'Loki' Season 2 Finale Review: So I Survived a Stroke for This?
Tom Hiddleston and all the creative talent do their best on the Disney Plus series.
Now Streaming: Look, I have nothing but praise for the independent films directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.
Their debut feature, Resolution (2012), was ragged and intense. Their sophomore feature, Spring (2014), was even better, adding notes of melancholy and poetry to their trademark intensity, while The Endless (2017), Synchronic (2019), and Something in the Dirt (2022) refined their artistry further, making it intimate and personal.
Their work as directors on the Disney/Marvel series Moon Knight again showed touches of their visual artistry, even if the stories, which were not their own, were often confused and confounding, a trait that has continued with Loki, which just concluded its six-episode second season.
Benson and Moorhead helmed the first episode and the final three episodes, which at times were truly beautiful, and at other times looked like a giant Technicolor Etch A Sketch brought into modern times. Primarily, however, the series consisted of endless explanations of mumbo jumbo that I could never follow without taking notes, though I got the distinct impression that the series has serious belief/trust issues with anyone pretending to be a god.
The creative talent, both in front of and behind the camera, did their professional best to produce a six-episode series that served to finalize the transformation of Loki, the character, from a god of mischief to a god of sacrifice, who smiles beneficently as he gives mankind the gift of life at the cost of his own life, like Jesus in the Multiverse.
Whatever. It passes the time, and I suppose acts as advertisement for The Marvels, in which Marvel head Kevin Feige reduces the agency and power gained by Brie Larson in Captain Marvel by giving some of it to Teyonnah Parris and some of it to Iman Vellani. You know, divide and conquer. (Note: I missed The Marvels press screening, and will wait to see it.) [Disney Plus]
Update: Earlier this week, I celebrated the third anniversary of surviving a stroke. I will always be grateful to every family member, friend and stranger who expressed support, either in person or otherwise, whether that support was physical, emotional, or financial.
I am grateful that I can continue to live by myself in my apartment and can still get around fairly well, albeit at around half my past walking speed and with the help of my trusty cane.
If you're walking with me and a bear attacks us, relax: you can easily outrun me.
I'm also extremely grateful that my abilities to think, watch, and write have remained largely intact. My speech, occupational, and physical therapists all told me that if I returned to 90% of my past capacity, their jobs were done. So, I'm happy with 90%, and none of my work colleagues have expressed concern about my current capabilities … at least to me.
Since the beginning of September, I've been very happy to serve as a 2024 SXSW Programming Associate, which has completely sucked up nearly all of my viewing time and most of my writing time, so I'll be scarce on here until the end of the month, when that job concludes, and probably the balance of the year too, as I clear my head and figure out what's next for me.
After that, I hope to return with a fresh perspective on family-friendly viewing that even people without children (like me) will enjoy and/or want to know about. That's an area to which precious little space has been devoted online, and I plan to think deeper about what I can possibly provide that is missing from the conversation.
Feel free to comment below or send me an email. I'm interest in hearing from all or any of you; my readership is small, so I consider each of you kindly. (In the wake of the former Twitter's meltdown, I'm still trying to figure out what to do about social media, if anything.)
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