The MCU's Loki Came From Tom Hiddleston Combining Three Classic Movie Villains
What makes a good villain? That's a question that storytellers have been asking themselves for centuries, and the answer is etheric, intangible, because there isn't a one-size-fits-all bad guy for every story. Sometimes you need a villain that is cold, and calculating, and sometimes you need one that is unpredictable in their moves and will fly off the handle if looked at wrong. The point is that a villain has to fit the story they're in, and more importantly, they have to pair well with the heroes.
The saying goes that a hero is only as strong as their villain, which means when Tom Hiddleston took the role of Loki, one of the most interesting big bads ever created in the Marvel comics, he had a lot on his shoulders. He not only had to craft a villain that would work outside of the printed page, he had to create one that could compliment Thor as a character, yet be threatening enough to be the main threat of the first "Avengers" movie.
Being a movie fan, Hiddleston decided to turn to his favorite cinematic villains and see what he could (artfully) crib to make Loki his very own unique blend of unpredictable threat and semi-relatable tormented soul. Once you hear the three direct influences he eventually culled, it's impossible not to see them in Hiddleston's performance.
The three characters are Jack Nicholson's Joker from the 1989 "Batman," Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in "Die Hard," and James Mason's Phillip Vandamm from Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest."
Villains just want to have fun
Hans Gruber and Vandamm definitely represent the cunningly intelligent side of Loki, and Jack Nicholson's Joker is about as mischievous as a bad guy can get without actually being "The God of Mischief" himself.
There are those obvious parallels, but according to Hiddleston, there's something all three villains have in common that really dictated his approach to the MCU's iconic villain, as he told Entertainment Weekly's Anthony Breznican back in 2013 while promoting "Thor: The Dark World." In short, they're all having fun. They like being bad, and that delight shines through in the film, which was something that was key for a character like Loki:
"I remember I looked up mischief in the dictionary and the first entry is 'an inclination to playfulness, a desire to tease.' And then actually further down the line, like entry No. 5 is 'destruction and damage.' So you have this one word mischief which encompasses all these things and that's the role I'm playing. It's my job to turn up on set and have a great time and I hope that's something that's appealing: you know, Loki's having a good time and so am I."
The God of Mischief has to be having a good time being chaotic and unpredictable because if he isn't, then who the hell would be? I love hearing insight like this, especially from actors who are true blue cinephiles at heart looking to respect the legends that preceded them. So, next time you fire up "The Avengers," make sure to keep an eye out for the small glimpses of Nicholson, Mason, and Rickman that poke through in Tom Hiddleston's performance.