While the Marvel Cinematic Universe focuses on franchise heroes, and the MCU is often seen as having less than memorable villains, some characters have demanded the attention of fans. Chief among them has been Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, who started out as a side character and the bad guy, before becoming a reluctant hero at the center of his own story. Hiddleston says that he studied other charismatic villains when he first brought on the role, including Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Speaking at PaleyFest 2024 (via People) on a panel dedicated to Loki, Hiddleston specifically referenced Alan Rickman’s Die Hard villain, as well as James Mason’s role in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest as characters he loved growing up. He studied them before taking on Loki because they were characters that drew the audiences attention even though they weren’t the focus of their stories. Hiddleston explained…
Those are all characters that are about control and revenge …I might just love those performances as a child. … I just was so drawn to those performances as they seemed to be having such a wonderful time playing these antagonists, I suppose. And that was part of the charm. They were so charismatic, even though they weren't at the center of those films.
While I’m not sure I ever would have compared Tom Hiddleston’s Loki to Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber, hearing that the criminal mastermind inspired the trickster god isn’t that surprising looking at the two characters. They are certainly both very charismatic villains. While the “bad guy” in a movie is frequently a dark and angry character, in these cases, both Loki and Hans are clearly very happy with the people that they are, even if who they are is terrible. And the actors certainly had a fun time playing the parts, that much is quite obvious. This is despite the fact Rickman originally turned down the Die Hard role.
The end result also matches up. You can’t talk about how great a movie Die Hard is without talking about Alan Rickman’s best performance. He’s a big part of the reason that movie works as well as it does. The same has to be said for Hiddelston’s Loki. The first two Thor films especially are not generally seen as among the best of the MCU, but Loki is a clear bright spot in both.
Loki became such a popular part of the MCU that he eventually did get the chance to be the center of a story, in two seasons of Loki on Disney+. At this point, following the Loki Season 2 ending it’s unclear if we’ll see the character again in any upcoming Marvel movies or series, but he has certainly made his mark on the franchise, just as Hans Gruber did in the Die Hard movies.
