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Yep. That's like FF2 where the director said that a forty foot purple guy would look silly, so they made Galactus into a cloud. And they cut out The Watcher entirely. A forty foot purple guy is silly, but an orange rocky guy, a silver guy on a surfboard and a stretchy super-science genius are NOT silly? A movie based on the Galactus trilogy without Galactus and the Watcher?

If you make comic book superhero movies you have to embrace the silly and the "preposterous" otherwise thinking any one given thing is "preposterous" is the only thing really silly.

Once parameters of the fictional setting are established, it's the writer's job to follow those rules. Loki is the ultimate master of deception IN THAT SET OF RULES. No human can out-trick him, at least not that easily. Thor is aware enough to understand the social implications of being adopted, so Loki should be aware enough that he's in a facility wherein he is being very closely monitored and Natasha wouldn't say something like that on the record. Sloppy, sloppy writing.

As I said above, I never thought Loki wasn't in control, I thought the "foreshadowing" was just a red herring.

But even so. No, Loki isn't as two-dimensional as your wanting to portray him. Your "SET OF RULES," are based on your interpretation. A trickster god can't be tricked? Does that mean Thor can't be struck by lightening or effected by a storm? Would a master marksman like Hawkeye be invulnerable to arrows? That's just sloppy thinking.

Trickery isn't Loki's bitch, it's his tool, his weapon, it's his hammer.

Isn't it well established in both history and Marvel continuity that the gods are imperfect? The tales of mythology are cautionary tales, gods are gods, but they embody the emotional flaws of humans as well. Thor himself needed to taught humility. Odin placing him on Earth as Don Blake, in his first appearance. The movie had Odin teaching him a similar lesson in arrogance.

Loki isn't the all-powerful complete trickster god, he is flawed, he can be fooled, he is power hungry, arrogant and prideful, how can those things not effect his character just as much as his desire to screw with everyone. Georges Dumezil considered Loki more an incarnation of "impulsive intelligence." These aren't really gods they are just flawed, exaggerated humans in parables.

Read a little Joseph Campbell.

Like that would help. I'm sure everybody realizes this but Allen's position isn't any deeper than "Allen dislikes Whedon, therefore The Avengers must suck".

Mike

It depends on what you're going for. For Batman, Christopher Nolan stayed away from the blue and yellow tights, sidekicks, and other more less realistic ideas and it worked very well for his story.

Other times, staying away from the more colorful aspects can hurt the film.

I agree with Allen here. Sure Loki and the Asgrdians are mentioned as not truly being immortal, or whatever else the humans think of them. However, you'd expect Loki not to be that stupid. Especially since he apparantly knows all of Black Widow's history of trickery, espionage and various murders. The scene didn't bother me that much because it was a great, fun movie, but I don't think the possibility of Black Widow selling out the entire human race for her friend was developed very well. I guess you could think, "ohhh, she remembers the Soviet Union falling..." but if Earth falls, where's she going to defect to with Hawkeye? Mars?

Nope. More like, Whedon has show time and time again how sloppy a writer he is and here's another example.


Also, ad hominem.

Type that in a glass house did ya?

Allen, has it ever occured to you that if you had more going on in your life, you wouldn't have to cling so desperately to your willfully ignorant opinions on stuff like this?

What am I saying? Of course it hasn't.

Joss Whedon's qualifications as a writer - He does it for a living and quite successfully.

Allen's qualifications as a writer - Message board comments that are usually mocked or ignored.

Mike