Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Loki, “Glorious Purpose”, Review!

 We have the return of Loki after he was killed in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) by Thanos, you can’t keep a god of mischief down, and in Avengers: Endgame (2019) we found that the Avengers, a team of Ant Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor time travel during Loki’s invasion in 2012.  It’s basically the clip show of the MCU.  They find Loki being escorted away by S.H.I.E.L.D., but the Tesseract is knocked out the briefcase.  Loki picks it up and zaps away.  Avengers Captain America fights with current Cap who manages to take away Loki’s staff, sort of accomplishing the mission.  Loki picks up on the events of the Avengers’ mission, we have the struggle over the briefcase, and Loki cubes away. We get a beetle crossing the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.  The puff of Loki’s cloud appears in the sky and sends him hurting down into the desert sands.  He takes out the mouth covering given to him by Thor and sees the Mongolian locals.  Loki stands on a rock giving his grand speech.  Tom Hiddleston is back to Loki form, devious and clever.  


The Mongolians don’t understand him.  Suddenly, a portal opens and three black and red suited officers exit with weapons, purple-tipped staves.  They examine the Cosmic Cube, Loki sees a commander, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), walk out of another portal, she arrests the “variant Loki” for “crimes against the sacred timeline.”  Mosaku was in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016).  She strikes Loki so his mouth swings around in slo mo and puts a collar on him. He is taken away by the commander who orders the timeline to be “re-set”, a device glowing yellow, then purple.  She takes Loki into red-tiled hallway, the offices look like a throwback to The Prisoner, Loki tries to escape, but can’t escape time - he is zapped back in place, this device is a Time Twister. Hunter B-15 turns over the Cosmic Cube to a desk worker, Casey (Eugene Cordero).  Loki is taken to an elevator-like room which has a four-armed robot with a smiling face.  It tries to pull off his armor, then just zaps Loki’s clothes off!  He falls down into another room in a prisoner’s jumpsuit.  A bureaucrat wants him to sign a stack of papers of “everything that he’s ever said”!  


Loki signs one paper, drops into another room where he is questioned if he’s an organic being and has a soul!  He goes through a scanning machine that takes his picture.  The absurd, bureaucratic worlds reminds me of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Loki heads into an office with winding queues, but only finds another prisoner.  A screen repeats Loki’s words, it is a cartoon, orange clock, Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) of the Time Variance Authority.  This was an organization keeping continuity as stable as possible introduced in Thor #371 (1986).  A cartoon shows the battle of timelines that almost destroyed the universe.  Three, alien Time Keepers created the “Sacred Timeline”, the variants like Loki create Nexus’ that may result in a Multiversal War.  The TVA is there is to correct time slips.  The other prisoner who refused to get a ticket is vaporized.  Loki holds up his ticket.  This moves to 1549, at a church in Aix-En-Provence, France, where a man in a suit, Owen Wilson is examining a crime scene with TVA officers, Hunters in charge of Minutemen troops.  Wilson is of course known for his comedies and voices Lightning McQueen for the Cars films.  



The bodies were stabbed by someone at a Nexus event.  The lead hunter is all business and is ready to zap a young girl who has entered the church.  The investigator gives her a cellphone-like device that projects a drawing and asks her who killed the men.  She points to a stained glass window of a devil with a blue tongue!  He finds that her teeth are blue because she has a roll of Kablooie candy.  The commander says that their time is almost up.  A TVA official gives the investigator Loki’s case file.  Loki is taken into the TVA courtroom. His judge is Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). The character, also known as Terminatrix, first appeared in Avengers #23 (1965).  Mbatha-Raw has some time travel experience playing Tish Jones in Doctor Who.  Loki pleads he is not guilty, the Avengers are guilty of disrupting the timeline, Ravonna says their actions were correct, Loki’s escape is a crime.  Mobius takes a seat in the back.  Loki changes his plea to guilty and then tries to snap his fingers, no magic in the TVA.  Ravonna orders Loki to be “re-set.”  Mobius stands up and takes charge over Loki.  They walk out into the TVA halls and Loki stops to see the future city outside.  In an elevator, Agent Mobius introduces himself, Loki is not impressed.  Mister Mobius was introduced in Fantastic Four #353 (1991).   


Mobius takes Loki to his office, he has a red, circular device on his desk, Loki is told Mobius pursues “dangerous variants.” A red globe that can peer into the past, future, an any place?  This is similar to the Tachyon Machine that was in the Tomorrowland (2015) movie.  He asks about Loki’s ambitions to rule Asgard, Earth, and the Nine Realms.  Loki mentions he wants to rule since freedom is lie.  Mobius shows scenes from The Avengers.  Loki’s greatest weaknesses is his arrogance and lack of self-reflection.   Next, on a flight to Seattle, an airline attendant is shown checking on Loki in a business suit.  His identity here is as Mr. Cooper.  He tells her that he has a bomb in his briefcase.  The plane unloads passengers and then in flight, Loki takes the briefcase from the attendant, leaps off the plane and Rainbow Bridge to Asgard.  Mobius is amazed that Loki was D.B. Cooper!  Then, Mobius shows Loki is his future with his actions leading to the death of his mother, Frigga, in Thor: The Dark World (2013).  Loki of course manages to escape, but learns some hard truths about himself.  Mobius needs his help to find the time criminal, sort of like a time traveling The Blacklist, is there an evil greater than Loki?  The series is all out fantasy sci fi with some comedy, it takes the plot bending time travel mechanics of Avengers: Endgame into more of a fun territory.  


Three Time Twisters out of Five!   


#Loki, #TomHiddleston, #OwenTWilson, #GuguMbathaRaw

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