Whether it be as a supporting character, a villain, or an ally of sorts, Loki has been a prominent character in every movie we’ve looked at so far this month. I’ve mentioned him briefly in other posts, but have waited until now to fully analyze his character. The main reason I did this is because Loki’s character is incredibly complex, and I felt it was best to look at a few movies first, so that we could detect a pattern in his behavior and use this to aid our discussion of his character. Let’s look through each of the movies I’ve featured so far and see what we can learn about everybody’s favorite god of mischief.
During the movie Thor, Loki grows and changes just as much as his brother and counterpart. At the beginning of the movie we see a younger sibling who genuinely loves his brother, and wants to keep him out of as much trouble as possible, as seen when Loki tries to deter Thor from going to Jotunhiem for revenge. While it is true that Loki brought the Jotun soldiers into Asgard to cause a bit of trouble, I don’t believe it had any malicious intent behind it. I see a brother who wanted to cause a little playful trouble in that moment, and perhaps it was mixed with some jealousy stemming from Thor being crowned king, but I think that he knew that there was no way three or four Jotun soldiers could cause any real harm. But unfortunately, malicious is exactly what Loki became over the course of this film. Discovering that his father, Odin, had been lying to him about his identity his whole life and the opportunity presented to him in Thor being banished sent Loki down a path that changed him for the worse. He began to revile his father and became desperate for the approval of his mother. He lied to Thor and lied to Lady Sif and the warriors three in attempts to keep his power as king of Asgard, angrily insisting on the right that had been promised to him in the lies his father had woven. Eventually, at the end of the film, he decides that it was worth falling through the cosmos and risking ending up who knows where was better than facing the reality that Thor had succeeded in winning back his father’s praise like he felt that he himself could never to.
When he fell through the universe at the end of Thor, he landed in Midgard and on the planet earth. Here another curious change happened in Loki; his malice towards his family changed grew to include also a hunger for power. One of the first things he saw on earth was the prized tesseract. I imagine that his thought process included two big motivators for taking the object for his own: the sheer power of the tesseract was perfect for dominating and controlling the weak race of humans, and using the jewel of Odin’s treasure room to achieve his goals would be like a slap in the face to Odin himself. He thus spent the course of The Avengers fiercely fighting to bring the planet earth and its native human race under his control. He used every possible asset he had – including a loaner Chitari army. It took the collective strength of the mightiest heroes earth had to offer to bump Loki off of his high horse and knock him back down to size. The film ended with an angry Loki in chains and being escorted back to Asgard by Thor. Now both malicious intents and having discovered a power-hungry spirit in himself, he was headed back to the very last place he wanted to go.
In Thor: The Dark World, Loki asks a question of Frigga that sticks out to me every time I watch it: “Have I made you proud, Mother?”. It says several things in one little phrase, which shows excellent writing. Most prominently, because we don’t have time to go into the layers of this line, it displays that Loki knows that Thor has been working to become a good king and to make his parents proud, and that he also knows that he’s been doing the exact opposite. He hates how Thor has succeeded in his pursuits in this way, but wants to show his mother that he still cares for her, probably the most out of his whole family.
Throughout the course of the second installment in the line of Thor movies, Loki adds another characteristic to his repertoire: not only is he malicious and power-hungry, but he also becomes very bitter. Bitter that he is wasting away in Asgard’s prisons and Thor is soon to be sitting on the throne. Bitter that he was once respected as a prince and now was treated as a common criminal. Bitter, even, in a strange way, that his mother dares to care about him enough to provide him with furnishings and entertainment in the form of books. But that last bit of bitterness is a different story entirely. Even more fuel was added his smoldering, angry fire when he inadvertently caused his mother’s death. This was when he became bitter at life in general. While he agrees to help Thor with ridding Jane of the Aether, it’s clear the entire rest of the movie that his anger towards his brother has far from cooled down. When the film ends with us seeing that Loki has taken over the throne of Asgard and has disguised himself as Odin, it becomes clear that his hunger for power hasn’t gone away either.
Loki and Thor’s relationship is perhaps the rockiest in all their odd family dynamics. In the course of the three movies discussed here, they go from loving brothers to being completely at odds and then coming back around to being almost-allies. We still have another movie to explore that features the both of them, though, so hold on to your hats and keep this character analysis in mind as later this month we dive into a story that has much more in store for the gods of mischief and thunder!
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