I'd give it 8 out of 10. First one was slightly better, but this had way more comedy and character development. Oh, and I'd bang Nebula and mantis. Don't judge me
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Review
- Thread starter ViCiouS
- Start date
I can wait till it's on hbo
What's fucked up is when you look up the actress them hoes ugly. And Zoe ain't got no ass
I'm ready for the 3d blu-ray
The complete set will be nuts
If you gon waste your money on HBO you might as well cut the cord and go see this twice with all the money you would save
It was definitely better than the first one.
And it really came to life in IMAX 3D
I loved that Mantis came off somewhat as comic relief.
Back in the "old days", she was considered one of the worst characters ever.
And one of the worst Avengers (along with The Swordsman).
But for me, a lot of these Comic Book Team films are starting to be no different from one another.
And it really came to life in IMAX 3D
I loved that Mantis came off somewhat as comic relief.
Back in the "old days", she was considered one of the worst characters ever.
And one of the worst Avengers (along with The Swordsman).
But for me, a lot of these Comic Book Team films are starting to be no different from one another.
I saw it at the movies, I was talking about seeing it again. My morgagte is now under 600, utilities(water gas and elec) all together total under 120, no car note. Payin for hbo ain't shit.
I'm smashing Mantis too
Fuck that. Get you the PlayStation Vue or something those greedy ass cable companies ain't never gettin another $ for they premium channels
Shit, I got more to waste. No house note and no car note. Just working and stacking
Mantis only if she wears the makeup and acts ditzy like she did in the movie
Yup
69ing with antennas on my balls
The original members of the Guardians???? Martinex? Whoa buddy.....
Spoiler alert for this link
http://screenrant.com/guardians-galaxy-movie-hidden-easter-egg/
I know this isn't officially open for spoiler discussion but this is some cool easter eggs from both movies.
http://screenrant.com/guardians-galaxy-movie-hidden-easter-egg/
I know this isn't officially open for spoiler discussion but this is some cool easter eggs from both movies.
Ego/Knowhere Secret
4.2KSHARES
WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
–
The heroes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 took a big leap into Marvel’s cosmic mythology with Peter’s father, Ego (Kurt Russell). But the ‘Living Planet’ who turned out to actually be one of Marvel’s Celestials may have already appeared in the previous movie, just… not in the form fans were expecting. In fact, now that we know the real plot twists surrounding Ego’s origin story, his natural form, and his relationship with Peter Quill’s mother, another MASSIVE Guardians of the Galaxy Easter Egg can be understood. There’s far too much evidence for it to be a fluke, but seems to be a hidden message from director James Gunn spilling the beans on Meredith Quill’s lover – and the cause of her death – years ago.
We can’t say that this combination of Marvel’s Celestial lore with fictional space coordinates, and finally Ego’s ability to kill through cancer is Guardians’ “Final Undiscovered Easter Egg” still yet to be found. Since the release of Vol. 2, Gunn has clarified that he’ll be taking that secret message to his grave if nobody can solve it, although some have “come close.” Either way, we’re confident this is another MCU connection few fans have made, but if it is what it appears to be, it’s one truly incredible detail courtesy of Gunn. One that fans will absolutely love, revealing the sequel’s secrets before anyone knew what to look for.
Be warned, there will be SPOILERS ahead. Because the secret of Ego, Peter Quill’s mother, and Guardians of the Galaxy 2‘s story may have been spilled in the first movie.
THE COORDINATE EASTER EGGS WE KNEW
For those who have yet to see Guardians 2, one last SPOILER warning… because the biggest twist of the film isn’t just that Ego is evil, and out to conquer the entire universe – it’s that he gave Star-Lord’s mother her brain tumor. According to the Celestial Brain-turned-Planet-turned-Man, he did it because he truly loved Meredith, having visited her three times on Earth – and knowing that he might give up his conquest of the universe out of his love for her. The only way to cut the cord permanently was to put the cancer in her head that would wipe her clean from this temporary, mortal world.
But hold on. Once the shock of that bombshell faded, we placed it with one unforgettable secret message concealed within the first Guardians movie. Most fans will have heard it by now, but the space coordinates that accompany the on-screen text in the Guardians films aren’t random. In some cases, they’re hand-picked by Gunn as real places in the Andromeda Galaxy, while others are created out of thin air. One of the latter comes when Ronan the Accuser’s ship, The Dark Aster, is reveal. It’s a text and number string that looks like astronomical coordinates, but deciphered into something far more shocking.
Applying the Dark Aster coordinates to a simple system of swapping letters for their placement in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, Z=26), fans got the following:
“T8IS IS1301319+31N3518” OR “THIS IS MOMS+CANCER.”
It was a cryptic statement, and one most fans took as a symbolic or thematic statement by director Gunn – that Peter fearing, then defeating Ronan matched his struggle to accept his mother’s death. But with Guardians 2 making it clear that Ego the Living Planet was actually the cause of Peter’s mother’s cancer… we got to thinking. If those coordinates were clearly a message, but NOT one about the Dark Aster they accompanied… maybe it was part of a larger message to the audience directly?
THE COORDINATES SPELL A MESSAGE?
Time to do some more digging, and break down every other bit of on-screen text we’re given in the film – and we mean every. As mentioned above, some of the planets or locations and their coordinates correspond to real or hypothetical spots in our known universe, like Morag (M31V J00443799+4129236) and Xandar (M31V J00442326+4127082). Both are found in the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 13, hence the “M31V” at the beginning. In addition, the location of the Kyln prison looks to be a joke based on this format, deciphering down to “MTH ISISN TREAL”(M20H 119919142+0185112).
But the coordinates of completely fictional, yet meaningful places or objects in the this particular story translate most easily into English terms or phrases. At the time, those studying the coordinates of Knowhere, in particular, found only a partially constructed string of letters that seemed to broadly point to Meredith Quill, Peter’s mother (played by Laura Haddock). It made sense, considering that the Dark Aster’s coordinates also made vague reference to her. But without knowing exactly what Gunn was getting at, it was hard to make some larger sense of it.
Until we tried to think of how there could even be an undiscovered Easter Egg at all, considering the amount of fans scrutinizing every frame. It meant they weren’t examining everything, which forced us to drill down a bit deeper. We never knew why James Gunn chose the year “1988,” specifically, to begin his flashback story (in fact, it sort of created a Guardians/Avengers plot hole). And we fully accept that this may be a cosmic coincidence, and the deciphered meaning of the opening text is simply a year. But combining the coordinates that point to the mystery of Meredith Quill gives… well, a clear statement:
For clarification, combining the alphabetical values associated with the numbers shown on screen, and allowing for digits that overtly resemble letters without translation (3=”E”), the coordinates in sequence form a clear message from Gunn to the audience. “SHH… THIS IS MOMS CANCER… MEREDITH QUILL (E)X” clues viewers in that a secret is coming their way, that the secret is the source of Star-Lord’s mother’s cancer, and that the source is her “ex.” An ex we now know to be Ego in human form, who confirmed that he gave her cancer.
It was at this point that we began to do some digging to see if this complete message had been found, or posed before, and couldn’t find it online. The diehard fans will know that Reddit user ‘MTrigs’ had put some of the pieces together too, specifically the translation of Knowhere’s coordinates into a reference to Meredith Quill’s past lover. But that was before Guardians 2 solidified the link between Knowhere, Peter’s father, and Meredith’s cancer, meaning the conclusions wound up to be off-target (and lacked the initial “SHH” message that clues fans in to read the messages as one extended hint).
But we’ve got a suspicion that the link between Knowhere and Ego is far more… literal than the first movie suggested on its own.
- By Andrew Dyce
- 20 hours ago
- 39 Comments
4.2KSHARES
WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
–
The heroes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 took a big leap into Marvel’s cosmic mythology with Peter’s father, Ego (Kurt Russell). But the ‘Living Planet’ who turned out to actually be one of Marvel’s Celestials may have already appeared in the previous movie, just… not in the form fans were expecting. In fact, now that we know the real plot twists surrounding Ego’s origin story, his natural form, and his relationship with Peter Quill’s mother, another MASSIVE Guardians of the Galaxy Easter Egg can be understood. There’s far too much evidence for it to be a fluke, but seems to be a hidden message from director James Gunn spilling the beans on Meredith Quill’s lover – and the cause of her death – years ago.
We can’t say that this combination of Marvel’s Celestial lore with fictional space coordinates, and finally Ego’s ability to kill through cancer is Guardians’ “Final Undiscovered Easter Egg” still yet to be found. Since the release of Vol. 2, Gunn has clarified that he’ll be taking that secret message to his grave if nobody can solve it, although some have “come close.” Either way, we’re confident this is another MCU connection few fans have made, but if it is what it appears to be, it’s one truly incredible detail courtesy of Gunn. One that fans will absolutely love, revealing the sequel’s secrets before anyone knew what to look for.
Be warned, there will be SPOILERS ahead. Because the secret of Ego, Peter Quill’s mother, and Guardians of the Galaxy 2‘s story may have been spilled in the first movie.
THE COORDINATE EASTER EGGS WE KNEW
For those who have yet to see Guardians 2, one last SPOILER warning… because the biggest twist of the film isn’t just that Ego is evil, and out to conquer the entire universe – it’s that he gave Star-Lord’s mother her brain tumor. According to the Celestial Brain-turned-Planet-turned-Man, he did it because he truly loved Meredith, having visited her three times on Earth – and knowing that he might give up his conquest of the universe out of his love for her. The only way to cut the cord permanently was to put the cancer in her head that would wipe her clean from this temporary, mortal world.
But hold on. Once the shock of that bombshell faded, we placed it with one unforgettable secret message concealed within the first Guardians movie. Most fans will have heard it by now, but the space coordinates that accompany the on-screen text in the Guardians films aren’t random. In some cases, they’re hand-picked by Gunn as real places in the Andromeda Galaxy, while others are created out of thin air. One of the latter comes when Ronan the Accuser’s ship, The Dark Aster, is reveal. It’s a text and number string that looks like astronomical coordinates, but deciphered into something far more shocking.
Applying the Dark Aster coordinates to a simple system of swapping letters for their placement in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, Z=26), fans got the following:
“T8IS IS1301319+31N3518” OR “THIS IS MOMS+CANCER.”
It was a cryptic statement, and one most fans took as a symbolic or thematic statement by director Gunn – that Peter fearing, then defeating Ronan matched his struggle to accept his mother’s death. But with Guardians 2 making it clear that Ego the Living Planet was actually the cause of Peter’s mother’s cancer… we got to thinking. If those coordinates were clearly a message, but NOT one about the Dark Aster they accompanied… maybe it was part of a larger message to the audience directly?
THE COORDINATES SPELL A MESSAGE?
Time to do some more digging, and break down every other bit of on-screen text we’re given in the film – and we mean every. As mentioned above, some of the planets or locations and their coordinates correspond to real or hypothetical spots in our known universe, like Morag (M31V J00443799+4129236) and Xandar (M31V J00442326+4127082). Both are found in the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 13, hence the “M31V” at the beginning. In addition, the location of the Kyln prison looks to be a joke based on this format, deciphering down to “MTH ISISN TREAL”(M20H 119919142+0185112).
But the coordinates of completely fictional, yet meaningful places or objects in the this particular story translate most easily into English terms or phrases. At the time, those studying the coordinates of Knowhere, in particular, found only a partially constructed string of letters that seemed to broadly point to Meredith Quill, Peter’s mother (played by Laura Haddock). It made sense, considering that the Dark Aster’s coordinates also made vague reference to her. But without knowing exactly what Gunn was getting at, it was hard to make some larger sense of it.
Until we tried to think of how there could even be an undiscovered Easter Egg at all, considering the amount of fans scrutinizing every frame. It meant they weren’t examining everything, which forced us to drill down a bit deeper. We never knew why James Gunn chose the year “1988,” specifically, to begin his flashback story (in fact, it sort of created a Guardians/Avengers plot hole). And we fully accept that this may be a cosmic coincidence, and the deciphered meaning of the opening text is simply a year. But combining the coordinates that point to the mystery of Meredith Quill gives… well, a clear statement:
For clarification, combining the alphabetical values associated with the numbers shown on screen, and allowing for digits that overtly resemble letters without translation (3=”E”), the coordinates in sequence form a clear message from Gunn to the audience. “SHH… THIS IS MOMS CANCER… MEREDITH QUILL (E)X” clues viewers in that a secret is coming their way, that the secret is the source of Star-Lord’s mother’s cancer, and that the source is her “ex.” An ex we now know to be Ego in human form, who confirmed that he gave her cancer.
It was at this point that we began to do some digging to see if this complete message had been found, or posed before, and couldn’t find it online. The diehard fans will know that Reddit user ‘MTrigs’ had put some of the pieces together too, specifically the translation of Knowhere’s coordinates into a reference to Meredith Quill’s past lover. But that was before Guardians 2 solidified the link between Knowhere, Peter’s father, and Meredith’s cancer, meaning the conclusions wound up to be off-target (and lacked the initial “SHH” message that clues fans in to read the messages as one extended hint).
But we’ve got a suspicion that the link between Knowhere and Ego is far more… literal than the first movie suggested on its own.
That's why you gotta smash with that cosplay shit on. Grab Mantis by them antenna and skeet in Nebula's robotic eye.
Little late on this... Finally watched it Monday.
Fucking loved the movie... It didn't hit me like the first one, but the first one was just special to me....
But I loved the movie... It was also Easily one of the funniest movies that I've seen in awhile which I didn't expect at all..
I'm definitely going to find some way to use "I'm Mary Poppins Ya'll" in something. That line came out of nowhere and had me on the fucking floor.
Fucking loved the movie... It didn't hit me like the first one, but the first one was just special to me....
But I loved the movie... It was also Easily one of the funniest movies that I've seen in awhile which I didn't expect at all..
I'm definitely going to find some way to use "I'm Mary Poppins Ya'll" in something. That line came out of nowhere and had me on the fucking floor.
And now... lets look at some Pom Klementieff (AKA Mantis)
Gotta love when a movie transcends beyond pop culture
https://www.yahoo.com/style/guardians-galaxy-quote-now-being-175410567.html
A “Guardians of the Galaxy” quote is now being used to SAVE LIVES
Rachel PaigeMay 9, 2017
There are a lot of great moments in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and many of them involve Baby Groot. Okay, fine, all of the involve Baby Groot, because he is the cutest Groot we’re ever going to see. And now, instead of just brining us joy and happiness, Groot is here to make the world a little bit safer, one seat belt at a time.
If you’ve seen the movie — or even, a few of the Guardians trailers — you know that at one point, our fearless Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) needs to blast off in his Milano, and yells back to Groot:
“Groot, put your seatbelt on!”
Marvel
Well, now this very smart and safe quote from the movie is actually being used to encourage passengers to wear their seatbelt. When Star-Lord tells you to do something, you do it.
A Twitter user spotted a highway sign in Utah, referencing this moment from the movie:
It caught the attention of Guardians director, James Gunn. Look at that influence you have over traffic and safe practices, James!
The sign then got the perfect Marvel treatment, completely with our beloved Baby Groot.
So you hear that? Put your seatbelt on. The candy (whatever space candy you happen to be eating) can wait.
https://www.yahoo.com/style/guardians-galaxy-quote-now-being-175410567.html
A “Guardians of the Galaxy” quote is now being used to SAVE LIVES
Rachel PaigeMay 9, 2017There are a lot of great moments in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and many of them involve Baby Groot. Okay, fine, all of the involve Baby Groot, because he is the cutest Groot we’re ever going to see. And now, instead of just brining us joy and happiness, Groot is here to make the world a little bit safer, one seat belt at a time.
If you’ve seen the movie — or even, a few of the Guardians trailers — you know that at one point, our fearless Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) needs to blast off in his Milano, and yells back to Groot:
“Groot, put your seatbelt on!”
Marvel
Well, now this very smart and safe quote from the movie is actually being used to encourage passengers to wear their seatbelt. When Star-Lord tells you to do something, you do it.
A Twitter user spotted a highway sign in Utah, referencing this moment from the movie:
It caught the attention of Guardians director, James Gunn. Look at that influence you have over traffic and safe practices, James!
The sign then got the perfect Marvel treatment, completely with our beloved Baby Groot.
So you hear that? Put your seatbelt on. The candy (whatever space candy you happen to be eating) can wait.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/guardians-galaxy-2-shift-redefining-marvel-1000917
'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' and the Shift That's Redefining Marvel
Courtesy of Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
missed date with Peggy (Hayley Atwell) in Captain America: The First Avenger. Relying on a romantic thread to provide both some heart and added excitement often works well in movies because of their condensed timeframe as opposed to a television series: take person A, add person B, let the tension simmer for a while over gentle heat, then turn it up at a time of your choosing and let it boil over; add other drama to taste. When attempting to use this formula in a longer-running format than a film, certain issues make themselves apparent — if the tension is left to simmer for too long, it simmers down to nothing; if it boils over too soon, well, there goes the excitement. (Ironically enough, Chris Pratt's Peter Quill alludes to many of these dilemmas in a running gag in Guardians 2.)
Paramount Pictures/Photofest
Captain America: The First Avenger
The thing about that, of course, is that an MCU movie isn’t really self-contained; it’s part of a vast network of sequels and tie-ins, so all the problems mentioned earlier more quickly pile on. The MCU showed considerable growing pains in this regard during Phase Two, struggling with two interconnected but ultimately separate questions.
One: How do you fit love interests into the equation when already dealing with so many characters and plot lines?
Two: How do you give a film emotional depth without it taking away precious time needed for fight scenes and witty banter and showing off cool new toys?
The MCU’s struggle with the first question can be most quickly illustrated by simply looking at the almost comically similar designs of these posters for 2013's Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3, which both scream, "We think the love interests should be important, but we’re not quite sure what to do with them any more." In regard to the second question, the movies of Phase Two are all over the place as far as the possible answers, or non-answers, they provide. Winter Soldier pulled on the brother theme with Bucky (Sebastian Stan), but also gave Peggy and Steve a reunion while introducing her niece Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) as a possible love interest. Thor: The Dark World reintroduced Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), though the MCU just as quickly abandoned her. Moving into Phase Three, though, trends appear to be developing in regard to how the MCU handles both of these concerns.
Marvel Studios
Regarding the matter of love interests, they have turned into the narrative equivalent of an appendix or wisdom teeth in the MCU. They don’t really have a function any more, but they’re still included in the standard package in a somewhat minimized, peripheral form. In Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange, this is arguably true of the protagonists’ love interests as characters (VanCamp's Sharon Carter and Rachel McAdams' Christine Palmer, respectively). In the case of Guardians 2, there's a peripheral focus on Gamora’s (Zoe Saldana) — to use the exact terminology of the film — “unspoken thing” with Peter, which is somehow one of the hardest selling points in a movie full of fantastical worlds and CGI beings. At one point, Peter and Gamora debate the existence of this “unspoken thing,” and one can’t help but think that, in a way, they are actually both correct: Peter is right about there being some unspoken thing, but Gamora is right in the sense that the unspoken thing is actually that there is no chemistry between them whatsoever.
The reason that sidelining the romantic elements hasn’t spelled disaster for the MCU is that it has found a new emotional source to pull from — familial bonds, whether those be of the traditional, biological variety or the nontraditional, ragtag team kind, though the latter sort is increasingly dominating over the former. And yes, the MCU has featured a lot of key familial and pseudo-familial bonds over the years: Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), the cutthroat businessman with a cold, shriveled lizard heart masquerading as a fatherly figure; Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) adoption-borne identity issues; Steve and Bucky’s brotherly bond; the list goes on.
With Guardians 2, the MCU has gone from only occasionally dabbling in family themes or alluding, but not committing, to the idea of the various ragtag teams that populate its films as family units to fully embracing the concept. In doing so, it has tapped into a reservoir of potential excitement and emotional depth. In a particular sense, emphasizing this “family feeling” can, in terms of narrative, fill a similar role to that of a central romantic pairing (no, not like that, this isn’t Westeros). That is, it can also serve as a useful narrative scaffolding and as a source of emotional appeals, and it brings along some decided advantages: it’s a lot easier to fit more characters in a familial web than even the most complicated of love triangles/quadrangle/polygons, leaving a much bigger number of permutations of character dynamics to work with. In other words, it makes it a lot easier to keep things exciting.
This actually isn’t even a new argument, it’s one pulled from the writings of G. K. Chesterton, who stated the following in his 1905 essay collection Heretics:
"[T]he supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born…. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us.”
More and more, the MCU seems to be aligning with Chesterton’s way of thinking. Chesterton was admittedly thinking about family in a rather old-fashioned sense, but considering he was writing more than a hundred years ago, he can be forgiven for that. Though he falsely presumes a genetic prerequisite for inclusion in a family unit, his other points are right on the money for the MCU. In fact, Captain America: Civil War and Guardians 2 can practically be seen as proofs of concept for Chesterton’s essay: Families are not harmonious units, but rather anarchic states, and that’s what makes them so exciting.
Courtesy of Film Frame/MVLFFLLC/Marvel
Captain America: Civil War
What makes Civil War’s airport battle, for example, one of the MCU’s greatest fight scenes is that it has not so much the dynamic of a traditional heroes vs. evil army of spies/aliens/robots/etc. as that of a family reunion. Take Bucky, for instance, who plays the role of the controversial “plus one” who almost everyone hoped against hope wouldn’t be invited this time around.
While Civil War alludes to the idea of the Avengers et al. being a family in this sense — in other words, a group of people brought together by forces outside of their control but who ultimately (for the most part) do not want to see any major harm come to each other in spite of the in-fighting that so often ensues — Guardians 2 drives this point home, while also unabashedly trying to play every single emotional angle possible. Fatherly betrayal and fatherly sacrifice are two of the oldest tropes in the book, but managing to feature both of them in the climax of the same film involving one character and two different father figures is admittedly inspired.
On the whole, Guardians 2 follows a rather common pattern as far as sequels go. It's got the same basic components as the first installment, only it seeks to go bigger and bolder, and it generally succeeds. In fact, the aforementioned scene of fatherly sacrifice, in which Yondu (Michael Rooker) sacrifices himself to save Peter, parallels Peter’s near-sacrifice to save Gamora in the first Guardians of the Galaxy in its use of a two-people, one-spacesuit gambit. But while the first attempt comes off as a somewhat campy slight tug at the heartstrings, the second variation manages more of a somewhat campy punch to the gut. Maybe it’s that familial bonds actually do have greater emotional impact potential than romantic ones (Logan, anybody?), or maybe it’s that the MCU has just figured out how to work with them better.
Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Another way in which Guardians 2 embraces a ragtag-team-as-family concept beyond anything before encountered in the MCU is in going truly intergenerational with the inclusion of Baby Groot, one of the film’s greatest strengths. While he’s adorable and entertaining enough on his own, the simultaneously very familiar (at least, for anyone who’s ever had to deal with a small child before) and yet entirely bizarre interactions between Baby Groot and the rest of the gang are what truly make him the movie’s best not-so-secret weapon.
Later this summer, the MCU’s next outing, Spiderman: Homecoming, is being marketed in a way that suggests Marvel plans to keep going with this intergenerational trend. The second trailer in particular upgrades the cool-estranged-uncle vibe of Tony Stark’s interactions with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) in Civil War to more borderline-dad status, complete with hypocritical, “I’m disappointed in you” lecture (“If you’re nothing without this suit, you shouldn’t be wearing it,” is quite a statement coming from Tony Stark).
Will the MCU truly embrace the team-as-family? When Spider-Man swings into theaters once more, we'll likely have a better idea. And who knows? Maybe down the road, Marvel could even figure out how to make love interests relevant again. Hope springs eternal.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is in theaters now. For more, check out what those last-minute cameos mean — and our interviews with Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker and cinematographer Henry Braham.
'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' and the Shift That's Redefining Marvel
Courtesy of Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
missed date with Peggy (Hayley Atwell) in Captain America: The First Avenger. Relying on a romantic thread to provide both some heart and added excitement often works well in movies because of their condensed timeframe as opposed to a television series: take person A, add person B, let the tension simmer for a while over gentle heat, then turn it up at a time of your choosing and let it boil over; add other drama to taste. When attempting to use this formula in a longer-running format than a film, certain issues make themselves apparent — if the tension is left to simmer for too long, it simmers down to nothing; if it boils over too soon, well, there goes the excitement. (Ironically enough, Chris Pratt's Peter Quill alludes to many of these dilemmas in a running gag in Guardians 2.)
Paramount Pictures/Photofest
Captain America: The First Avenger
The thing about that, of course, is that an MCU movie isn’t really self-contained; it’s part of a vast network of sequels and tie-ins, so all the problems mentioned earlier more quickly pile on. The MCU showed considerable growing pains in this regard during Phase Two, struggling with two interconnected but ultimately separate questions.
One: How do you fit love interests into the equation when already dealing with so many characters and plot lines?
Two: How do you give a film emotional depth without it taking away precious time needed for fight scenes and witty banter and showing off cool new toys?
The MCU’s struggle with the first question can be most quickly illustrated by simply looking at the almost comically similar designs of these posters for 2013's Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3, which both scream, "We think the love interests should be important, but we’re not quite sure what to do with them any more." In regard to the second question, the movies of Phase Two are all over the place as far as the possible answers, or non-answers, they provide. Winter Soldier pulled on the brother theme with Bucky (Sebastian Stan), but also gave Peggy and Steve a reunion while introducing her niece Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) as a possible love interest. Thor: The Dark World reintroduced Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), though the MCU just as quickly abandoned her. Moving into Phase Three, though, trends appear to be developing in regard to how the MCU handles both of these concerns.
Marvel Studios
Regarding the matter of love interests, they have turned into the narrative equivalent of an appendix or wisdom teeth in the MCU. They don’t really have a function any more, but they’re still included in the standard package in a somewhat minimized, peripheral form. In Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange, this is arguably true of the protagonists’ love interests as characters (VanCamp's Sharon Carter and Rachel McAdams' Christine Palmer, respectively). In the case of Guardians 2, there's a peripheral focus on Gamora’s (Zoe Saldana) — to use the exact terminology of the film — “unspoken thing” with Peter, which is somehow one of the hardest selling points in a movie full of fantastical worlds and CGI beings. At one point, Peter and Gamora debate the existence of this “unspoken thing,” and one can’t help but think that, in a way, they are actually both correct: Peter is right about there being some unspoken thing, but Gamora is right in the sense that the unspoken thing is actually that there is no chemistry between them whatsoever.
The reason that sidelining the romantic elements hasn’t spelled disaster for the MCU is that it has found a new emotional source to pull from — familial bonds, whether those be of the traditional, biological variety or the nontraditional, ragtag team kind, though the latter sort is increasingly dominating over the former. And yes, the MCU has featured a lot of key familial and pseudo-familial bonds over the years: Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), the cutthroat businessman with a cold, shriveled lizard heart masquerading as a fatherly figure; Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) adoption-borne identity issues; Steve and Bucky’s brotherly bond; the list goes on.
With Guardians 2, the MCU has gone from only occasionally dabbling in family themes or alluding, but not committing, to the idea of the various ragtag teams that populate its films as family units to fully embracing the concept. In doing so, it has tapped into a reservoir of potential excitement and emotional depth. In a particular sense, emphasizing this “family feeling” can, in terms of narrative, fill a similar role to that of a central romantic pairing (no, not like that, this isn’t Westeros). That is, it can also serve as a useful narrative scaffolding and as a source of emotional appeals, and it brings along some decided advantages: it’s a lot easier to fit more characters in a familial web than even the most complicated of love triangles/quadrangle/polygons, leaving a much bigger number of permutations of character dynamics to work with. In other words, it makes it a lot easier to keep things exciting.
This actually isn’t even a new argument, it’s one pulled from the writings of G. K. Chesterton, who stated the following in his 1905 essay collection Heretics:
"[T]he supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born…. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us.”
More and more, the MCU seems to be aligning with Chesterton’s way of thinking. Chesterton was admittedly thinking about family in a rather old-fashioned sense, but considering he was writing more than a hundred years ago, he can be forgiven for that. Though he falsely presumes a genetic prerequisite for inclusion in a family unit, his other points are right on the money for the MCU. In fact, Captain America: Civil War and Guardians 2 can practically be seen as proofs of concept for Chesterton’s essay: Families are not harmonious units, but rather anarchic states, and that’s what makes them so exciting.
Courtesy of Film Frame/MVLFFLLC/Marvel
Captain America: Civil War
What makes Civil War’s airport battle, for example, one of the MCU’s greatest fight scenes is that it has not so much the dynamic of a traditional heroes vs. evil army of spies/aliens/robots/etc. as that of a family reunion. Take Bucky, for instance, who plays the role of the controversial “plus one” who almost everyone hoped against hope wouldn’t be invited this time around.
While Civil War alludes to the idea of the Avengers et al. being a family in this sense — in other words, a group of people brought together by forces outside of their control but who ultimately (for the most part) do not want to see any major harm come to each other in spite of the in-fighting that so often ensues — Guardians 2 drives this point home, while also unabashedly trying to play every single emotional angle possible. Fatherly betrayal and fatherly sacrifice are two of the oldest tropes in the book, but managing to feature both of them in the climax of the same film involving one character and two different father figures is admittedly inspired.
On the whole, Guardians 2 follows a rather common pattern as far as sequels go. It's got the same basic components as the first installment, only it seeks to go bigger and bolder, and it generally succeeds. In fact, the aforementioned scene of fatherly sacrifice, in which Yondu (Michael Rooker) sacrifices himself to save Peter, parallels Peter’s near-sacrifice to save Gamora in the first Guardians of the Galaxy in its use of a two-people, one-spacesuit gambit. But while the first attempt comes off as a somewhat campy slight tug at the heartstrings, the second variation manages more of a somewhat campy punch to the gut. Maybe it’s that familial bonds actually do have greater emotional impact potential than romantic ones (Logan, anybody?), or maybe it’s that the MCU has just figured out how to work with them better.
Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Another way in which Guardians 2 embraces a ragtag-team-as-family concept beyond anything before encountered in the MCU is in going truly intergenerational with the inclusion of Baby Groot, one of the film’s greatest strengths. While he’s adorable and entertaining enough on his own, the simultaneously very familiar (at least, for anyone who’s ever had to deal with a small child before) and yet entirely bizarre interactions between Baby Groot and the rest of the gang are what truly make him the movie’s best not-so-secret weapon.
Later this summer, the MCU’s next outing, Spiderman: Homecoming, is being marketed in a way that suggests Marvel plans to keep going with this intergenerational trend. The second trailer in particular upgrades the cool-estranged-uncle vibe of Tony Stark’s interactions with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) in Civil War to more borderline-dad status, complete with hypocritical, “I’m disappointed in you” lecture (“If you’re nothing without this suit, you shouldn’t be wearing it,” is quite a statement coming from Tony Stark).
Will the MCU truly embrace the team-as-family? When Spider-Man swings into theaters once more, we'll likely have a better idea. And who knows? Maybe down the road, Marvel could even figure out how to make love interests relevant again. Hope springs eternal.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is in theaters now. For more, check out what those last-minute cameos mean — and our interviews with Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker and cinematographer Henry Braham.
I just want to mention...
Did anyone else catch John Crichton/Ben Browder as one of the aliens...
Which is an amazing Easter Egg since John was basically Starlord on Farscape.
Did anyone else catch John Crichton/Ben Browder as one of the aliens...
Which is an amazing Easter Egg since John was basically Starlord on Farscape.
She may not have any ass, but she's aight.
Loved it. Liked it more than the last one. Love drax character
They won't.They know EXACTLY what they are doing.
Baby groot And Racoon rocket need they owns movie
Who's the lady with red gloves?It was definitely better than the first one.
And it really came to life in IMAX 3D
I loved that Mantis came off somewhat as comic relief.
Back in the "old days", she was considered one of the worst characters ever.
And one of the worst Avengers (along with The Swordsman).
But for me, a lot of these Comic Book Team films are starting to be no different from one another.
Scarlet witch?