The Avengers

From facebook:

Well, I saw The Avengers. There were many explosions and much destruction of high tech equipment. Midtown Manhattan was wrecked. I liked Iron Man, Thor and Captain America better. I even think I liked Iron Man 2 better. Tom Hiddleston, who was a fine Loki in Thor, was completely wasted. Robert Downey Jr. was wasted. They were all wasted.

I've seen lots of rave reviews, so I am clearly in a minority. There was so much beating up, so much noise, so many clouds of dust and fire that I found it hard to follow the movie. Maybe there were characters in there somewhere.

More from facebook:

Well, maybe Tom Hiddleston was not entirely wasted. The explosions are fading from my memory, the adrenaline rush is almost over, and I'm trying to figure out the movie's plot. There are hints... When Loki appears, the skin around his eyes is badly bruised, and he looks as if he's been through hell. He's recently been through a wormhole, which is probably stressful even for a god. And he's also met the nasty aliens. My impression is, he's their puppet, though he thinks he's the puppetmaster. This is nice. This is irony. But I'm not sure. I wasn't given enough. I would have liked a bit of conversation with Thor. "You don't know what happened to me when you threw me in that wormhole. You don't know what I've been through. I died in there." Maybe the conversation was there, and I missed it amid all the explosions.

Loki is nastier and more desperate than he was in Thor, less in control. That is interesting, and I would have liked to know more. Again, I would have liked a bit of conversation with Thor to explain. The key to Loki is his relationship to Thor, the golden big brother. He's lost the chance to be king of Asgard -- he does mention this in The Avengers -- and now he wants to be king of Thor's Midgard, in part as revenge against Thor.

The aliens want the Tesseract, which is their motivation. Loki is willing to trade it for Earth. It's a lousy trade, another indication that Loki is not playing at the top of his game. Something has happened to him. I assume he was torn apart in the wormhole and blames Thor and is really mad now and more than a little crazy. Okay, now I have most of a plot, and most of it is in the movie. It was just hidden by the explosions.

Loki is what drives the entire movie. We did need more of him; and Thor -- the golden brother -- was dim in this movie. He's always dim in one sense of the word, but he needs to shine. He is the heir to Asgard, after all, and Earth is his world -- both in the Thor movie and in Norse mythology. Thor is "the friend of men." Envy of Thor is what drives Loki, along with a need to be loved.