And though she be but little, she is fierce!

Part of the legacy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aside from helping coin the phrase “superhero fatigue,” is its murderers’ row of actors. Say what you will about the MCU, but it has assembled an incredible range of talent since its inception. (That’s the power of IP money and Kevin Feige, huh?). With each project, starting with the Robert Downey Jr.-led Iron Man in 2008, Disney has collected global stars like Thanos amassing his precious Infinity Stones. Marvel has nabbed established names (Samuel L. Jackson, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek), then-rising stars (Florence Pugh, Zendaya, Michael B. Jordan), rookie MVPs (Tom Holland, Iman Vellani), and returned beloved faces to the mix (Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire). But when it comes to a truly memorable performance over all this time in the MCU, Tom Hiddleston has everyone beat.

Hiddleston scored big with his role as Loki in 2011’s Thor. Since then he’s appeared in six additional films, two animated shorts, and two Disney+ shows, including, of course, Loki, which is in the midst of its second season. Loki the character is alive and well, even if the show’s latest episodes are convoluted. It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep up with Loki’s time travel, timelines, variants, and other complications. In a way, that issue is emblematic of the MCU’s current state. Now in its 15th year, it’s struggling to retain the same level of enthusiasm in a post-Avengers: Endgame world. Loki was a potential bright spot after an engaging, fresh first season in 2021. But now it’s in something of a sophomore slump. Thankfully, the series has two saving graces: stunning visuals and outstanding performances, none of which are more impressive than its lead’s.

Compared to other notable MCU actors, including commendable villainous turns from the likes of Jordan and Michael Keaton, Hiddleston obviously has the advantage of time. Across three Thor and three Avengers movies over 12 years, Loki Laufeyson isn’t the same God of Mischief we were introduced to way back when. Still, Hiddleston ensures, either with a deranged smirk or sly dialogue delivery, that remnants of the original character are still in there. But now, Loki is open to the possibility of redemption because he’s fighting to save the world, not to eliminate it entirely, as was his mission in The Avengers.

Loki has received the kind of nuanced and believable character development that’s rarely seen in the MCU (or any major superhero franchise, for that matter). Hiddleston deploys an impressive physical and emotional range, evolving Loki from a maniacal killer in The Avengers to an anti-hero in Thor: Ragnarok (where he’s aided by a comical partnership with co-star Chris Hemsworth) to a full-fledged sentimental hero in the new episodes of Loki. (Thankfully, his spiky hair and costumes have also made headway, although we do miss the Asgardian horned mask.)

Loki isn’t alone in his evolution from antagonist to protagonist on the small screen portion of the MCU. Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), and Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), have been on similar paths. They each got to unpack their traumas and flesh out their human side over a span of multiple episodes (in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and WandaVision, respectively) instead of a mere two-hour film. In fact, WandaVision is arguably the best Disney+ Marvel series to date, elevated further by Olsen’s tremendous performance. 

Similarly, Hiddleston capitalizes on the space he’s given over two seasons to transform Loki in a way the movies simply don’t allow. In every Thor film, he’s the supporting character. But in the show, Loki’s imprisonment at the Time Variance Authority and his partnership with Mobius (Owen Wilson) accomplish what even Loki’s own brother couldn’t: Revealing that the character does, in fact, have a heart. This becomes more pronounced when Loki falls for another Loki, played by Sophia DiMartino. At least we know narcissism—in some form or another—is imbued in all Loki variants.

The streaming series was shooting on the same soundstages as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Loki at roughly the same time, but Vellani had yet to encounter Toms Holland or Hiddleston, which simply wouldn’t do. As per Ms. Marvel News, that situation was rectified in an instant.

“We shot Ms. Marvel right next door to Loki and No Way Home. I’ve been there two weeks and I go to Marvel’s head of security like ‘Yo Barry, I haven’t met any of the Toms yet!’. He comes back 15 minutes later and says, ‘Tom Hiddleston wants to meet you’.

[extract]

Approx: 9 - 10:30mins

25:10 How was [Tom’s] movement in terms of coordinating him?

(This one is particularly worth a watch, in my opinion, as he talks about filming the opening TVA scenes)

By Adam Barnhardt, December 18, 2020

Loki has neared the end of the filming cycle on its first season, and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige is a huge fan of the work Tom Hiddleston put in on his solo series. In a recent chat with Emmy Magazine, the mega-producer mentioned it was a long time coming to get Hiddleston as the star of his own property within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, saying that "turning a whole show over to Tom has been a revelation," while also mentioning the fan-favorite actor "carries every scene."

Feige — one of the primary architects behind the biggest franchise Hollywood has ever seen — then went on to praise Hiddleston's work with MCU newcomer Owen Wilson. "Seeing Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson sitting across the table from each other doing fifteen pages of dialogue is amazing," Feige added.

Joining Hiddleston and Wilson is an expansive roster of A-list Hollywood talent including Richard E. Grant, Sasha Lane, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Earlier this fall, Mbatha-Raw was the one to originally confirm production had restarted on the project after a months-long shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was in the middle of filming when the pandemic happened, so I had a real break, I’ve been painting and reading. Like so many others, I was at home for a long time,” she said. “Not to make light of the suffering going on, but in some ways, it has been an opportunity for me to get a fresh perspective on things. It is downtime that perhaps I might not have had, and now I’m thankful to be back to work. It’s been a journey for everyone, but it’s all for a greater reason and the greater good.”

“I’m obviously sworn to secrecy about everything to do with Loki, but it feels great to be back," Mbatha-Raw added. "Everyone is trying to do it as safely as possible under the circumstances, and it feels good. I’m excited. It’s a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see it.”

Loki may eventually hit Disney+ around May 2021.

[Clearly this was written before the trailer was released but still nice to read. Emphasis mine]

A really interesting interview with Aidan Monaghan, stills photographer on High-Rise and many other films. 

(The High-Rise segment is from approx 2:20 - 4:41).

Shakespeare’s history plays are all about contrasts: council chambers and battlefields, city and country, the corridors of power and the world of the streets. High politics and low life. And that’s especially true of Henry IV Parts I and II. Half the time you’re watching England’s rulers sitting in meetings, tearing the country apart; the rest of the time you’re with Hal and Falstaff down the pub. They’re panoptic, these plays, full of so many different kinds of England. All human life is here. The two plays have great similarities, but they’re also in subtly different keys. Part I is brighter and more youthful, the story of Hal and his great rival, Hotspur; Part II is bleaker. Everyone seems to be older. We know that Hal will turn his back on Falstaff, that moment is coming, and it casts a real chill.When Sam Mendes asked me to do the two Henry IVs for The Hollow Crown series in 2012, I hesitated for less than a second. The plan was to film as much on location as possible. It was a very different approach to the last big BBC Shakespeare project, the Complete Works series of the late 1970s and early 80s, which came from the age of studio TV: terrible sound, vision-mixing on the spot, restricted camera setup. We wanted to get away from all that; the whole idea was to take Shakespeare’s history plays out into the country they portrayed. Location scouting was a major part of it. I wanted a high-medieval building to film the court scenes. In the end, we went for Gloucester Cathedral, where they allowed us to clear the whole nave, these wonderful romanesque pillars and vaulted roof, and film in the cloisters. They were rather film-friendly, because they’d recently done Harry Potter. The Eastcheap scenes we shot at Ealing studios.

I did a gentle bit of adaptation – some cutting, a little reordering of scenes. I thought that no one would thank me for making a dull but completist version. But so much of it is already there in Shakespeare’s writing – the world of Eastcheap, Falstaff’s world, is a warm, genial, comradely world. The court, by contrast, is a world of high politics: men in the medieval equivalent of suits. Hal, this wastrel prince, played in our version by Tom Hiddleston, is the connective tissue between the two. He wants to live in both worlds, have it both ways – who wouldn’t? Yet when it comes to it, at first in the battle scene of Part I, then properly in Part II, he steps up to the mark.

Everyone loves Falstaff, and there’s this idea – propagated most recently by the US scholar Harold Bloom – that he’s the icon of bucolic England, this jolly, cosy Father Christmas figure. When Simon Russell Beale and I were discussing it, we felt very strongly that it was the opposite. Falstaff hates the countryside, spends most of his time grousing and grumbling, trying to con people out of money. As with Hal, the characterisation is hugely complex. Neither figure is heroic. Shakespeare constantly shifts things, playing with your sympathies. The scene in Part II where Falstaff visits Shallow and Silence, two countryside justices who knew him years before, is one of the greatest things in all Shakespeare. Everyone is lost in memories of a world that may never have existed.

In some ways, the climax of Part I is the extraordinary scene between Hal and Falstaff, a kind of mock-trial in the pub where Falstaff pretends to be Hal’s father, who’s incredibly irritated that Hal is wasting his life, and Hal plays himself, before they swap over. There’s so much going on: father figures, surrogate father figures, the question of what their relationship really is, the foreshadowing of the moment when Hal decides to banish Falstaff once and for all. I decided I wanted to shoot it straight through with two cameras; we’d rehearsed, but never run it through, and I didn’t want the extras to have witnessed it before. It was remarkable: eight minutes long, Simon and Tom both acting their hearts out. It felt so intense and clear. Afterwards, several of the crew asked me whether I’d rewritten it. I hadn’t changed a word.

Tim Blakeley, trainer of Tom Hiddleston for Kong: Skull Island

Hugh Laurie on Tom Hiddleston winning the Empire Hero Award, 19th March 2017