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Although I really liked the first season LokiBecause my reviews won’t let me lie, the series never really appealed to me beyond “how cool is Loki the Crocodile” and things like that. Be that as it may, considering the transformation of what was initially sold as a miniseries into a series and the consequent introduction of a completely open-ended ending that, unsatisfied, introduced a villain – or a different version of the villain – at the last second who, in a continuous action , treating us to a long and tiring monologue about the rules of the multiverse, I was awaiting the second season with a certain trepidation.
And Ouroboros It basically embodies my fear.
The new year’s opening episode of Loki Laufeyson’s misadventures across time and space is, in short, an endless, supposedly clever rant that teases out more rules, this time about how AVT works and how to prevent the protagonist from continuing to “slip.” Through time,” as we see him doing throughout the draft. When Ke Huy Quan is introduced as Ouroboros, or OB, essentially the same character he plays in the acclaimed, Oscar-winning multiverse film he co-starred in, he starts spouting lines of dialogue as if he’s trying to simulate a horse race. Announcer, my patience has been in vain. And it didn’t help at all that the great connection between Loki and Moebius lost space in the process, with the chaotic madness – in the bad sense – being used in AVT as an empty backdrop for larger meanings beyond obvious screaming.
But by this I do not mean that Ke Huy Quan, Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson are not good in their roles, as they are as good as the script requires, and the problem lies in the script specifically. Actors rarely manage to perform miracles when the scripts given to them are not up to their talents and no miracles are performed here. Yes, Cowan is likable (how he won an Oscar, that’s another conversation…), Hiddleston has the same massive screen presence and charisma, and Wilson uses a “delightful puppy” attitude to draw in the viewer, but it’s all too rushed and full of (the famous technobabble Which has been used since time immemorial in audio-visual media, but there are uses and usages of course) it is thrown into the lap of the viewer at a rate of 10 words per second, which are emptied by the drama and the cast of actors.
However, the direction of the inseparable duo formed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, does what it can with Eric Martin’s crazy script and ends up delivering an audio-visual narrative that, while exhausting, makes you want to take a break and rest a little (and , I didn’t do that, I just felt it!) It maintains a good cohesion and a certain fluidity that helps make the verbosity a little more palatable. The same can be said for the art direction, which does its best to create a variety of different environments, at different moments in time, maintaining the identity of AVT, especially the brown tone that the photography glorifies.
After all that, Ouroboros It’s the television equivalent of an instruction manual. The rules exist, and based on them, it will be the responsibility of the production to develop the narrative according to a certain internal logic, even if there is room to change the rules. Likewise, there’s good use of mysteries and parallel plots that fuel interest in the series, whether it’s who exactly cut loose on Loki or The year is 1982. But of course, if the expository dialogue keeps flowing at this rate, we’ll find out all this and more in the first five minutes of the next episode…
note: Do I care that the rules of time travel change again in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if they ever happen at all? No, I don’t mind it at all, but not a little. I do not consider it boring and do not take it into account in my analyses.
Loki – 2X01: Ouroboros (USA, October 5, 2023)
Creation and development: Michael Waldron
direction: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
road map: Eric Martin
ejaculate: Tom Hiddleston, Sofia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Neil Ellis, Ki-Hui Kwan
Duration: 47 minutes.
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