That was also a callback to what he’d said earlier…
I did remember that, but it was still heavy-handed, IMHO. I get that he’s attached to the life he knew on Earth before Yondu took him, but as a practical choice for fighting, it made little sense. At first, I thought he was forming a ball around himself (because that was all he had been able to make with the Ego-light), but if he could make the Pac-Man capable of movement and waka-waka noises, he could have made something that could fight better. Basically, Gunn was shoving the 80’s nostalgia in our faces. With the music, the retro stuff works well. In the first movie, the Footloose references fit the conversation. But in this movie, for the non-musical stuff, I thought it was overboard.
I liked it but it might be one of my least favorite MCU movies.
I think the biggest misstep was with Drax and Mantis. She should have become proxy daughter for him, not potential mate.
I am still pretty confused as to the place of the Ravagers in the galaxy–so now we’re to think they are closer to a Motorcycle gang with different chapters rather than a band of space pirates. Yondu’s gang was just more violent and deplorable than the others?
When rumors of the Stallone cameo and the original comics Guardians appearing, I was really hoping it would just be a post-credits sequence showing the Original Guardians coming to the past to get the current Guardian’s help.
Stallone would have been Major Victory and carrying Captain America’s shield.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2a/48/e0/2a48e0b7a53e6f90759e86bf53281a81.jpg
As it was…the movie version of the characters except for Martinex and Krugaar, were very lacking.
Push you Down:
Frankly, that IS how I saw her in the movie.
Both avatars were made of rock. It doesn’t matter what shape it’s in. Rock smash against rock. Besides they are both immortal. All the fight was was a delay/distract tactic so the others could escape.
The 80’s stuff is Quills identity. He’s the Earth Boy. He holds on to it and identifies himself as it to differentiate himself from being just another nameless ravager.
And the Pac-Man had the entire theater I was in laughing so I’d say that was a great decision by Gunn. And it’s plays to the catch scene and besides it was all he could think of. So win win win all around.
And Gunn insists still that D&M aren’t going romantic, so it’s the director’s intention, as well.
It was absolutely there and then undercut. The scene where she wakes him and he makes it sexual (by making it NOT sexual–if it was paternal it wouldn’t have been commented on even by Drax) and then his longing appreciative look to her at the end where he says something about her being beautiful (I forget the exact line).
He said she was “beautiful… on the inside” – another riff on finding her physically unattractive.
I wonder what role Mantis will play on the team. As far as we’ve seen, she has zero fighting ability.
I agree. I thought the movie made it clear that Drax and Mantis were forming a father/daughter relationship. Both of them explicitly said they had no sexual interest in the other. Mantis spoke about the absence of a father figure in her life and Drax talked about how Mantis reminded him of his dead daughter. And there’s the family theme that ran throughout the movie. I don’t see how they could have made the point any clearer without having them wear t-shirts.
Yes, but there’s lots of ground inside the team for somebody who’s good with emotional problems.
Huh. Well, I thought the end was supposed to show that Drax was having romantic feelings. And the scene Push You Down mentioned highlighted something sexual, where they wouldn’t have gone there at all if this were conceived of as a father-daughter relationship.
And don’t forget Miley Cyrus.
Yes, she had an uncredited role as the voice of Mainframe.
No, I feel that was James Gunn saying “Listen, despite all the evidence I know some people are going to ship this. So I’m explicitly having the characters tell each other - and the audience - that they have zero physical attraction towards each other.”
You mean the same point from about half the romantic plots in every movie or sitcom ever made?
I dunno, it wasn’t clear to me. Plus both characters were defined by their lack of social nuance, I wouldn’t take anything they say about it too seriously. I mean I’ll take the directors word for it, but if he meant it to be crystal clear in the movie, I don’t think he succeeded
Moreover, Peter is the Lost Boy of Earth – as seen in this movie, emotionally he was kind of stuck at the age he was when his mom died and he was abducted. All the things he loved as a kid are the only touchstone he has left to Earth.
Look at how awed he was to get that Zune with 300 (!) songs from Earth; that sort of stuff is all he has left to remind him of Earth. Of course he fell back on 80s nostalgia when trying to psych himself up to take on his dad.
To me, that read as more of a big brother/little sister interaction. Neither father/daughter nor potential mate relationships would tell the other they weren’t beautiful.
Drax came off almost like a boy talking about girls being gross. In googling around, I’m finding every interpretation: that it’s a sibling-like relationship, that it’s a father-daughter-like relationship, that it’s a fledgling romantic relationship, that it’s just friendship.
I really feel if I were making a movie and I didn’t want any shipping, I’d make different choices and never put in that scene with Mantis waking Drax and him “misunderstanding.” That just doesn’t make me think he’s assuming she’s like a family member. But it’s obvious we all have different takes on it!
I was told that the movie was derivative of the first one, but I didn’t find that true at all. I took Pepper Mill to it yesterday (for Mothers Day – it was raining and miserable here yesterday), and we both liked it.
For me the interesting thing was seeing how they switched around characters , origins, and relationships from the Marvel Comics to make the MCU. As a reader from back in the 60s, I loved seeing Ronan the Accuser pretty much as Kirby drew him in the first film. In this one it was interesting to see Ego showing up in a new context (I had read his stories way back in the old Thor – Kirby, again). And I knew, even before they showed us in one of those stringers at the end, as soon as they mentioned “cocoon”, that it would be Him/Adam Warlock. Even before they showed us the cocoon and she said his name would be “Adam”.
I liked the way the opening credits scene focused – literally – on Baby Groot dancing during the GotG fight with the “Multi-Dimensional Creature”. You didn’t ne4ed to see it in detail, and you only got to see occasional glimpses and out-of-focus shots. Reminds me of the way Phil Foglio handled the Gorilla Grodd – Inferior Five battle in his 4-issue Angel and the Ape series. The fight was literally only background to Sam’s doings.
She never got a chance to show any. Comic book Mantis was originally a rather different character in origin ( Vietnamese-German ), but did eventually end up in a version of GoG and her primary talent was martial arts badass. Her empathic abilities were her second-line skill.