite possible, even the new Spider-Man - No Way Home movie scheduled for the end of the year (I say scheduled because the coronavirus pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon). So, yeah, nothing is really resolved and we’re left with a cliffhanger, of sorts which, given that I suspect it could be a while for even a second series to get sorted, is a bit of a downer... especially since this last one was a really boring episode when the rest of the show had been really cool.

And that’s more or less it. The music is good but, yeah, no CD release so I’m not investing any time thinking about this stuff anymore... quite often these days I’ll pass on a film or a TV show because there’s no CD of the soundtrack coming out and, yeah, whether I’ll bother getting around to the second series myself is anybody’s guess, if Marvel are going to keep just releasing dodgy downloads of the music instead of the real thing (and the same goes for a Blu Ray release... if it’s not physical then it really isn’t there).

Loki was, for the most part, quite a cool TV show which got incredible dull in the last episode but, may or may not continue from where it left off when we eventually get to a second season. I’m getting a little tired of trying to guess what Marvel’s never ending long term plans for the characters in these kinds of things are, though, so I’m feeling less invested in the whole MCU of late. I guess we’ll see what happens at some point.

Thor - The Dark World (aka Thor 3)

Thantastic Thor

Thor - The Dark World (aka Thor 3)
2013 USA
Directed by Alan Taylor
Playing at UK cinemas now.

I really liked the first Thor movie (my review here), despite not being as familiar with that particular comic book character as I might have been, or perhaps because of that fact. I quite liked his turn in The Avengers (aka Marvel Avengers Assemble... my review here) movie and so was hoping his third outing wouldn’t make the mistake that the numerologically challenged Iron Man 2 (reviewed here) made and let the first movie down a bit. However, I went in with a fairly open mind and saw what I saw and concluded what I concluded, which is this...

Thor - The Dark World is not a great movie. Having said that though, it’s certainly a quite good movie and absolutely a lot of fun but, most importantly of all, it doesn’t let the first movie down in any way in terms of maintaining the same blend of character chemistry, morality and paciness of the original. The first movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh, had a certain stylistic flair which reminded me of nothing less than the Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Adventures Of Robin Hood, which is a pretty good template for any swashbuckler as far as I’m concerned. This one didn’t quite tick those boxes for me, I have to say, but it did still manage to maintain a certain cavalier attitude in the attitudes of some of the characters which gave it an edge on some of the other Marvel Universe movies doing the rounds in the last year or so.

I liked the interplay between the characters quite a bit in this one. I even liked the normally insufferable Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, on this occasion... a character I found to be sadly lacking in his first two Marvel Universe appearances but in this one I thought the chemistry between him and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor was pretty watchable, for once. Maybe the script was stronger at the dialogue level. The direction was quite nice in places too, with some really nice shot set ups in certain sequences where foreground and background people and objects created nice angles and relationships between each other (something I think will probably be even more noticeable when I watch a 2D version at some point, I suspect).

The performances were all as brilliant as you would expect from such a cast, with Kat Dennings’ uber intern character adding just the right touches of colour when bouncing off Natalie Portman and co, so that the movie, on many levels, is just a joy to watch. Unfortunately there were some big fails as far as I was concerned...

I didn’t, for instance, think a heck of a lot of the various action sequences which played away from Earth... in Asgard and The Dark World, for example and, considering at least two thirds of the action actually takes place in these environments, I did find my mind wandering at some points. Christopher Eccleston was pretty great as “bad guy of the moment” Malekith but he was under so much make up that if I hadn’t already had known he was in it, I wouldn’t have noticed it was Eccleston. So that’s a shame.

Another great performer, the distinguished actor Stellan Skarsgård, also returned for a third go at his Erik Selvig role, but he has been scripted totally as another “comic relief” ingredient in this movie and, although his performance was as phenomenal as it always is, I didn’t really enjoy the fact that, after his import in the last two movies, he’d been pretty much reduced to a mere running joke in this film.

That being said, there are some unprecedented moments of high silliness in Thor - The Dark World and that really does a lot to act as an antidote to alleviate the dullness of some of the grimmer scenes in Asgard and other alien landscapes and lift it back up to the realm of being a good movie rather than a bland affair. Thor’s encounter with the London Underground right in the middle of the big, final battle sequence, for example is priceless and I really welcomed the inclusion of the Charing Cross tube platform into the narrative... except, note to the writers, Charing Cross station is not three stops from Greenwich, which is on a different line and would require changing trains and be more like a half hour ride. This could not have happened in the context of the narrative people. How hard would that have been to sort out?

All in all, the special effects were competently handled (although I feel a lot of the scenes in this felt like a dry run for Guardians Of The Galaxy in some way, which doesn’t fill me with confidence for that movie when it comes out), the story was sound and, although the various character twists could be seen coming a mile off (the last shot before the end credits run, for example, wasn’t exactly revelatory), the scenes set in London and Greenwich more than compensated for some of the bits which dragged... although I’d have to say Idris Elba was sadly underused. He needs a bigger role fighting alongside Thor in the next one please guys. The pseudo-appearance of another Marvel Universe character halfway through the narrative was also a welcome inclusion, to be sure... Marvel really are applying their early to mid-sixties comic book modus operandi to their movies at this point, quite successfully too, so far.

As far as the music goes, Brian Tyler’s excellent score is great but not as good as his score for Iron Man Three (reviewed here) and, more importantly, not as cool as Patrick Doyle’s score for the first Thor movie. I’ve got nothing against Brian Tyler, I think his music is always good and I am looking forward to receiving this score for Christmas (fingers crossed) but seriously, when will Marvel stop playing musical chairs with their composers and obliterating any musical continuity within the series. To be fair to the always listenable Tyler, he does integrate another composer’s theme for one sequence in this movie, although I can’t tell you what scene and which composer because that will obviously spoil the surprise of that brief cameo for you... but I really think Marvel should start to treat their scores for their movies more seriously at this stage. They are doing so much right now with the scripting, casting and choice of directors that they should really get onto the case.

That aside, if you liked the previous two Thor movies then you really shouldn’t be too worried about this one as you’ll almost certainly have a fairly enjoyable time with it too. And I’ll tell you now, don’t be getting up to go once the end credits start rolling... this movie contains, not only a mid end credits epilogue sequence but also a post end credits epilogue sequence too, which gives a little bit more closure to the actual story on the second epilogue, while setting up the next story arc for at least one of the upcoming Marvel movies on the first of the epilogues.

So there you go. Good movie, not as great as the first one, still quite fun and worth paying out the money for, although I thought the 3D conversion on this one was quite poor, flat and lifeless... it has to be said. Definitely worth a watch for all you Marvel fans though.