In Which I Overidentify With a Comic Book Villain
So I rewatched Thor last night, and I still love it, but I kind of have one issue with it:
So Loki gets 'adopted' by Odin to be a living chess piece and raised in an environment where he hears, every single day, how the frost giants are savages and they aren't like us and so they don't matter and Hey, isn't it great we practically annihilated them them? and We beat them so easy they were like worms beneath our feet and the only good giant is a dead giant and probably It's too bad Odin didn't let us finish them off, they killed my beloved _____ and I wish I could make them suffer and kill them all they don't deserve to live, and that's how Loki grows up, nurtured in the hate of a country recovering from a devastating war.
Loki grows up a sort of Snape to Thor's James; his strengths are in trickery and obfuscation, where Thor's are of the more straightforward, raw strength variety, in a society where Warriors Have Honor and Might Makes Right, and Loki's strengths are mistrusted, so Thor, of course, is favored to take over for Odin.
Loki engineers an attack during Thor's big day to start some mischief, and some frost giants get killed but they aren't like us so they don't matter anyway.
Thor gets pissed and attacks the Frost Giants, opening the door to war, which is wrong because lots of Asgardians could die. He gets scolded and punished and banished, but with a way back. Bad form, Thor, Odin says. Learn to be better and you can come back.
Then Loki learns he's a frost giant.
Loki, who spent his life hearing all about how they're filth and they're savages and they're not Asgard and thank God we're not like them, learns he's one of them.
Loki comes up with a way to annihilate them, because - because he's not like them, maybe he's a frost giant but he's not like those other frost giants, and maybe if he kills them he can show everyone that he's better than them, that he's really an Asgardian. And this is wrong, because he tricks them and kills them with trickery as opposed to slaughtering them face to face in open combat.
And in the end, he's hanging off the bridge, hanging below the brother who fucked up and got a chance to redeem himself, and he's looking Odin in the eyes and trying to explain himself. And Odin's looking back and he knows - he has to know - that Loki's going to let go if Odin doesn't accept him, if Odin doesn't forgive him, if Odin doesn't give him a second chance and say Bad form, Loki; learn to be better and we can talk, and Odin looks at him - at the baby he stole from the battlefield that he planned to use as a pawn in a plan to give the giants a leader raised Asgard who will hate himself so much that he'll make them stop being so savage and uncivilized and will make them more like us and so make a peace between the two nations - and Odin says:
"No, Loki."
And it all ends in celebration, because, in the end, all it came down to was that Loki wasn't like us, so it doesn't matter.
And I still love this movie, but I really fucking hate Odin.