I assumed that starlord was her special nickname for him and not something only from the letter.
^That was my thought as well–a pet name she had always called him.
I’ve got a pet theory that “Star-Lord” is a reference to his dad (who she described as an “angel”, though it’s not clear if she means as in “he’s a sweetheart” or as in “he came down from a Higher Plane of Existence to start our family and had to go back for a while” or something in between).
The movie had some unexpected emotional punch for me, but I also think being on a Doctor Who binge is turning me into a softy when it comes to TV and movies. In particular, their use of “Hooked on a Feeling” in the movie was a lot darker than it was in the trailer, what with the montage of the craphole prison with the one prisoner seen sobbing to herself while looking at a family photo.
So, the big dang battle over Xandar. I get that the heroes had to convince the Nova Corps that they were on their side, lest their whole brilliant “save Xandar” plan fall apart with Nova Corps trying to intercept them early on, potentially screwing everything up even before Ronan drops in. Moreso since they were traveling with the Ravagers at this point, who the movie made clear were considered to be Not Nice People™ by pretty much everyone, including the Ravagers.
As soon as the battle opened up, and especially since it was going badly for the Ravagers, I was pretty much sitting in my chair thinking “and the Cavalry arrives any moment now”. Cue the Nova Corps. I thought it was cool and all (it’s one of my favorite tropes for an unlikely ally to come to another’s aid at the nick of time), but they played it up too much since the Nova Corps arriving to help in the fight to protect their own capital city should have been taken as a given, rather than as a plot twist.
The Nova Fishnet: It was goofy, it was campy, it was comic book superheroey and it was only not stupid because it actually worked in stopping Ronan’s ship and delaying him long enough for the Ravagers to punch a hole in the ship and let the Guardians in. Ronan ended up having to use his stone-enhanced hammer to deal with them, and even that didn’t work right away. Plus, the Nova Corps using a Power Of Teamwork combination defense move to stop Ronan is a nice ying-yang contrast with the Ravagers “Shoot everything” offensive move.
The Kree not wanting to call out Ronan for being a dick. They don’t like the Novas. They probably like Ronan even less, but are pragmatic enough not to draw his fire while he’s on a rampage. Sure, he’ll come for them later, but that’s later. Today they’re still recovering from a war that only recently ended and Ronan is officially Someone Else’s Problem.
Also, Ronan’s ship reminded me of the Necromonger ships from Chronicles of Riddick, what with the rotating bits.
Didn’t Ronan say twice during the movie that the Xandar had killed both his father and his grandfather? There’s your motivation to oppose the treaty right there. It wasn’t just religious zealotry, it was straight-up revenge.
Wasn’t Ronan’s father Thanos?
Nope. The only offspring of Thanos is Nebula, who is supposed to be his granddaughter, but Thanos disputes this. I think he had sired some offspring in his younger days, but then went around killing them all
Did anyone else see the subject of the post-credit sequence when he first appeared? I happened to be looking in just the right place, top-center, when they first went into the Collector’s lair and there he was. They changed the focus right away, but I pointed and whispered to my husband “Is that xxx???!!!”
Yes, someone noticed, it was indeed a “blink and you miss it” scene.
…well… in movie-- Nebula and Gamora are referred to and refer to Thanos being their “father.” It’s an adopted thing–not biological.
I just saw the film with my boyfriend, who has never read a Marvel comic in his life, and spent at least a quarter of the film with his eyes closed because action scenes give him motion sickness. After reading this thread, I asked him to describe Ronan’s motivations. I had to remind him which one was Ronan, but once that was sorted out, he had no problem describing exactly why he wanted to blow up Xandar.
The one thing that kinda rankled me was Xandar’s relative defenselessness. So this advanced space society who managed to get the Kree to enter into a peace treaty, somehow can’t stop this one supposedly rogue Kree guy from more or less flying into their capital? Really? Was everyone else fighting with pillows and featherdusters? The terms of the Xandarian/Kree peace treaty was “blow up all and I mean all your shit bigger than a breadbox”?
I thought Nova was supposed to be pretty baddass, from the Marvel vs Capcom games, but these guys were really lame.
Post-war military drawdowns?
Okay, so it’s WW2, the Americans have a dust up with Germany, everyone gets sick of the thing and there’s a peace treaty, but Sgt Shultz thinks that’s a crock, and drives a single tank with a nuke in it to bust up the White House because he’s pissed, and the best America can do is form a human barricade while a bunch of jailbreak hoodlums plink away at the tank with their totally gangsta pistols, and that represents the best forces that America can muster.
Really??
Anyone accusing Game of Thrones of lacking exposition must have been distracted by the, er, scenery in those scenes.
Almost as implausible as the US not being able to stop 19 rogue al-Qaeda members from more or less flying into their capital city? Plus the defenses held until the barrier got Macguffin’d right in the face.
Tank? It’s closer to an aircraft carrier. From the Japanese perspective, they were at war and the US still managed to sneak a plane with a nuke through not just once but twice. I really don’t see how the GotG battle is beyond the scope of believability.
A web reviewer I’m generally a fan of but occasionally vehemently disagree with is saying the movie’s completely bereft of plot.
I don’t think that’s a defensible analysis at all. I think the plot is basically 90% the plot of the Maltese Falcon, writ 21st century (which is to say with explosions).
Well, The Maltese Falcon is basically the defining example to prove that, in rare masterfully executed cases, you can have an excellent story . . . without a plot.
Guardians of the Galaxy is essentially an origins story. Most superhero origins stories are bereft of plot and the conflict with the villain is the most boring part of the story. In the case of Guardians of the Galaxy, the origins story is not a story of “How the Superhero Got His Powers”. Instead, it is a story of “How the Team Got Together”.
If one wants to be critical though, the ship looked big enough to take out the entire capital of the planet, which seems like it would be pretty devastating even without Ronan using his stone-power to destroy everything else.
And based on what we’re shown, it seems like in the GotG universe that it’s perfectly reasonable for any random idiot to be flying around in his own personal city-sized ship. If 1/100th of households owned their own 747, I would expect the level of defenses against 747 crashes to be pretty high. It’s because that’s not our reality that we don’t have any such defenses in place.
Without any knowledge of the story beforehand, I perceived the film as a spoofish comedy. Somewhere between Spaceballs and Star Wars. I didn’t think it was meant to be a serious representation of any other story, and I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much. Right from the beginning, I laughed during Starlord’s escape with the orb. If I took the story seriously, I might have been bothered that a rogue space criminal has far more advanced weaponry than the entire planet that he’s trying to defend. But I was able to focus more on the stunning IMAX visuals and sound, the hilarious dialogue and entertaining action scenes. While the movie did spur some of the questions I asked earlier in this thread, the story was only moderately important for me.
I was very impressed with the “sparkly colored lights” aspect of the art direction. These are some of the prettiest space battles I’ve ever seen.
I was not entirely happy with the extreme motion portrayed. I was actually finding myself getting a little seasick. (And I was only watching the 2-D version!)
As a lifelong Marvel Zombie, I adored the little call-outs and quick cameos. Like, the Soviet space-dog, Cosmo. In the comics, he’s actually a fully-developed character. Here, he just pops on and off again. I was the only one in the entire theater who laughed when I saw him!