Marvel's LOKI Series Influenced By Films Like INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, and BEFORE SUNRISE

Loki writer Michael Waldron recently opened up a little bit about the Marvel series, which is set to drop on Disney+ this week! Like many of you, I’m really excited about seeing how Loki’s adventure continues as he’s recruited by the Time Variance Authority, to help fix the mess he made by putting the timeline in chaos.

While talking to Vanity Fair, Waldron shared what films influenced the series and maybe you’ll find them surprising, maybe you won’t. The films include Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. He explained:

“At first I was carrying in the Rick and Morty sensibility and I had to recalibrate. I’m not writing a 22-minute cartoon. I was watching Quentin Tarantino movies—Inglourious Basterds. Movies that luxuriate in long scenes of dialogue and tension building.”

It’ll be interesting to see how these films influenced Loki. It’s hard to see how Before Sunrise is worked into it, but I guess we’ll find out. It easy to see how the other films might fit into the series, though.

Waldron went on to admit that he knows fans are going to pick this show apart, so they made sure all the time travel elements were going to be airtight.

“I was always very acutely aware of the fact that there’s a week between each of our episodes and these fans are going to do exactly what I would do, which is pick this apart. We wanted to create a time-travel logic that was so airtight it could sustain over six hours. There’s some time-travel sci-fi concepts here that I’m eager for my Rick and Morty colleagues to see.”

It’s easy to find plot holes in time travel stories, but maybe the creative team of Loki will actually pull off something that’s airtight. The writer went on to say that each episode will feel like they stand alone. This series won’t feel like a six-hour movie like the other shows have:

“It was important that every episode stood alone. The Leftovers or Watchmen, which I admired so much—every one of those episodes felt like a distinct short story. That’s the sign of a great episode of TV. ‘Oh, it’s that episode of Loki.'”

The series picks up “immediately after Loki steals the Tesseract (again), he finds himself called before the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic organization that exists outside of time and space, forced to answer for his crimes against the timeline and given a choice: face deletion from reality or assist in catching an even greater threat.”

The series stars Tom HIddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant, and Sophia Di Martino. The series was directed by Kate Herron, and Michael Waldron is the head writer. The series is set to premiere on June 9th.

Loki premieres on Disney+ on June 9, 2021.