"The Nice List" - Coming Soon!

Coming soon to Amazon Prime this holiday season is our new Christmas film The Nice List.

Cole Davidson isn't just naughty. His constant selfish, dishonest, and hurtful behavior towards others has landed him on a list even worse than Santa's Naughty List. When he and his best friend Ralph discover this on Christmas Eve, they hurry out in search of good deeds for Cole to do so he can redeem himself before midnight. The only problem is that Cole is painfully bad at being good. Can he earn enough points to get himself onto the Nice List in time, or will Cole get a lump of coal this Christmas?

5 Tips for NaNoWriMo

Well, tomorrow marks the start of the 2018 NaNoWriMo challenge. For anyone unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month), it's an annual online competition where participants are given the entire month of November to write a novel from beginning to end. The goal is to either finish the book or write 50,000 words, whichever you do first.

It's an exciting challenge for writers of all experience levels, but it can also seem daunting to people who haven't tried it before. I felt the same way about it for years, since I tend to be a slow writer, but when I did it for the first time last year, I actually managed to finish my novel The Last Good Man before the end of November. That hardly makes me an expert, but since more and more people are taking an interest in NaNoWriMo every year, I figured I ought to offer the advice I have to any first-timers out there.


1. Use The Website

Maybe it goes without saying, but it helps your writing pace tremendously if you register on the official NaNoWriMo website and log your progress every day. Check your word count for the day on whatever word processing program you use, enter it into the site, and NaNoWriMo will give you a full breakdown of your daily average. It also compares your overall word count to what it should be by that point in the month, then it uses that information to calculate the date when you'll reach 50,000 words.

If that isn't motivation enough, you can also find other writers on the NaNoWriMo site and add them to your "Writing Buddies" list to compare each other's progress. Lastly, the site offers prizes, usually subscriptions for writing or formatting software, to the first few people who upload a 50,000-word manuscript. It might be better for first-timers to just focus on meeting their own writing goals for the month instead of competing, but if winning a prize helps you to keep going, then by all means go for it. Besides, the prize might help you on your next NaNoWriMo.

Here's a link to the website for anyone interested: https://nanowrimo.org


2. Outline Your Book

The only rule of NaNoWriMo is that you're not allowed to start writing the actual novel until November 1st. You're allowed to outline it as much as you want before that, though. Mapping out your story ahead of time is usually the best approach to writing a book under any circumstances, but it's especially handy when you only have thirty days to write one. That way, you can avoid writing yourself into a corner, getting hung up on plot holes, or stalling out because you don't know where you want the story to go.

Granted, outlines aren't always perfect. You might discover while writing your book that something in your outline doesn't make sense, or that you forgot a crucial detail in the planning stage that needs to be addressed in the story. Maybe you'll even think up a new plot point that's better than what you had in your outline and it will end up altering the rest of the plot. My best advice for things like that is to go with your gut feeling and maybe make notes for possible changes at the end of each chapter. The book might need work after NaNoWriMo, but having an outline will at least give it the foundation it needs.


3. Write, Don't Edit

What matters for NaNoWriMo is the pace of your writing, not the quality. No first draft of anything is flawless, so it's best not to stew over your word choices or punctuation when you're writing on such a strict time budget. Picture what's supposed to happen in the scene that you're working on, write down what you see in your mind, and then move on. This might sound alarming to more methodical writers, but eventually you will get comfortable with it. Personally, I found it more than a little therapeutic to to stop thinking about how the book might sound to readers and just focus on writing it.

This might just be a matter of preference, but based on my own experience, I recommend writing your first NaNoWriMo book from the First Person point of view. I typically write in Third Person, which tends to come out too wordy and poetic since the story is basically being told by some all-knowing, James Earl Jones-like narrator in the sky. It's from the point of view of someone above the characters, whereas stories in the First Person are from the point of view one of the characters themselves. This allows you to take a much less formal approach to the writing style, since you're writing it the way a normal person would tell the story, and I think that helps the writing to go faster. Your book will still need editing afterwards, but since you're writing it in a more naturalistic way, you might not think about that nearly as much in the meantime.


4. Keep It Simple

There's a part of every writer that dreams of becoming the next J.K. Rowling, but even the first Harry Potter book was pretty basic compared to its sequels. Writing 50,000 words in thirty days is challenging enough for first-timers, so it's probably not a good idea to tackle the most complicated story you can think of for your first NaNoWriMo. A simple, to-the-point story makes for quicker writing, and quicker writing makes for a more motivated, enthusiastic writer.

That's not to say that every NaNoWriMo book you ever write has to be simplistic. I just think it's good to get comfortable with a faster work pace first and then move your way up to telling more complex stories. Think of it like weight training; if you try to lift an eighty-pound barbell on your first gym visit, you'll probably hurt yourself, but if you start by lifting smaller weights, you'll eventually build yourself up to the point where you'll be able to handle a heavy load.


5. Make It Fun

Listen to your favorite music while writing your NaNoWriMo book. Let yourself go to the movies as a reward when you reach a big milestone on your word count. Drink a shot of something (responsibly) to celebrate every time you finish a chapter. NaNoWriMo is supposed to be a fun challenge, so do whatever keeps you in a positive mindset while you're writing.

If I have one piece of wisdom to give about writing, it's that if you like a story enough, it will write itself for you. In other words, if you write your book with enthusiasm, you'll be more immersed in it and more likely to keep coming up with fresh and creative ideas for it as you go along. An author's energy can really show in their writing, and that energy can rub off on readers and make reading your books all the more enjoyable to them in turn. And that's the goal of NaNoWriMo: to make writing a source of entertainment rather than stress. If you can accomplish that, then half the battle will already be won.

Is an Actor's Word Definitive?

It's pretty common knowledge that actors bring a lot of their own ideas to the table when playing a character. Not only can they add dimensions to a performance with ad-libs and personal quirks, but they often take the extra step by inventing backstories for their characters beyond what the script provides. This is pretty common knowledge too, and it makes sense for actors to do this. Having a personal history in mind that doesn't necessarily relate to the story at hand makes their characters feel more like real people, and that gives them something to draw from when finding their motivation for certain scenes.

One aspect of this that I want to explore though is what happens when an actor's vision of their character doesn't quite jibe with what's conveyed in the final product. I'm not talking about when the actor and the writer and/or director clash over creative differences. I'm talking about when those creative differences result in a major aspect of the character being ambiguous to the viewers. Sure, writers and directors are the top creative authorities on the overall project, but the actor is the one who delivers the performance we actually see. Does that make their word the more definitive one in the end?

Take the characters Pintel and Ragetti from the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. Played by Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook, they're a pirate duo who frequently switch allegiances depending on what's more beneficial to them, as pirates do. Unlike most duos in the series though, they never once turn on each other. They're completely loyal to one another from start to finish, and even when things descend into "every man for himself," they still more or less work as a team with their shared wellbeing in mind.

The movies (produced by Disney in the early-to-mid 2000's, mind you) seem to present them as just really good friends who have each other's backs because they've been through so much together. In fact, Pintel was a solo character in the first draft of the script, so it makes sense that splitting him into two characters in later drafts would result in a duo that always works together. However, a lot of viewers genuinely believe that he and Ragetti are a homosexual couple. There's even a deleted scene from the first film where Pintel mentions that he "used to date a eunuch." What complicates this further is that Lee Arenberg has said that he and Mackenzie Crook came up with the idea before filming that their characters were actually uncle and nephew.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, aye?

Personally, I always favored the uncle and nephew theory since it came from the actors themselves. If that was how they played their roles, then it has to be what their characters' relationship really was, right? And it wasn't like one or both of their characters couldn't still be homosexual; they just wouldn't be a couple with each other. However, this way of thinking got turned on its head just a month ago when I saw the movie Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior for the first time.

See, there's a marauding male duo in that movie too. Their names are Wez and the Golden Youth, and they spend most of their shared screen time riding on a motorcycle together while dressed in black fetish leather, complete with a dog collar and chain on the Golden Youth and "assless" chaps on Wez. Wez always sits in front on the motorcycle with those chaps, by the way. One of the heroes kills the Golden Youth during a negotiation scene about a third of the way through the film, and his death sends Wez into such a vengeful rage that the lead villain has to restrain him and remind him that every one in their group has lost "someone we love."

The intention for these two characters would seem obvious, even for a film from 1981. However, Vernon Wells, the actor who played Wez, has a reported history of getting angry at people who insist that Wez and the Golden Youth were a couple. He's also said that director George Miller left it up to him to decide his character's backstory, which Wells decided was that of a surrogate father to the Golden Youth, and that a scene clarifying this was meant to be in the film at one point. To the best of my knowledge, no proof of this scene existing has ever surfaced, not even in older drafts of the script, and the Golden Youth was originally a female character.

Taking the actor's word suddenly doesn't seem like the most credible approach anymore. Granted, there are a few differing factors between these two cases.

The Pirates movies present Pintel and Ragetti's relationship in a very broad, distant light that allows for several interpretations. Mad Max 2, in contrast, seems to give Wez and the Golden Youth's relationship one very specific undertone, unless the idea is that they just dress that way because everyone has questionable fashion in Mad Max. Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook could come up with any backstory they wanted for their characters without really contradicting the writers' ideas, whereas Vernon Wells was stuck on a two-man motorcycle in assless chaps. He's going to have a harder time convincing people of his interpretation because things like the wardrobe and staging were beyond his control.

The actors themselves and the timing of their films' releases are also big factors in credibility. If Wez really is supposed to be a homosexual, it's possible that Vernon Wells was never comfortable with that idea, or else he was comfortable with it back in 1981 but his view has changed since then. Or maybe he honestly never saw the role that way during production and resents that it's been interpreted that way. Another commonly known thing about actors is that they tend to accept roles that they're not entirely passionate about or don't fully understand because work is scarce at the time, and a lot of them do look back on those roles wishing they had turned them down or played them differently. Even Viola Davis recently admitted to having regrets about her Oscar-nominated role in The Help.

The bottom line seems to be that while actors do play a key role in bringing characters to life, they don't own those characters. Therefore, their word only holds so much weight. As viewers, we can still believe them if we want to—it's always good to view art from more than one perspective—but if you want the definitive word on something in a movie, show, or stage play, you're probably better off asking the writers and directors, the people who had to envision the bigger picture.

And for the record, I still prefer to think that Pintel and Ragetti are uncle and nephew. That's partially because I've written a 155,000-word fanfiction series based on that idea, and I like it when the words that I write hold a little weight.

3K Film Festival - Sign Up Today!

Are you a filmmaker in Western Pennsylvania? Ever wanted to compete in a weekend filmmaking contest? Now's your chance to sign up for our 3K Film Festival in November! 

The competition starts on Friday, November 2nd. Teams will draw the genre and style of the film they have to make, and then we give them exactly 50 hours (3,000 minutes) to make it.

Click the link below to sign up on our website. Register before September 15th, and you'll get our Early Bird discount for just $45. Sign up between September 16th and October 15th, and it will only be $50. The registration fee from October 16th to November 2nd will be the full $60.

> 3K Film Festival website <

Join the fun, and good luck!

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Loki of Jotunheim

While we're still on the subject of Loki's (we'll say "alleged") death in Avengers: Infinity War, there's one particular aspect of it that I think is worth discussing. It's actually a major aspect of his overall depiction in the MCU that a lot of fans would like to see the movies address again. I'm talking about Loki's Frost Giant appearance.

As established in the first Thor film, Loki isn't Thor's biological brother, but an adoptive brother who was born as a Frost Giant in the realm of Jotunheim. This means that in his natural form, he has blue skin and red eyes. Coincidentally, his supposed death scene in Infinity War was lit heavily with blue light and Thanos strangling him left Loki with bloodshot eyes. This led many viewers to wonder if the shape-shifting God of Mischief had reverted back into his Frost Giant form because the spell disguising him as an Asgardian wore off as he died.

It's understood now that this wasn't the case, but it does leave us wondering more than ever about the nature of Loki's dual appearance and where it fits into the MCU.

The first Thor is the only film to ever show Loki as a Frost Giant, and the first full reveal of it is a huge moment in that story. What's more, Thor never sees him in that form at any point in the film. Fans have been itching to see Frost Giant Loki again ever since, and who can blame them? It would be a great dramatic peak for Thor and Loki's relationship to have the God of Thunder finally see what his brother really looks like, and it would make Loki's arc feel more complete too since seeing himself in that form the first time was what made him fall from grace.

Some viewers have even cited his remaining in Asgardian form after death as proof that he didn't really die. Others just find it frustrating, sometimes to the point that they wonder if the screenwriters have forgotten about Loki's Frost Giant origins. I'm no expert, but based on what I've seen in the MCU so far, here's my take on everything.

For starters, the screenwriters haven't forgotten about Loki's origins. He introduces himself at one point in both Thor: The Dark World and Infinity War as someone from Jotunheim, and not only does Thor: Ragnarok show his real father Laufey depicted in a ceiling mural, but it also shows a stage play about Loki where a child actor covered head-to-toe in blue paint portrays him as a baby. I'll even offer that maybe Infinity War gave Loki blue lighting and bloodshot eyes for his presumed death as a subtle nod to the fact that he's a Frost Giant.

As for him not turning back into a Frost Giant when he dies, I don't think it's that simple. The only times we see him turn back into one in Thor is whenever he touches another Frost Giant or the Casket of Ancient Winters, and even then the transformation is brief. We also get a flashback where his adoptive father Odin finds him as a baby on Jotunheim and then Loki changes into an Asgardian. Frost Giants don't seem to have any appearance-altering powers, and we learn in The Dark World that Loki received his illusion powers from Odin's wife Frigga later in life. Because of this, we can assume that Odin was the one who originally transformed him into an Asgardian.

And I think that word is the key here: "transformed." I don't think Odin cast a mere disguise over Loki; I think he actually altered Loki's physicality, much like he transformed Thor from an Asgardian into a human while banishing him to Earth in the first film. Loki's Asgardian appearance was a deep-rooted, mostly permanent change that became his default form once it was cast, and Odin was the one who cast it. If Odin's death in Ragnarok didn't make Loki automatically turn back into a Frost Giant, then Loki's death probably wouldn't make that happen either.

Whether or not Loki's still alive, there are plenty of ways that the MCU can show him as a Frost Giant again. I personally like the thought of Thanos using the Reality Stone to taunt Thor with various illusions of his little brother, including one of Loki in his original form. The question is just whether or not the MCU will bother to show that side of Loki again. The character's last appearance will be in Avengers 4, however large or small his role will be, and since that film will most likely have a ton of more important storylines to juggle, it might just decide to close the books on Loki even faster than Infinity War did. He did resolve everything that he needed to in that film, after all.

I'll still hope for Frost Giant Loki to make a final cameo in Avengers 4, just because the films do keep reminding us of his origins, but as a Loki fan, I'm pretty sure he'll always leave us wanting more no matter what the MCU does with him.

Avengers 4: They're Not Quite Dead

It's been exactly three months since The Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters and turned the whole Marvel fan community upside-down. Practically everyone who's ever seen a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is itching for next summer's release of Avengers 4, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo are doing everything in their power to keep the details about it under wraps until then. They don't even want to announce the film's title yet because they say it might spoil the plot. If the Infinity Gauntlet was powered by Avengers 4 details instead of the six Infinity Stones, the universe would still be safe from Thanos.

Because of this, countless fan theories have been popping up all over the internet in the past three months. Most of them center around characters who died in Infinity War and ways that they could come back to life, and while a lot of those deaths occurred when Thanos snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out half the universe, some deaths occurred before that. These are the trickier ones to theorize about since they don't seem as easily reversible as the ones caused by the Snap. However, more and more fans are starting to look at some of these deaths from a new angle: that those characters aren't actually dead.

I could spend days researching and constructing my own theories about every "dead" character, but for the sake of brevity, I'll just talk about three of the more likely ones to turn up alive in Avengers 4.

1. The Collector

There isn't too much to say about this character, mainly because there isn't too much to say about his role in Infinity War. All we see is a brief scene of Thanos threatening him for the location of the Reality Stone, then a reveal that it was all just an illusion cast by the Mad Titan to draw the heroes out of their hiding places. The obvious assumption is that Thanos killed the Collector offscreen shortly before this scene occurred, but there are reasons to think that he didn't.

For starters, the MCU doesn't make a habit of killing notable characters offscreen. The only one that comes to mind is Sif from the Thor film series, who's been absent since The Dark World and was said in interviews to have died from the Snap. This lack of closure was mainly due to Jaime Alexander not being available to reprise her role though, and that clearly wasn't the issue with Beniccio Del Toro. The MCU is one of the biggest film franchises in history; if the screenwriters don't have enough time in one film to properly kill off a character and the actor is still under contract, they can probably afford to save that death for another film rather than just having it happen offscreen.

Second, let's consider the illusion that Thanos cast of himself threatening the Collector. He didn't kill the Collector at the end of the illusion, and their conversation throughout it was very detailed and true to the Collector's character. It's possible that Thanos was reenacting what actually happened when he confronted the Collector earlier, rather than fabricating a conversation off the top of his head. It stands to reason then that just like in his illusion, he didn't kill the Collector in real life. Thanos is a surprisingly merciful supervillain, so if the Collector gave him the Reality Stone without too much resistance, Thanos probably spared him.

The strongest piece of evidence though comes from this piece of artwork, which shows the Collector playing a board game with his brother the Grandmaster:

This is an official piece of artwork created by Marvel Studios for a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction in Disneyland, and it's prompted Studio President Kevin Feige to express interest in featuring the two characters together in a future film. Granted, such a scene could end up being a flashback that takes place prior to Infinity War, but it still leaves the door wide open for the Collector to be alive. Bottom line, his character still has a chance of turning up alive since we never actually saw him die.

2. Gamora

Okay, physically she is quite dead, but I think she's getting better.

Unlike the other pre-Snap deaths in Infinity War, Gamora's had a very spiritual element to it. Thanos killed her as part of a ritual to obtain the Soul Stone, an Infinity Stone with the power to control life and death. Her demise is directly tied to the Soul Stone, and the Soul Stone was the stone responsible for killing half the universe when Thanos snapped his fingers.

That was why he had a vision of Gamora in an orange-tinted realm right after he caused the Snap. Her appearance wasn't presented as a hallucination brought on by his guilt over killing her. It was presented as the real Gamora communicating with him in spirit. She didn't know what had happened until Thanos admitted it to her, and the scenery being orange (the same color same the Soul Stone) implied that her spirit was trapped inside of the stone. Thanos using the Soul Stone to such a huge capacity was probably what triggered Gamora's sudden appearance in the first place.

The Soul Stone is the only Infinity Stone shown in the movies to have any kind of rule set attached to it. You can't just snatch it up and use it like you can with the other five; certain actions have to be taken to prove that you're worthy to use it. You have to follow the rules in order for it to function properly. Because of this, it's entirely possible that an improper use or even a forfeiture of the Soul Stone could cause it to reverse the sacrifice that was made to obtain it and then render the stone unusable once more. This could mean a resurrection for Gamora in the near future.

As for behind-the-scenes evidence, the waters are a little muddier now than they were three months ago. Zoe Saldana is still active on the MCU publicity scene even though Infinity War's theatrical run is over, and Guardians of the Galaxy Director James Gunn has said that Gamora will have a "significant role" in the next film of that series. However, Gunn's recent firing from the project could undo a lot of his story ideas. This might not affect the Guardians characters too much though. Marvel Studios plans their films pretty far in advance, and the timeline of the MCU is so intricate and interwoven now that it would be very difficult to scrap story ideas. If the studio did that, it could cause a butterfly effect that would drastically alter their plans for a lot of future films.

Overall, I still think it's safe to assume that Gamora will come back to life. It's just what she'll do afterwards that's foggy.

3. Loki

I know, I wrote that huge two-part eulogy for him when Infinity War first came out and now I don't even think he's really dead. I still stand by most of what I said in my "Looking Back On Loki" essay, and to be perfectly frank, a part of me still likes to think that the God of Mischief really did meet his poetically poignant end in the first scene of Infinity War. That doesn't change the fact though that the events leading up to his death look EXTREMELY suspicious now.

Here's a rundown of what happens: Thor and Loki are cornered by Thanos, Loki stalls for time — promising Thor that "The sun will shine on us again" — and then he tackles Thor out of the way as the Hulk comes crashing into Thanos. The Hulk and Thanos have a brutal fistfight for several minutes, but not once does the scene ever cut away to Thor and Loki to show us what they're doing. This is odd enough, but what's even more odd is that Thor eventually shows up in the middle of the Hulk and Thanos's fistfight by himself. What happened to Loki?

There's still no sign of the God of Mischief even when Thanos apprehends Thor and kills Heimdall. It's not until Thanos is just about to make his exit that Loki shows up again, and when he does, he almost appears to step right out of nowhere. He tries to kill Thanos, seeming to use the bare minimum of his powers, and then his trick backfires and Thanos appears to kill him. This scene raises so many questions that it gets harder and harder to take at face value every time I watch it.

First of all, Loki's faked his death before in the MCU, and we haven't always gotten a clear explanation of how he did it. We still don't know exactly how he survived his fight with Kurse in The Dark World, so he could very well have survived against Thanos. For all we know, the person that Thanos appeared to kill could have just been a random dead Asgardian that Loki possessed and then projected his appearance onto from a safe distance away. We've seen him do both of those things to some extent before, even without the use of his scepter.

Second of all, photos have leaked of Tom Hiddleston as Loki on the set of Avengers 4. The scene being filmed seems to involve time travel since he has his clothing and hairstyle from the first Avengers film, but it still appears that Loki is supposed to be in the next film. What's more, Tony Stark appears in that same scene wearing what looks to be a disguise, suggesting that the Avengers might go back in time to alter the past or tamper with the timeline in other ways. Maybe the Loki who appeared to step out of nowhere at the beginning of Infinity War was a different Loki than the one we saw tackle Thor out of the Hulk's way a few minutes earlier.

Some might say that these theories are all moot, since Tom Hiddleston has done multiple interviews saying that his time playing Loki is over and that Loki isn't coming back to life in Avengers 4. However, Marvel Studios has a history of releasing bogus interviews to subvert fan expectations. Just look at Ben Kingsley's interviews about playing the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. Those were absolutely meant to be misleading, at least at the time when they first came out. Heck, the Russo Brothers themselves have insisted that Spider-Man and Black Panther's deaths in Infinity War are permanent, and yet both of those characters already have sequels to their own standalone films in the works.

Also, the interviews of Tom Hiddleston saying that his time playing Loki is over are only half deceptive; Avengers 4 is the last film on his contract, not Infinity War, but it just so happens that he was done shooting his scenes for Avengers 4 by the time that Infinity War opened in theaters. Technically there's nothing inaccurate about anything he said in those interviews, but having them come out right after we saw Loki die in a new movie does seem like we're being set up to have the wrong idea.

This is all a prime example of where things stand with the MCU these days. The franchise is so huge, the stakes are so high, and the studio has grown so clever with both its writing and its marketing that we have almost no way of predicting what's going to happen in their films anymore. Some fans may find all of this secrecy and uncertainty maddening, some may find it exhilarating, and some probably take it as even more of a challenge to try and figure out what will happen next. Whatever the case, we'll all probably be more and more eager to see these movies with each passing phase. Not many franchises can stay this engaging after ten years and twenty movies.

And if Marvel Studios has been throwing us more of these curve balls than they've needed to, then mischief managed, I suppose.

Booksigning Afterword

I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who came to my book signing yesterday. I sold over half of my inventory, met a lot of interesting new people, and got to touch base with a lot of people from my past. It was a very good day. Seeing people so genuinely interested in reading your work is the most rewarding part of writing, and I'm extremely grateful to all of you for your support!

Looking Back on Loki - Part 2

SPOILER ALERT!!

THIS ESSAY WILL ALSO GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET AND YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING IN IT TO BE RUINED, SEE IT BEFORE READING THIS.

IF NOT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, THEN DO IT FOR LOKI'S.

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Thor: The Dark World (2013)

It's worth mentioning that during this film's post-production, actor Tom Hiddleston appeared in character as Loki at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. He "interrupted" a sneak preview of Thor: The Dark World, scolded the crowd for not accepting him as their king the summer before, then vowed to show them the preview if they pledged their loyalty to him. Needless to say, the crowd got their preview and the God of Mischief gained a wildly supportive army that day.

I bring this up because it showed how aware Marvel was of Loki's popularity at the time, as well as how keen they were to play to it. I think that contributed a lot to his role in The Dark World.

The filmmakers knew we wanted to see him turn good and team up with Thor. They knew we debated if and how he would die in future films, and they knew how much we wanted to see him succeed for once. Because of this, there was a real sense that they toyed with our expectations for Loki in the second Thor film, and the end result was perfect for his character.

Loki hit rock bottom in The Dark World. Not only was he disgraced before all of Asgard, but Odin seemed to disown him and left him virtually powerless by imprisoning him. Then, when Loki thought things couldn't get worse, he caused the death of his adoptive mother Frigga. The dark elf Malekith invaded Asgard, and when a henchman named Kurse found Loki in the dungeon, Loki told him the way to the throne room. He did this for revenge on Odin, but it was Frigga that Kurse killed instead.
 

This made Loki snap again. Now there really was no salvaging his life, and with Thanos no doubt hunting him down after his failure on Earth, he knew his days were numbered. This and his rage over Frigga's death made him decide to cooperate when Thor asked him to help stop Malekith. This would only mean temporary freedom for Loki, but that was all he needed to carry out his new plan.

His chance came during a fight between him, Thor, and Kurse on the dark elves' home world. Loki killed Kurse, saving Thor and avenging Frigga, but he was wounded in the process. Thus we got the scene we were expecting where he died dramatically in Thor's arms after redeeming himself. The twist was that it wasn't real.

To my knowledge, it's never been confirmed if Kurse really stabbed Loki, since Loki's powers allowed him to cast illusions of such things. Either way, he wasn't fatally wounded, but he took advantage of Thor's emotional state and faked his own death. Thor was forced to leave him behind and pursue Malekith, one of Odin's guards found Loki, Loki killed the guard and assumed his appearance (possibly even disguising the guard's body as his own), and returned to Odin. After that, he used his powers to trap Odin on Earth, assumed his adoptive father's appearance, and took on a new life as the King of Asgard. At long last, the God of Mischief had succeeded.

What's interesting is that he never sought further revenge on Thor after his brother defeated Malekith and came home. Thor had broken Loki out of prison and committed treason by leaving Asgard, so no one would have questioned a steep punishment for the God of Thunder, but Loki allowed Thor to go free and live happily on Earth with his human friends. Maybe he had made some kind of peace with Thor during their time together, maybe he couldn't properly restrain Thor since he didn't have any of Odin's powers, or maybe he thought that letting Thor leave Asgard on good terms would minimize suspicion towards himself. Whatever the reason, fully pardoning his brother after everything they had put each other through showed growth on Loki's part.



Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

It would take four years for Loki to show up again in the MCU. He was supposed to make a cameo in 2015's The Avengers: Age of Ultron when Thor had a vision of Asgard's destruction, but like a lot of things in that film, he was cut for time. Between that and all the questions that The Dark World had left us with, there was still a good amount of excitement for Loki's comeback in Thor: Ragnarok.

To put it simply, this Thor movie turned out to be very different from the first two. It's said that director Taika Waititi, best known for comedies, was given free reign with Ragnarok, so there ended up being way more emphasis on humor than drama this time around. For Loki, this meant giving us a more cowardly, inept, and silly God of Mischief than we were used to seeing.

In terms of the narrative, this character inconsistency can actually be justified. Loki spent his whole life seeking admiration and eventually power, and once he gained both at the end of The Dark World, he had no goals left to work towards. This caused him to lose a lot of his drive and his edge over the four years he spent disguised as Odin, and not having to worry about Thanos finding him anymore allowed him to become oblivious to the world around him. It made sense that after Thor caught on and exposed him as an imposter at the start of Ragnarok, Loki had to spin his wheels a bit before finding a new direction in life.

He hit rock bottom again after Thor made him take them to the real Odin on Earth. The brothers found their father moments before he died, and although Odin forgave Loki, his death was one betrayal too many for Thor to do the same. The final nail in the coffin came when Thor's half-sister Hela sensed Odin's passing and seized control of Asgard.

The best Loki could think to do was give up on his home again and simply look out for himself. When he and Thor became stranded on the planet Sakaar, he quickly schmoozed his way into favor with its ruler, the Grandmaster. He made one half-hearted attempt to help Thor, mostly so he could brag about his new social status, but when Thor still wanted nothing to do with him, Loki tried to betray his brother for financial gain. Thor outwitted him though, saying that Loki's refusal to be more than the God of Mischief had made him predictable, and escaped back to Asgard without him.

This marked the ultimate turning point for Loki. All his schemes of the past seven years had been for nothing, and having Thor completely give up on him this time made him finally realize what he had ruined between them. What was more, he had no guarantee that he would be safely hidden from Thanos on Sakaar. There was a chance he might die soon anyway, so why not die doing something genuinely admirable?

After making his own escape from Sakaar, Loki took his brother's words to heart and returned to Asgard to help Thor defeat Hela. This involved destroying their home like Thor had foreseen, and it was Loki who set that destruction in motion. Curiously enough, he had to do it in Odin's vault—the same room where he had first learned of his Frost Giant lineage. The ship that he had arrived on allowed Asgard's people to evacuate in time, and Loki further proved his loyalty by joining them on their voyage to Earth. It was during this voyage that he made his peace with Thor and watched his brother assume the role of Asgard's new king.

It seemed like Loki was finally a real hero, but in the midst of it all, he had secretly made another huge mistake in another moment of weakness.



The Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

And that brings us to the grand finale. Infinity War is still less than two weeks old, and it's already broken the record as the fastest movie to ever gross $1 billion at the box office. It's well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time, and I think that's largely because of how many upsetting character deaths occur throughout the plot. Fans want to figure out how the next Avengers film will resolve things, if it even can, and a good way to look for clues is by watching Infinity War again. And if that doesn't work, then at least they'll get the most out of what could be their favorite characters' final appearances on the big screen.

The film is shocking and bleak, and Loki's death in the opening scene sets that tone perfectly.

His huge mistake at the end of Ragnarok was stealing the Tesseract from Odin's vault before he escaped from Asgard. Loki did this on impulse as well, not because he wanted a peace offering for Thanos, but because he remembered how powerful the device was and couldn't resist the thought of possessing it again. Now that the Tesseract was away from Asgard though, Thanos could sense the Infinity Stone inside of it and was able to track down the Asgardians' ship in space. The Mad Titan boarded their ship, and in a horrible twist of irony, half the people that Loki had helped to rescue were slaughtered before his eyes.

Even then he wouldn't hand over the Tesseract, since he knew what his enemy meant to do with the stone inside. It wasn't until Thanos started torturing Thor in front of him that Loki revealed the device, though he still didn't give up. He stalled for time so the Hulk could attack Thanos, and when the Hulk lost that fight, Loki attempted to finish the job himself.

Loki often defeated opponents by distracting them with illusions of himself and then striking from behind. However, he didn't do that this time; perhaps he decided he was through with hiding. Instead he faced Thanos himself, pretended to offer his services again, and tried to stab his former ally in the throat. Sadly, the God of Mischief really had become predictable, and after stopping the blow, Thanos lifted him into the air by his neck while Thor watched helplessly. Loki declared that the Mad Titan would never be a god, then Thanos killed him with one squeeze. The last we saw of Thor's little brother was his body lying on the floor while the God of Thunder grieved over him.

~

I've heard complaints that this sendoff for Loki was anticlimactic, but I disagree. The scene pretty much covered all the bases it needed to for his story arc: proving that he valued his brother's life more than his own ambition, having him team up with two of the Avengers to an extent, showing that he'd accepted his past by stating he was Odin's son but not an Asgardian, and letting him get in a few last tricks and interesting lines. I even kind of like that his death was so simple and blunt this time. He already had an epic sci-fi spectacle death in the first Thor film and a dramatic Shakespearean death in the second, so it was fitting that his third death had none of those theatrics. That sold the reality of it so much more.

As for killing him in the first scene, I understand why it was done. We needed a reason to personally hate Thanos, and the film needed to show us how high the stakes had grown. Also, I'm not sure what else the writers could've done with Loki in this film. What made him so interesting was his moral conflict, the question of whether or not he would become one of the heroes. When he did that at the end of Ragnarok, he completed his arc. If he'd survived and been just another good guy throughout Infinity War, I think he would've been a lot less interesting, and if he'd become a villain or a double agent again, I think it would've felt too contrived. Besides, his death became Thor's main motivation to destroy Thanos, and since this was brought up multiple times, it still felt like Loki had a presence throughout the film.

Production photos of the fourth Avengers movie have surfaced since Infinity War's release. Because they appear to take place during the events of the first film and feature the characters wearing mysterious wrist devices, fans have speculated that the story will involve time travel to undo the final moments of Infinity War. It's possible that Loki could "return" that way, with Thor encountering a past version of his brother. There's also hope that he might come back from the dead as a result of the Avengers meddling with the past.

Personally, I think the best way to bring him "back" would be in spirit, with Thor either using the Infinity Stones to connect with him or by dying as well. It'd be a fitting and poignant end for the God of Thunder to sacrifice himself for the universe and then have his brother lead him to Valhalla as a reward. We'll just have to wait and see.

If this is the last time we'll ever see Loki, I'll close with this: When he first saw himself as a Frost Giant, he wondered if he was cursed. He was right in a way. His curse was that for all the cunning and strategic thinking he possessed, his emotions were always what ended up dictating his choices. In this regard, he was more like Thor than he wanted to believe, and since he never had the same opportunity as Thor to learn self-control, his emotions continued to sabotage him at every turn. When he saved the Tesseract from destruction on a whim, the penalties of this curse became cataclysmic.

Still, there was a way Loki could have kept the Tesseract out of Thanos's hands. All he had to do was keep it cloaked in invisibility, refuse to say its location, and let Thanos kill Thor. That would have been the more sensible choice in the grand scheme of things, since Thanos wanted the Infinity Stones to "save" the universe by committing genocide. However, Loki's emotions pushed him to reveal the device in exchange for his brother's life.

Several other characters, mostly the heroes, had to choose between someone's life and an Infinity Stone throughout the film. Most of them gave up the stone to spare the person's life. The only willing exception was Thanos, who tortured one of his own children and killed another to claim a stone. Loki may never have quite been a hero, but in the end, he had more in common with the heroes than he did with the villain. The son of Odin who had once tried to kill his brother and save Asgard by also committing genocide had replaced his rage with compassion, and his emotions made the better choice as a result.

In the end, Loki understood the value of life, and that's no curse.

Looking Back on Loki - Part 1

Well, it's been a little over a week since the premiere of The Avengers: Infinity War, and like many fans, I'm still reeling from the film and pondering what to expect in its sequel. I feel like enough time has passed that most people who wanted to see the movie already have, so a spoiler warning might not be needed, but to be safe, here's mine:

SPOILER ALERT!!

THE ESSAY YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ WILL GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY WAR.

YES. THIS MOVIE IS SUCH A COLOSSALLY EPIC ENDGAME THAT EVEN THE BEGINNING CAN BE RUINED.

--

With that said, I want to talk again about my favorite character, Loki. He's one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's oldest, most pivotal, and most popular figures, as well as one of its most compelling villains. That's why it came as a huge shock to a lot of viewers, including myself, when the Mad Titan Thanos abruptly killed him in the opening scene of Infinity War. It's probably one of the top three saddest deaths in the whole film, which is no small feat, so I'm writing this two-part essay as an in-memorium of sorts. It's a film-by-film look back on Loki's story arc throughout the series that hopefully does justice in showing what a terrific character he was.

We have five movies to discuss, so in the words of the late God of Mischief, "Send the rest."



Thor (2011)

According to screenwriter Zack Stentz, Marvel Studios gave the writers of the first Thor film a very specific instruction: "Give us a villain as good as Magneto." Magneto was the villain of the original X-Men film trilogy, and his goal was to wipe out humanity so that his people, the mutants, could inherit the Earth. This didn't stem just from a feeling of superiority over humans, but also from the horrors he endured as a child in a Nazi concentration camp. Magneto's goal was to protect his new people from those who distrusted them, which he couldn't do during the Holocaust, and the hate that drove him to pursue this goal turned him into the same monster that he was trying to defeat. He was a villain who thought he was the hero, and no one could tell him otherwise.

With this in mind, the writers of Thor gave us Loki. As Thor's jealous, overlooked younger brother, his goal was to lie, scheme, and manipulate in order to keep the God of Thunder from becoming King of Asgard. This type of villain may have seemed like a tired trope at first, but the writers knew how to make him more engaging as the story unfolded.

Hence, we got a scene where Loki discovered that he wasn't Thor's brother at all; he was the abandoned son of the Frost Giant Laufey, Asgard's enemy, and Thor's father Odin took him in as a baby and turned him into an Asgardian to raise him. What's more, when Loki confronted Odin about this, we learned that his adoption wasn't strictly an act of kindness. Odin also wanted to raise Laufey's son on Asgard as a way to eventually bring peace between their races. It just happened to involve lying to Loki about who and what he was for most of his life while always showing him less favor than Thor for reasons he couldn't understand.

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment when the whole Loki fan train started, it would probably be that scene. His tragic backstory was the kind that the protagonist usually had in a superhero film, not the antagonist, and Odin's flimsy explanation for keeping it a secret really made viewers side with Loki in that moment. And that's the core of what won us over. We could side with Loki. Unlike with Magneto, who was always pitted against people with a clear moral high ground, we were made to see Loki's view of everything very early on and could genuinely believe he was in the right.

Thor would make a terrible king. He was a complete loose canon who almost got Asgard into a full-scale war with the Frost Giants, and Loki getting him banished to Earth was probably the safest way to keep things from escalating. Loki didn't even really want to be king in Thor's place. He just didn't want the only home he'd ever known to be placed in the hands of an idiot.

It wasn't until much later in the film, after he'd learned the truth about himself, that we learned Loki's new goal. Along with wanting to protect Asgard, he now wanted to have Thor killed on Earth and impress Odin by wiping out the Frost Giants. He wanted to set up a crisis that would prompt Asgard to end their truce with Laufey, and with Thor gone, he would be the one to defeat their enemy. He would be the hero that everyone in Asgard admired.

If this had been Loki's goal from the start, we might have felt differently about him, but we saw what made him snap and decide to do this. That gave us hope that he could be reasoned with and brought back to his senses before going through with his plan. In the end though, he couldn't be reasoned with, and after Thor saved the day and Loki saw Odin's disappointment in him, he abandoned his home and sent himself hurtling into a black hole in space to his supposed death. Everything he had ever known was a lie and he saw no way to salvage it, so in a moment of weakness, he gave up.



The Avengers (2012)

Released one year after Thor, The Avengers was one of the biggest movies of the 2010's. Not only had it been hyped up for four years with a string of prelude films, but it ended up being every bit the action-packed, crowd-pleasing popcorn blockbuster that it had promised to be. It's made Marvel Studios pretty much the king of the box office to this day, and since Loki came back as the villain in The Avengers, he was bound to leave way more of an impact on viewers this time around.

And of course, he did. I would daresay he even gained a bigger overall fanbase than any of the heroes after this movie. It's easy to see why too; he was working towards a different goal from all the other characters, so he stood out, and since he had an underdog backstory, you still kind of rooted for him. Also, it was entertaining as hell to watch him try and maintain his dignity throughout his increasingly hilarious defeats. Loki had the same insecurities and emotional conflict as before, but instead of being depressed about his shortcomings, he was trying to stay confident and enthusiastic. You kind of had to admire that.

This wasn't to say though that Loki was totally eager to conquer the Earth in The Avengers. One of the human characters, Agent Coulson, even observed that the God of Mischief didn't have enough conviction in what he was doing for him to succeed. I didn't read many fan theories at the time, but my understanding was that Thanos found Loki floating in space after Thor, recruited him, offered him the chance to prove himself by stealing the Tesseract from Earth, and Loki took that offer in exchange for being allowed to rule Earth afterwards. He made this deal somewhat impulsively; he was still angry at Thor, so taking over the planet that his brother had grown to love sounded like the perfect revenge at the time. Loki soon realized that he was in over his head with Thanos, but it was too late to back out of the deal by then. We even got a scene in The Avengers where Loki was told that Thanos would torture him beyond imagination if he failed to complete his mission.

If Loki wanted to survive, he would have to reinvent himself and fully embrace his conquest of Earth—the "glorious purpose" that he was now burdened with. This seemed to work at first, so much that his mission even delighted him at times, but then Thor came to stop him. That was what stirred up Loki's conflicted feelings again and made him start to lose momentum. Thor wasn't just ordering him to give up his mission, he was offering to bring him home and help him pick up the pieces of his old life. It was extremely tempting, but since Loki still yearned for respect and feared punishment from Thanos, he did whatever he could to remove that temptation. That was why he tried to kill Thor in the middle of the film and then stabbed him during the climax when Thor was starting to get through to him. He didn't have the conviction to win those arguments otherwise.

Not that any of it paid off in the end. The Avengers defeated Loki's invasion army, the Hulk wiped the floor with him, and Thor took both his brother and the Tesseract to Asgard to be locked up forever. This was actually where Loki's story arc in the films was supposed to end, but once Marvel saw how much the fans loved him, they knew they had struck gold with this character. They had a villain who was better than Magneto now, at least from a marketing standpoint. They had a charming, mysterious, and sympathetic villain who added genuine dramatic weight to Thor's storyline even at the silliest of times. If they wanted to keep making successful Thor movies, then they had to keep Loki around.

To be continued in Part 2...

"The Last Good Man" Now Available

My brand new post-apocalyptic novel The Last Good Man is now available on Kindle for $2.99. Check it out at the link below, spread the word, and please be sure to leave a review if you enjoy the read!

Link: "The Last Good Man" on Amazon.com

The end of the world was the best thing to ever happen to Jodi Sullivan. Once an abused recluse who struggled to support herself, the girl is now free to wander the woods and take what she pleases from anyone, even though she rarely sees other people anymore. She's finally in control of her life, and she's not about to give up that control.

All of this changes one day when she crosses paths with Owen, her ex-brother-in-law, while a team of armed soldiers pursues him. He's the last person Jodi would ever want to help, but her need to know her missing sister's fate drives her to become his guide—while hiding her identity from him, of course. She soon learns that a deadly virus caused the apocalypse, and Owen has stolen a cure from the government in an effort to save mankind.

Now the chase is on as the two try to keep a step ahead of Owen's pursuers. Every stage of their journey will test their survival skills, their loyalty to each other, and most of all, their faith in people. Will Jodi put aside the past and help give the human race another chance, or will she decide once and for all that it's not worth saving?

--

Thoughts on Channel Awesome

Maybe it's late for me to start talking about this, but this is how long it's taken me to absorb what's been going on and decide how I feel about it.

That subject is the controversy surrounding Channel Awesome right now. For anyone who doesn't know, Channel Awesome is an online review site that was founded roughly ten years ago under the name of That Guy With The Glasses. It featured video reviews of movies, video games, and other forms of popular media, and while it featured the work of numerous critics, its first and most famous one was Doug Walker, who played a character called the Nostalgia Critic. Walker and his brother Rob were the channel's founders while a man named Mike Michaud was its CEO.

The controversy is that several critics, artists, and employees who had left Channel Awesome for various reasons over the years recently released a Google document that details their experiences with the site. Released on April 2nd (perhaps so people wouldn't mistake it for an April Fool's joke) the 74-page document is called "Not So Awesome" and gives countless examples of how the people in charge of the site mistreated these former contributors. Practically everything under the sun is listed, including misogyny, sexual harassment, bullying, negligence on set, forcing people to sign waivers after getting injured, failure to use Indigogo earnings for their intended purpose, and even a claim that Channel Awesome knew of an alleged child groomer/rapist among its content producers for over a year before taking action. The release of this document subsequently led to an entire online movement known as "Change the Channel," which has led to much discussion among fans of Channel Awesome.

Here's a link to the full "Not So Awesome" document if you'd like to read it:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZFkR__B3Mk9EYQglvislMUx9HWvWhOaBP820UBa4dA/preview#

Channel Awesome issued two written responses to this document. The first was a brief non-apology that literally said "We're sorry you felt that way." The second listed the document's most heinous accusations and gave somewhat questionable evidence against each one. This included the accusation of them knowing about the alleged child groomer/rapist for over a year, and the site's evidence against that was a screencap of two chat conversations from 2013 where the Walkers, Michaud, and HR Manager Holly Brown discussed what to do about this individual.

The purpose of this was to show that they fired him three weeks after hearing the allegations, although they show no documentation of exactly when they first learned of his behavior. What's more, despite attempting to white out the man's name in the screencaps, they did a poor enough job that viewers were still able to decipher the first letter, a "J," and figure out who had left the site around those dates. They eventually realized that it was a critic named Justin Carmical, known to fans as JewWario, who had been a beloved inspiration to many people and was deeply and widely mourned after his suicide in 2014.

Nearly all of the critics working for Channel Awesome, including Doug and Rob Walker apparently, have resigned since April 2nd, hundreds of thousands of viewers have unsubscribed, and the site is now effectively dead.

So what are my thoughts on all of this?

I discovered That Guy With The Glasses pretty much at the start of its run in 2008, when my college roommate showed me the first few Nostalgia Critic reviews. I became hooked and watched the show every week, along with a few others like The Spoony Experiment, Todd In The Shadows, and Renegade Cut. I'll admit that the Nostalgia Critic's work has been diminishing in quality for a while now, and I have yet to watch a lot of his more recent reviews, but he and his colleagues have been some of my greatest creative and analytical influences. To this day, I imagine their voices saying the words when I read certain parts of my blog in my head.

I think if this scandal had come out six years ago, before the site became Channel Awesome and Doug Walker changed up the format of his reviews, I would have been very upset. Today though, seeing this happen just has me feeling distant and disappointed. It's not a loss so much as a bitter awakening, and the only critic I've watched that those feelings are aimed at is Doug Walker. I don't think I'd ever heard of CEO Mike Michaud before this, and although he seems to be the main villain in this story, he doesn't have the same "fall from grace" stigma as Doug Walker.

As for Justin Carmical, I never watched any of his videos, not even after he died, and I'm glad I didn't. I've met quite enough people like him in my life, even if the number is very small, and it disgusts me like nothing else that such terrible human beings can trick so many into admiring them. I can't imagine what his widow, who knew nothing about this, or any of his victims is going through since his accidental outing, but I can only offer them my sympathies and hope that they're left in peace to recover from what's happened. I even offer my sympathies to the people he inspired, who now have to separate him from his uplifting words in order for those words to still have meaning.

I'm not clear on how much authority Doug Walker actually had at Channel Awesome since he wasn't the CEO, so I don't know how much to blame him for withholding the truth about Carmical. I also don't know how much more could've been done about Carmical at the time of his firing, since the only evidence back then was an allegation from someone who wished to remain anonymous. However, if that allegation was compelling enough for Channel Awesome to fire him, then it should've been compelling enough for them to alert the other websites that featured his reviews and especially the conventions that he attended. They didn't even announce that they fired him, let alone why. They just said that he left the site, and almost no one questioned the circumstances.

Several more grooming cases involving Carmical have apparently come to light in these past three weeks. Had Channel Awesome told anyone about his behavior when they first learned of it, they could've prevented a lot of those cases from occurring, but because the site was afraid of bad publicity, they kept that information to themselves. For that reason alone, I can't support Channel Awesome or Doug Walker in any of their future endeavors. Even if I feel the urge to watch an old Nostalgia Critic review on YouTube some day, I'll only watch a reposted version on someone else's channel. I'm not giving any more views to That Guy With The Glasses or Channel Awesome.

My final thoughts are these: like a lot of Nostalgia Critic fans, there was a time when I dreamed about becoming a video reviewer as well and maybe someday making it onto the Channel Awesome site. I never pursued that because of all the technical and copyright issues involved in using clips from movies in such reviews, so I took up blogging about movies instead. Now that these revelations about Channel Awesome have come out, I'm glad I never tried to pursue my original dream.

Channel Awesome made me glad that I didn't try. That's a sentiment that no one should ever have about anything, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels that way right now. Maybe a lot of aspiring reviewers will get over that feeling and become more determined to make their own videos in the future. Maybe I'll even decide to do it too. Until then though, I can only feel some hollow relief that I never ended up having a hand in this mess or a story to tell in the "Not So Awesome" document.

Goodbye Channel Awesome, and Goodbye Nostalgia Critic. I wish you well moving forward, but I think I can remember things for myself from now on.