Thor: The Dark World, Part 2: Female characters & representation.

Previously: Part 1, Heroes & Villains.

I was extremely careful not to read any spoilers before I saw this movie, which is just as well because it's VERY spoilery. The one thing I did see beforehand was part of a review that said Jane's role was mostly to "faint on cue", which made me rather apprehensive. There's probably going to be a lot of debate over this among fans, but I personally thought the depiction of women in Thor: TDW was very good. If Jane had been the only female character, I wouldn't have been pleased by the fact that she fainted a lot, but there are four women in this movie (one more than in The Avengers, which had a far larger ensemble cast), and each of them has an important role in their own right. On the simplest level, this is how representation works: the more women you have in your movie, the more leeway you have to let one of them be "weak" -- whatever that means.
Jane's characterisation is very solid thanks to the first movie, and I appreciate the number of publicity interviews Natalie Portman has done where she talks about strength of character vs. the concept of "strong female characters". Sif is a warrior. Frigga is an witch and a diplomat and a mother, who can fight if she has to. Jane is brave and curious and smart, but she's not a fighter. Darcy is independent and fun and "normal". All four of those characters are "emotional", but not in a way that's coded to make them seem hysterical/weepy/stupid, which is often how some people interpret "emotional" female characters. A female character who faints a lot sets off alarm bells because we associate it with swooning damsels in distress, but a female character who has no weaknesses is a more insidious problem. I suppose they probably could've done better than Jane being Maguffinised for half the movie, but I think it worked in the context of her being the mortal girlfriend of a near-indestructable alien, which I can only assume will be the primary conflict in the Thor/Jane romance storyline in any potential sequels.

Regarding Frigga, I am SO GLAD she got a more significant role, a role that really solidifies Asgard as a patriarchal society. A patriarchal society where leadership is determined by genetics, hence Odin's desire for Thor to start looking for a ~suitable~ wife rather than the sub-standard "goat", Jane. (Thank god there wasn't a real Jane/Thor/Sif love triangle, by the way. I LOVE SIF, and a love triangle would've been a complete fiasco.) I could've done with more Frigga/Loki scenes, but overall I thought she was a really satisfying depiction of a classic "woman behind the throne" character: someone who gains power within traditional femininity, whereas Sif is the warrior who fights to be part of the boys' club. Also, Frigga's death was a rare example of a mother/wife character being killed off, but not "fridged".
We were discussing this in the most recent episode of the Fandomspotting radio show/podcast, and everyone agreed that while we don't actually want Frigga to be dead, her death scene (and subsequent funeral) was satisfying, and definitely not an example of the "fridged female character" trope. Her funeral was one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie, and Thor and Loki's reactions to her death were engaging and complex. The difference between your average "MY WIFE IS DEAD!!" action movie and Thor: TDW is that with Thor and Loki, their reactions take into account their own personalities and relationship with Frigga, and her death wasn't immediately sidelined: it was brought into the foreground with this epic, Lord of the Rings-esque funeral. It was similar to Coulson's role in The Avengers, where a character's death is used as a catalyst to bring the heroes together against a common goal, but that dead character is developed beforehand rather than being two-dimensional or exploitative.
It's not a huge shock for a Marvel movie to be overwhelmingly white, even though Thor took a couple of baby-steps forward by casting Idris Elba as Heimdall. Still, I felt that this movie was actually a lot whiter than the first one, which is something that I don't even always pick up on unless it's pretty obvious. The thing that put me on edge in the first place was the absence of Hogun. He's introduced early on, but aside from his scene on Vanaheim he's basically benched for the rest of the movie. I originally assumed this was due to one of two reasons: either the actor was only available to film limited scenes (ie, only on the Vanaheim set), or he filmed more Vaneheim scenes that were cut from the final edit. Unfortunately, the director has recently stated that Hogun was written out for basically no good reason, which I find very disappointing.
The plan was apparently give each of the Warriors Three some "individual" moments, and for one to travel to his home world to thematically mirror Thor's decision to move to Earth at the end of the movie. But I guess they chose the Japanese guy to be an outsider who comes from a world that looks like a Mongolain grassland, because... of reasons...? This just does not come across as a good choice at all. I'm not sure if he actually gets much less screentime than, for example, Fandral. But Hogun's role in this movie functionally removes him from the central action, and characterises him as an outsider while Fandral and Volstagg hang out with Thor and Sif in Asgard. I can sort of understand wanting to bench one of the Warriors Three on another planet because there are too many characters in the story, or because they wanted to introduce one of the other Nine Realms. But since both Volstagg and Fandral are comic relief characters, and Hogun is one of the few non-white people in the movie, it was a bad decision to leave Hogun behind.

The eventual result is that of the three significant people of colour in Thor: TDW, Idris Elba gets an awesome role while Hogun vanishes offscreen and Christopher Ecclestone's elf husband puts on a mask on and turns into a giant beast-monster for the last two thirds of the movie. Collectively, this doesn't look great -- particularly when coupled with the addition of two extra white dude characters in the form of Richard (Jane's date, who I really enjoyed), and Ian the Intern. I don't have anything against Ian as a character, but his main purpose was to provide Darcy with someone to talk to, making him a perfect example of when casting just defaults to a generic-looking white man for no good reason. This kind of thing is particularly frustrating because in an ensemble movie like this, it shouldn't be hard to cast a more diverse range of side-characters, even when you're carrying over a predominantly white cast from the first movie. It came across as lazy writing and casting, and soured my opinion of a movie that I otherwise loved and found very entertaining.
Out of all the Marvel movies, Thor and Thor: TWD are the best at illustrating complex emotional themes and depicting interesting, human characters outside of the central superhero/love-interest duo. So it's all the more noticeable when they fail at racial diversity. Right now, my goal for Thor 3 is for it to be an Asgard/Nine Realms buddy movie, where Jane and Darcy get to come to Asgard. Thor, Hogun, Sif and Fandral go on adventures, while Volstagg stays home to cook and take care of the kids. Loki is partially redeemed, culminating in a Thor/Loki hug where at least one of them cries, and there's a subtle undercurrent of Sif/Loki romantic subtext throughout the movie. Also, someone makes an STD joke about Fandral, preferably Hogun. Ian disappears without trace. Perfect.

To be continued in Part 3...

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Thor: The Dark World, Part 1: Heroes and Villains.

SPOILER WARNING: There are spoilers for Thor: The Dark World throughout this post!

I recommend watching this movie back-to-back with Thor, as it really emphasises the way the two stories shift from personal character journey to sweeping epic. I watch A LOT of superhero movies, but this was probably the best graduation from origin story to sequel that I've seen so far. Thor is purposefully the reverse of your typical superhero character arc because instead of struggling with superpowers and learning how to become a hero, he's learning how to be a fallible human and not have superpowers. Even the obligatory daddy issues are far more interesting than usual, because Odin is an actual character rather than a long-dead ghost or an avatar of lofty paternal expectations.
Thor's unusually well-drawn characterisation means that there's a solid base on which to make The Dark World a sci-fi/fantasy epic with an ensemble cast, instead of just another superhero movie where the central character hits Bad Guys until they give up. I was also pleasantly surprised by how complex it was -- not that I'm suggesting it's a particularly deep and meaningful cinematic work, but more that it was one of the most unpredictable (and rewatchable) superhero movies I've seen so far. If you look at the Thor-Loki arc over the course of their three movies together, Thor is about Loki running rings around everyone because they're all straight-shooting warrior types. The Avengers is about Loki finally meeting his match, in the form of Black Widow (intellectually) and the Avengers themselves (because Friendship and Teamwork triumph over Evil, obviously). Finally we reach Thor: TDW, in which Thor has learned from his mistakes and manages to fool Loki himself.
I don't need to tell you what a gift Loki is as a character, but he's also a solid argument against the concept of disposable villains. The only comparable relationship is Charles Xavier and Magneto, but you don't really see them change to accommodate one another (partly thanks to the current chronology of the X-Men series), whereas you really see Thor getting smarter and more canny over the course of his three appearances so far. Not that he's smart enough, of course. Loki's triple bluff is a thing of beauty. But I loved the way the movie briefly turned into a heist story halfway through, with Thor and the Warriors Three orchestrating their elaborate escape plan.

Unless you've got Lex Luthor in your movie, villains are always the weak spot of the superhero genre. Villains, and the inevitable final battle sequence. (I'm looking at you, Iron Man, Captain America, every Spider-Man movie, and the final 14 hours of Man of Steel.) Luckily, this series has Loki, one of the most satisfying antagonists in recent blockbuster history. Any additional villains are basically window dressing by comparison, which is just as well because the clunkiest aspect of TDW was definitely Malekith, the Aether, and their attendant exposition scenes. Poor Christopher Eccleston. I don't have any particular problem with MacGuffins in general (after all, the entirety of Lord of the Rings is founded on a MacGuffin), but I suspect this movie may have suffered from cutting out some excess Malekith scenes along the way. He just wasn't very engaging. But even though Malekith was little more than a force for mindless destruction, that whole problem was obliterated by the presence of Loki and Odin.
In Thor, Odin was a pretty terrible father, but in a way that wasn't explicitly pointed out to the audience. Fans on Tumblr are definitely aware that Odin is a dick ("One day... one of you will be King, my sons." The Hunger Games of parenting!) but I'm reasonably sure that most average viewers just wrote him off as Anthony-Hopkins-as-Zeus. So I'm very happy that this time round, it was obvious that he's not a good guy at all, and not necessarily even a good king. Thor has matured beyond him, and thus Odin has become a kind of benevolent antagonist. In this context, having Malekith as a kind of ticking time-bomb in the background actually simplified the film and brought the interesting stuff (ie, Loki) into the foreground.

I'm quite surprised by this film's mixed reviews, because I felt that Malekith and the Aether was really its only major weakness. Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of the negative reviews seem to be thanks to superhero fatigue, which is fair enough because your average professional film critic is not as excited about Marvel movies as I am. However, not only did this movie mostly abandon the typical superhero formula, but it included something that's usually deemed far too complicated for the genre: multiple characters with conflicting yet believable motivations. Usually the most you can hope for is an ~ambiguous villain~ like Magneto, or Batman struggling with the moral dilemmas of vigilante justice. I find it baffling that last year's mediocre Spider-Man reboot received more positive reviews, when it followed the superhero formula to the letter, and was riddled with plot holes.
Another reason why rewatching Thor beforehand was so rewarding is that you get to see Loki's transformation in full. Thor's character development is, obviously, excellent, helped along by Chris Hemsworth being unfeasibly likeable in the role. But with Loki, the changes are beautifully drastic. In Thor, Tom Hiddleston is playful, childish, and overly emotional. He's an angry emo teenager who tries to burn down the school because nobody understands him. But since The Avengers, Loki has transformed into an exhausted, crazy-eyed murderer with papery skin. He's gone from being a doe-eyed sylph to a frazzle-haired angstbucket with a penchant for stabbing. It's beautiful. And, of course, he's an absolute scene-stealer. Ambiguous villainhood is all well and good, but Loki is endlessly entertaining because he's so goddamn hard to predict. You really do get the feeling that he's living from moment to moment, rather than following a carefully itemised Evil Overlord plan like most supervillains. I just wanna high-five Tom Hiddleston and the writers all the way through, both for creating such a fun character, and for developing such an interesting interpretation of Norse mythology.
By the end of the movie, it's equally easy to believe that as king, Loki could lead Asgard to ruin or restore it to its greatest triumphs. If they go the mythological route then the only way this can end is with Loki's destruction. But from a personal perspective, I think most of us want to see him if not actually redeemed, then at least appearing in Marvel movies ad infinitum.

Continued in Part 2:  Female characters and representation.

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Pre-Movie Avengers post: Loki's costumes, armour, and image-consciousness.

Related: Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Thor.

I suppose I could apologise for making another Avengers-related post, but I ain't sorry. Nope. I need to get rid of all my Avengers excitement somehow, otherwise I'll just run around in little circles waving my hands in the air until the top of my head comes off and steam comes out of the hole. (<--- actual example.)

So here we go: Hello, Tailor's first ever pre-movie costume review, brought to you by the many clips and trailers Marvel has helpfully provided in order to whip fans into the maximum possibly frenzy prior to the movie's release. Thankfully none of these trailers contain any information about what actually happens in the film itself, so this blog (and my brain) will remain gloriously spoiler free until April 26.

Picture of Loki and Thor grinding Get Low by Lil Jon, from The Art Of Thor.

Thanks to my recent introduction to Game Of Thrones, I had armour on my mind as I perused the various Marvel teasers. For the most part, the battle costumes in Game of Thrones are quite closely modeled on the kind of medieval armour we expect to be worn by jousting knights, and is reasonably practical. The armour we saw in Thor is pretty much the opposite -- showy, sparkly, and inspired by comicbook illustrations drawn by people who were making it up as they went along. Which is totally fine! The fact that the costume designers for Thor managed to make the Asgardian clothes look even remotely like something worn by actual people in real life is enough for me. Thor and Loki are both alien princes. For all we know, the non-metallic bits of their armour are laser-proof and knitted from meteor rocks, as opposed to being the slightly cheap-looking pleather they appear to be. Haters to the left.

Loki's ceremonial armour from Thor.

The Asgardian armour in Thor was very clean and polished, fitting in with a rather over-the-top, cartoonish aesthetic that worked in the context of the film but looks pretty cheesy in pictures. From what I've seen of Loki's Avengers costumes they're similar on what he wore in Thor, but are a lot more lived-in and have better detailing. The Avengers is altogether a bigger movie with high production values, plus the costumes from each of the individual Avengers' own prequel movies presumably had to be tweaked a little in order to mesh the different looks. Also, since one of the Loki's outfits from the Avengers trailers seems almost identical to the one he was wearing at the end of Thor, I think it's meant to be that one, just looking a bit the worse for wear after a few days/months/untold millennia floating through Yggdrasil's Space-Vortex (or whatever it is he was doing while he decided to take over Midgard and stop washing his hair).

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The main difference I've noticed is that Loki's armour in The Avengers gives the appearance of being more battle-ready. There's more wear-and-tear as if he's actually encountered some fighting and dirt (which Magical L'Oreal Prince Thor never seems to, even after he launched himself directly through the skull of a giant monster in the Thor movie), and at least one set of his gauntlets have been replaced by something a little more practical and less like an Asgardian Prince party costume.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The addition of a single shoulder-piece (that's called a pauldron, armour-enthusiasts!) suggests duelling, as there's generally more armour on a person's exposed side -- ie, the side that's presented towards the enemy. However, in the case of Loki this is kind of tricky because a) his main weapon isn't his spear, it's his ability to make you so annoyed you chop your own head off in frustration, and b) he's a master of illusion. So he can basically look like whatever the hell he wants. This makes Loki's costume and appearance the most interesting of any character in The Avengers, because you know that the way he looks is always going to be a conscious choice. I'll be on the lookout to see how Loki presents himself to different characters over the course of the movie, since the trailer already shows several costume variations. For example, the impressive gold armour and helmet (as pictured below) is from a scene where Loki addresses a crowd of fearful civilians, whereas when Loki visits Tony Stark he tones it down to a more sedate black get-up, possibly because he knows Tony would laugh at him if he showed up wearing eighteen-inch gold goat horns on his head.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The real question, though, is if he's ever actually wearing any of this stuff. Most of the time when he's in armour it's not because he thinks someone's going to come at him with a halberd, it's for performative reasons. And when we see him in Midgardian clothes (ie, a suit and tie) the implication is that that's an illusion, so... what is real? Will he turn out to have been wearing pyjamas throughout the entire movie, just using his magic to throw on a few dramatic Emo God outfits from time to time to remind everyone that there's an evil overlord in town? I hope so.

Links

This gifset is handy for comparisons between Loki's (similar) costumes in Thor and The Avengers. He definitely looks broader and tougher in the new movie, mostly due to the widened shoulders. In Thor his costumes tended to emphasise how slight he was in comparison to Thor, but in The Avengers he needs to present a more aggressive image because he's the primary antagonist rather than the hero's misunderstood little brother. While in Thor Loki often looked vulnerable and delicate, the costumes and visuals in The Avengers need to emphasise the more angular aspects of Tom Hiddleston's features.

This is another good look at how Loki's Thor costume is a lot more cartoony than the scraped and dented metal we see in The Avengers.

The Mary Sue: For anyone still wondering, yes, women can wear full armour too. Although not directly related to Thor or The Avengers, this article has a lot to say about body-shape, practicality and aesthetic, and how they relate to the type of body armour we see worn by sci-fi/fantasy characters.

Finally: The best Tony Stark/Loki costume commentary you're ever likely to find.

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NYFW Fall 2012: Ralph Lauren, Alexander Wang, Badgley Mischka, Creatures of the Wind, and more.

Ralph Lauren

As someone on twitter put it, this is like looking into my brain. Ralph Lauren's Fall 2012 show was heavily influenced by pre-war British menswear, included multiple flavours of tweed, and was soundtracked by the Downton Abbey theme music. At least half the collection was made up of Edwardian/1920s trouser suits for ladies, about which I could not be happier.

catwalk pics from Style.com

This was one of those situations where objective criticism falls by the wayside. I love early 20th Century suits, especially on women; I love knee-length trousers; I love Downton Abbey and continue to masochistically watch it despite the fact that I spend most of each episode shouting obscenities at Julian Fellowes' soap-opera hack style of screenwriting. Yes, this is something of a pastiche collection, but I think it plays around enough with 1910s/20s style (plus being genderswitched) that it doesn't fall into the category of directly-copied period costume.

Ralph Lauren isn't one of those labels I get pre-emptively excited over, unlike Mary Katrantzou, Alexander McQueen, Haider Ackerman, or Gareth Pugh. However, I've come to realise that every season, Lauren turns out the largest number of "conventional" outfits that I unequivocably adore. None of what we're looking at today is a product of groundbreaking design experimentation, but instead is the result of years of detail-work and attention to the ultimate goal of creating perfect tailoring for extremely rich people who want to look stylish and adult without making a statement.

This collection ranged from more working-class inspired suits with cloth caps and brown tweeds, to the glossy aristocracy of top-hat-and-cane suits. Also noticeably present were some riffs on the early women's suits -- ie, pantaloon-like short trousers, brown lace-up shoes, cloche hats, and the ubiquitous grey-brown patterned jumpers.

This is where the modern touch comes in.

There was something about this three-piece suit that screamed Ralph Lauren, to me.

After a moment, I realised that it was the fabric, which reminded me of this Ralph Lauren Purple Label ad from (I think?) 2009. Am I concerned that this level of fashion pattern-recognition is eventually going to take over my brain and fill up all my memory space with clothing and costume knowledge to the detriment of everything else? (Answer: yes.)

The latter half of the collection concentrated on more traditionally feminine eveningwear, which to my eyes paled in comparison to the suits. Thankfully they didn't go particulalarly heavy-handed on the 1920s influence, presumably because the designers were aware of just how many Jazz Age gowns the fashion world has in store for us this year already.

Alice + Olivia
Retro-cheesy mod style? Yes please. I hope someone wears this on a red carpet at some point -- it's very eye-catching. 

Anna Sui

Alexander Wang
This season's focus was fabric, specifically laminated fabric and plastic fibres. Everything was waterproof, artificial, and vaccuum-sealed to within an inch of its life, although without the aid of Wang's design notes I don't know if I would have picked up on much of that. With a few exceptions, this collection was a bit of a miss with me. I couldn't really work out what his goal was, or his audience, especially since he seemed to have traded in his usual ultra-modern American comfort for rigid, armour-like jackets that looked like they'd behead the wearer if she tried to bend her neck.

I wish we could have seen more of the plastic mesh turtlenecks most of the models wore beneath their coats, because I think they might have been the most saleable item in the collection. Odd-looking and probably not all that comfortable against the skin -- they looked like they were made of unwoven, moulded plastic -- but undeniably Alexander Wang, and perfect for layering into an outfit for a hint of early-2000s cyber style.

The alien-like detail on this dress, continuing directly from sleeve to glove, was one of my favourite parts of this collection. A sterile and eye-catching look.

Badgley Mischka
Yet another Metropolis-inspired collection, hot on the heels of at least two during Couture Fashion Week last month. I give this one more credit, though, because instead of running directly into the 1920s they went more thematic, with dull-sheen greens and golds, and the wild hair of all silent-movie madwomen. Also, I have a soft-spot for anything that reminds me of the green/gold motifs of the costumes of the movie Thor.

Creatures of the Wind
This has got to be one of the most eclectic collections I've ever seen. At first I was intrigued, because the inspiration was supposedly the 17th Century Scottish mythological text, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by Robert Kirk. In case anyone was in any doubt about how much of a nerd I am, at the age of 11 or 12 I had an obsession with fairy myth and legend that was so intense I got a reader's pass to a local university library so I could go to the archive and handle an original copy of this book, cementing forever my slightly unsettling fixation with white book-handling gloves.

It's unclear to me just what part The Secret Commonwealth... played in the creation of this show. There were certain elements of peasant-skirts and so on but in general it seemed like a randomly flung-together selection of Etsy-wear. I have no doubt that it would receive a high rating from Tavi Gevinson, but aside from that I'm rather puzzled by its lack of cohesive structure.

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Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Thor.

For the last ten years or so, blockbuster comicbook movies have been getting gradually less and less comicbook-y. That's not a criticism -- after all, The Dark Knight is a zillion times better than the infamously godawful Batman & Robin, even if it does take place entirely in the dark and focus on a ridiculously good-looking billionaire being sad about how hard his life is -- but I did enjoy getting a chance to see a movie as shamelessly comicbook-looking as Thor, because it really would have been impossible to make a story about sparkly alien god-beings seem super dark and serious. His weapon is a magical hammer, hello.

As you can tell from his helmet, nobody in Asgard gives a shit about low doorways.

(Also, Thor is the first feminist superhero movie. It is! Read that article, it says it better than I ever could.)

I was a bit doubtful of Thor at first, especially since when I asked my comicbook friend Michael whether it was just a film about an angry blond jock with an enormous hammer, he said, "YES, AND THAT'S WHY IT'S AWESOME." But once I saw it I had to agree that while it was still a film about an angry blond jock with a hammer, it WAS awesome! It was 100% sparkles and explosions, and 0% tiresome Hollywood sexism! The hero had a convincing rapport with his love-interest, unlike Batman (Christopher Nolan, I love you, but why must all your female characters be cardboard cut-outs and/or dead?) or Spiderman (Mary Jane: start carrying a taser, you get kidnapped like twice a week)! Thor and Loki's daddy issues were interesting and emotionally compelling, unlike the representation of pretty much any other blockbuster hero's daddy issues ever.

Disco eyepatches are in!

And it has some sparkleicious fantasy costumes, the likes of which have not been seen in years. I love the more "realistic" style of costumes used in LOTR and Harry Potter, but if they'd make Thor all harsh-looking and mysterious it would have ruined it, I think. Much of this movie's appeal comes from the contrast between the over-the-top, rainbows-and-gold visuals of Asgard (where Thor is an alien prince with a magical hammer), and Natalie Portman's impoverished scientist lifestyle in New Mexico (where Thor is a hot yet possibly-crazy homeless man). If you haven't seen the movie then most of the Asgardian costumes in this post are going to look completely ridiculous, but I promise you that in the context of a civilisation of alien vikings (really glam alien vikings, who despite the very sound advice of the superhero costume lady from The Incredibles, still have an ongoing love-affair with capes) they are perfectly acceptable.

Asgard, land of sparkles. That long walkway in the middle is made of GLOWING CRYSTALS and is called the Rainbow Bridge, just FYI.

OK, so for maximum shininess I'd put Heimdall first, even though he's a relatively minor character. Caveat: I have not seen an actor look so much look like an action figure in a long, long time, maybe ever. Even Captain America did not look this much like an action figure, and Captain America practically is an action figure.

His job is basically the all-seeing alien viking equivalent of being the guy who checks the CCTV cameras for break-ins. He spends most of the movie standing around looking imposing and wise, so it's not totally clear to me why he requires metal shoulderpads the size of a buick. HOWEVER, I am not Asgardian so who am I to judge? Like Liberace or Roman emperors, most these guys find it necessary to wear capes to breakfast. Haters to the left.

Asgardians are not subtle when it comes to phallic symbols. Ask Thor about his hammer some time.

When it comes to comicbook adaptations the costumes are very rarely the same as those found in the books, both because many superheroes change costumes regularly and because those costumes look either like brightly-coloured 1980s jumpsuits or really specialised stripper outfits (or both). However, considering how silly comics-Thor costumes appear to be, they've carried a surprising amount of the original looks through. (You may correct me if I'm wrong, readers -- I admit that I've never actually read a Thor comic so this assumption comes entirely from tumblr images.) For example, the whole helmets thing. Loki's comicbook costume appears to be something like this, leading to movie-Loki looking like a cross between Johnny Weir and a really gothy antelope:

(Here's a gallery of photos of the prop helmets, if you're interested.)

I really enjoyed Loki's armour because it was so clearly ceremonial. This does not look to me like working armour. Thor, Sif (Thor's female friend) and the Warriors Three all had comparatively functional armour, but Loki's armour fails to cover his legs, a bunch of his torso, and his throat. Loki's not a warrior. In fact, there's a very obvious brains/brawn delineation between Loki and Thor from the very first scenes in Asgard, as I recall. I suspect that Loki is the Asgardian equivalent of a nerd, and he mostly seems to rely on his wit and magical powers to win fights. In pre-prodution his Asgardian costume looked a bit more melodramatic, but I prefer what they went with in the end (plus it's far more suited to Tom Hiddleston's slim figure).

He's wearing black, so by standard Hollywood blockbuster logic he's probably going to turn evil.

Photo via Tumblr, I'm afraid.

Queen Frigg has a selection of super glam outfits, most of them in the 1970s stage costume/fantasy cartoon realm, like this one. Personally I think this gown is stunning in a "that would be horrifying in real life" kind of way. I love the combination of retrofuturistic silhouette (like the capes the men wear, her gown has stiffened boning to hold it in shape at the top) and cheesy celtic knot/Lord Of The Rings elf-ish patterns down the sides. Here's a close-up of the zillions of uncomfortable-looking rhinestones:

Queens don't need to be able to move their arms; they have people to do that stuff for them. She probably has like five disco Valkyries standing off to the side with magical alien hairspray to fix her hair if it ever comes out of its rigid curls. This costume would not look out of place in old-school Star Trek, and therefore I approve of it on principal. 

This is what movies would like to think ladies look like when they are being "casual" and/or are just about to go to bed. ie, part of her hair is slightly out of place but she's still wearing earrings, a ring, lipstick, and a metal-fibre dress. This is what alien viking queens wear to their husbands sickbeds, apparently.

As for Sif and Thor's Asgardian BFFs the Warriors Three, I couldn't find any decent full-length pictures so here's one of the stunt actors in the stunt versions of their costumes from the beginning of the movie.

Source: behind-the-scenes pics.

Note that Sif is wearing just as much clothing/armour as the men: practically unheard-of! Hogun's costume looks somewhat inspired by traditional Japanese armour, with a split half-skirt of flexible armour around the thighs. Fandral (the blonde dude) is meant to be a bit of an Errol Flynn-esque rake and therefore has a whole Robin Hood thing going on with the green colour-scheme and the turned-up cuffs, not to mention the fabulous hair.

Having looked at the Warriors Three comicbook picture on wikipedia, I think this is a fairly reasonable adaptation. I mean:

Volstagg is like giant viking Henry VIII in magenta shoulderpads, Hogun is a Mongolian warrior wearing a leather miniskirt and toting an enormous metal club, and Fandral is wearing what appears to be thigh-high boots and a fur-collared muscle shirt. Did I mention that these guys are from a culture that's developed interstellar travel? I fucking love it. Watching this type of movie generally requires you to switch off the part of your brain that thinks things like, "but why are they riding horses/carrying hammers instead of laser pistols/still living in a monarchy?"

Did you know there's a Tumblr entirely dedicated to Women Fighters In Reasonable Armour? Well, you do now!

The true majesty of Thor's epic cape-and-armour outfit is best illustrated by standing him next to a normal-sized person wearing normal earth clothing, so here we go:

SO RED. SO SHINY. SO... CODPIECE-Y. Also, his fishscale armour is really well made, they've managed to make it look like it's almost painted on to his ludicrously sculpted biceps. Kudos on that one, bicep-measurers. Your task is an evidently an arduous one and I applaud you for it. I'm still not really clear what those little shields on the torso are for, though. Decoration, I guess. The cape, of course, is wonderful. I was very heartened to learn from the costume designer that quite a bit of work went into designing the capes -- if you think about it, it's actually pretty hard to make a cape that billows when you want it to and stands still the rest of the time without bunching up in weird places.

He has some muscles.

Once on Earth, Thor's costumes become almost aggressively normal and generic-looking. In a way this emphasises how alien he is, because we've already got used to him being the dude in the cape, plus he's now a huge loud blond smiling body-builder in the middle of a zero-horse town in New Mexico. From a practical perspective, I assume that Thor's new friends had to quickly borrow and/or buy him a new wardrobe from the local thrift store, so plaid shirts and jeans make sense. Anyway, now for the most shocking part of this post: the Earth ladies.

SHE'S CHILLY SO SHE'S WEARING A SWEATER.

All of Natalie Portman's outfits are totally boring and sensible. Both Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings are stunningly beautiful, but Natalie Portman's character is a workaholic scientist and both women look like they're dressing for comfort, although Kat Dennings is a little more esoteric in style.

Never in all my years of superhero/cheesy blockbuster movie watching have I seen a scene like this next picture, in which two female characters (one of whom is funny and confident and the other is a workaholic science geek -- yet neither are mocked and derided for these characteristics, either implicitly or explicitly) sit down to discuss their work while wearing sensible warm clothes and being awesome BFFs.

OMG Darcy Lewis I love you, please be in all future superhero movies forever.

I'm rather proud of myself for making it all the way through this post without a single reference to the fact that Loki just needs a hug or that Odin is a shitty father (I COULD GO ON ABOUT THIS FOR A WHILE), so as a reward to myself here is a picture of Loki in what may well be my favourite outfit of the entire film:

To my endless disappointment, no full-length pictures are readily available of Loki in his Earth suit. However, rest assured that he looks amazing in it. This was the only costume I thought consciously about while I was watching the film, because to me it really illustrated the differences between him and Thor. Thor, while he is a likeable guy and therefore would have done OK in the end, really fell on his feet by immediately meeting friendly Earthlings who were willing to show him the ropes vis a vis how to buy coffee and cross the road without getting run over. Had Loki been the one banished to earth I think that he'd have hidden in the shadows for a day or so until he'd learnt enough Earth mannerisms to pass, and then he'd pursue a career as a con artist. In this scene from the movie he is (presumably) on Earth for the first time, yet he's immaculately dressed in a suit and coat. I choose to ignore the fact that he's also invisible, making such a disguise somewhat pointless, and instead concentrate on the fact that he's 100% tragic dapper ice-prince.

Postscript: Regarding Loki's "just chillin' in my black leather troubled-younger-brother outfit" costume (pictured above), I can't help but think of the designer Haider Ackermann, who does a lot of interesting work with rich iridescent fabrics and unusual structuring while still making all his designs seem incredibly classy and smooth. Beautiful.

Here's how to dress like Loki if you're a lady and also have $10,000 spare. (pics from Style.com)

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