Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
one thing i really liked about thor ragnarok that i havent seen a lot of folks on my dash talking about was its critique of imperialism and the ultimate message that a nation founded on the violent takeover of others doesn’t deserve to exist and will be the author of its own destruction, though its people may be innocent of their country’s past crimes
another thing i really liked about thor ragnarok is jeff goldblum’s painted nails
I’m pretty sure that’s not the message. Imperialism is bad, sure. Greed and corruption will lead to your own destruction, sure. “Changing your ways and becoming moral and peaceful is not enough, your country and it’s people do not deserve to exist and must pay the blood debt of their ancestors?” That’s reaching a bit.
not “your country and its people”, just “your country”. hela embodies the way of life that paved the way for asgard-the-nation to exist, and the scene where she reclaims the throne represents how nations founded on imperialism can never escape their roots—it’s literally like painting over an old mural, you might not see the original painting but it’s still there. the comment about the throne, a physical object representing the power of asgard-the-nation, further cements this (“all that fighting because of this” or something along those lines).
she literally draws her strength from asgard-the-nation, her violence and cruelty are what asgard-the-nation needed and used to flourish, back in the day. to defeat hela, thor and company literally have to allow asgard-the-nation to be destroyed—they have to let war burn on until an entire planet is destroyed, until not even the foundation remains, because even the foundation was built on the violent subjugation of other people. this is not a reach, like, this is the very first layer of subtext in the movie. this is all but directly stated. i’m sorry that taika waititi didn’t have a cameo at the end where he said “imperialist nations don’t deserve to exist because their success comes at the cost of those whom they subjugate”, but like, he did basically everything but that.
asgard-the-people, on the other hand, don’t deserve to die, and so they don’t. aside from the army that hela mows through (“armies are bad,” taika waititi would presumably say in his cameo), there are four asgardian deaths—the warriors three and the executioner. the warriors three are, like hela, physical vestiges of asgard’s imperialist past (source: thor (2011)), so like, again, they deserved what they got. but the number of asgardian civilian casualties is extremely low for a reason.
I have lauded the film for its criticism of imperialism and historic revisionism since day 1 and I am so happy it is gaining traction. The grace and follow-through with which it is handled is truly admirable.
NO ONE gets way with their shit, not Odin, not the Asgardian warriors, not the Grandmaster’s gladiatorial tirade, not even Skurge in his shallow redemption moment.
This movie earned its title like no MCU film before it, it was purification and rebirth, and Thor became the better version of Odin who led the innocent people caught up in the greed and corruption away from their smoldering worlds, instead of putting root in it and ignoring the lies in the foundation.
You can just really, truly tell when a director channels their experience with social issues through their work, even if it’s so elegantly weaved into a broader context of “comedy”. It didn’t matter; the jokes were functional and character-driven. Underneath all of that, however, was very apparent rage.
The true reason Garfield is now done by a team and not just Jim Davis is not due to Jim Davis’s age but is because Garfield holds too much power for one man to contain. This is for our safety not his.
Fibromyangela 