[Analysis] Guardians of the Galaxy [Review]
Hello!
To mark the sequel arriving in cinemas, this time it’s the tenth film in the MCU — Guardians of the Galaxy!
Also recommended as background reading before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
The second film is here
https://movie-paradise-blog.com/en/2017/05/2017-05-13-045341/
*Warning:
These are impressions and analysis written for anyone who has already seen the film, so spoilers ahead.
First things first — for anyone wondering what the MCU even is, this one!
[For newcomers] What Is the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe)? [MARVEL]
Right, let’s get into it.
The year is 1988.
Our hero Peter Quill is on his way to his mother, who is dying of cancer.
His father seems to be somewhere else entirely.
That line here — “you’ve got a present for Peter, haven’t you?”
The grandfather is wonderful.
Her time is nearly up, and he nudges his own daughter along so she won’t be left with regrets. That’s a parent’s heart.
He’s hurting too, and still he puts his grandson first. Genuinely lovely.
“Open it when I’m gone.”
That one lands hard.
He’s only about eight. Brutal.
The look on Quill’s face hurts to watch.
And the grandfather’s face in this moment, so full of pain…
Quill couldn’t take her hand. Because taking it would have made the death real, perhaps.
The grandfather can’t hide how shaken he is by his daughter’s death, and out of concern for the boy he sends him away for a moment.
But of course, probably from the shock, Quill bolts outside.
And then someone snatches him away.
The story begins.
Twenty-six years later.
And there’s Quill, listening to his Walkman.
Abducted by aliens and still in fine form lol
Quill is loving it.
One look and you know he’s a cheerful sort.
Something treasure-shaped turns up.
It’s called the Orb.
He announces his outlaw name, “Star-Lord”, with maximum cool — and nobody in the outlaw world has ever heard of him lol
Absolutely sold on Quill from that moment lol
An escape sequence straight out of Lupin the Third.
Looks like Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is on permanent rotation.
The blue one is Yondu, and he seems to be the man who raised Quill.
Right — this bit here is enormously important!!!!
This is the scene that locks the Kree into the MCU!!!
The Kree Empire is one of the three great empires in Marvel (the other two being the Shi’ar and the Skrulls).
And crucially, say Kree and you mean the Inhumans and Captain Marvel!!!
So, the Inhumans first.
http://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/m/manchester-98-99-rs/20160514/20160514101611.png
The Inhumans are the group in the image above, something along the lines of the X-Men.
Every one of them has superpowers.
Their ancestors were humans reworked by the Kree, and the powers exist because of the Kree. That’s the setup.
Normally they live quietly in a corner of Earth.
Their leader is the one in the middle, Black Bolt, and his weapon is his voice.
Cut loose and he’s strong enough to destroy the Earth!
And there’s more!!
The Inhumans are deeply woven into the MCU series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and a spin-off series, Inhumans, has been greenlit!!!!
https://theriver.jp/inhumans-1st-look/
Next up, Captain Marvel!
She’s a Kree woman and a hero (not blue), her MCU debut is already confirmed, and she’s appearing in Avengers: Infinity War too!!
That’s how much weight this scene carries, the one that finally puts the Kree on the board.
Looks like Quill wasn’t taken at random.
Ronan, the main villain of this one.
A Kree fundamentalist, you might call him. A fanatic, by the looks of him.
Wiping out the Xandarians is his whole creed.
The MCU normally hands you a single individual as the enemy, so an evil organisation in that slot is unusual here.
Thanos’ adopted daughters.
The green one, Gamora, ends up joining the team, mind lol
And Thanos appears!!!
Thanos is the MCU’s main villain.
Which is to say: every film being made right now is building towards the fight with this guy!
He is, in short, terrifying and ridiculously strong!!!
Xandar, Ronan’s enemy.
A beautiful planet, a bit like Scarif in Rogue One.
Hopping between planets on an adventure like this feels very Ratchet & Clank.
And there’s this film’s Stan Lee, spotted lol
Two MCU fan favourites spotted: Rocket and Groot.
This shopkeeper has a rough time of it in all sorts of ways lol
The fun thing about this first contact between Quill and Gamora is that you can tell exactly where his eyes are going — straight down the front lol
And the audience, following his eyeline, ends up looking there too lol
Gamora takes the Orb off him.
One thing leads to another and Quill, Gamora, Rocket and Groot all end up locked up.
Wherever he goes, the name “Star-Lord” gets laughed at lol
Gamora
A living weapon, her body surgically rebuilt
Adopted daughter of Thanos of Titan
Currently with Ronan, alongside her sister Nebula
Subject 89P13
Calls himself “Rocket”
Turned into a degenerate life form by illegal genetic engineering
Created on an asylum planet to work as a carer
Surgical scars on his back and elsewhere — a dark past
Known as “Groot”
A plant-type life form
House plant and bodyguard to 89P13
Can only say “I am Groot”
Peter J. Quill
Terran
A member of Yondu’s mercenary crew
the Ravagers
He was in Kong: Skull Island as well!!
The prison chapter begins.
It really is like watching someone play a game. Enormous fun.
Gamora: “I was going to betray Ronan and sell the Orb to a third party.”
So Gamora wasn’t an enemy after all.
A guard takes his Walkman and Quill goes off like a bomb.
Probably because it’s one of the few pieces of Earth he has left, and the bond with his mother on top of that.
The men who come to rough Quill up in prison get swatted aside by Groot and the others.
It’s about the bounty, sure, but they come across as a warm-hearted lot.
Enter Drax.
Ronan killed his wife and daughter, so he goes after Gamora for being one of Ronan’s.
But Quill talks him round — keep her alive, use her as bait for Ronan — and for now they’re allies.
Good, good.
Of every MCU film, this is the one Thanos turns up in most lol
Even Ronan goes quiet in front of him.
The scene calls to mind an audience with the Emperor in Star Wars.
One thing and another, and the jailbreak works!!
They mock Quill for going back on his own to get the Walkman the guard took lol
Fair enough, really lol
This scene is so good.
He still hasn’t opened the present from his mother.
He hasn’t let go of it yet…
The series NCIS does something similar — Gibbs, who lost his daughter, can’t bring himself to open a time capsule.
That way of showing it — can’t open it because he hasn’t let go — is just lovely.
This is the bodily-fluids-all-over-the-ship bit… lol
Yondu is strong.
This is the Collector’s entrance scene, but have a proper look at the background!!
There’s one of the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World!!
The name being Knowhere rather than Nowhere — know instead of no — is a lovely bit of wordplay.
It’s a Celestial, a hyper-cosmic being, which is to say a god.
They rank above the Grandmaster, Odin, the Collector, Thanos and the rest of the Cosmic Beings.
Quill tries it on in Knowhere and gets turned down lol
Half leading man, half clown, which makes him very easy to like lol
And he delivers when it counts.
That dog was presumably sent up on a NASA flight test lol
Right, this bit is important.
The Collector is here!!!
He’s a Cosmic Being too, and his domain is collecting.
He gathers things from all over the universe.
http://marvel-all-star.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC.jpg
He often ends up on the good guys’ side.
Incidentally, in the comics he doesn’t get on especially well with the Grandmaster, who turns up in Thor: Ragnarok.
The Grandmaster is a Celestial (Celestial being / Cosmic Being) as well.
And at last, the Infinity Stones get named!!
Thanos is out to collect all six Infinity Stones, build the Infinity Gauntlet and rule the universe.
A separate post on the details to come.
Incidentally, thanks to Thor: The Dark World, the Aether — another Infinity Stone — is sitting in this very room, so that’s two Infinity Stones together lol
That looks like the comics version of the Celestials — identical, really.
The Celestial above is presumably Knowhere.
This Infinity Stone governs POWER.
So what it brings is pure destruction.
And as you can see, the bigger the target the more force it puts out. Absolutely cheating.
The assistant wrecks the place lol
Gamora clocks that this power is bad news, while Quill’s sense of right and wrong hasn’t quite arrived yet lol
Drax brings Ronan and his lot down on them.
And Drax gets taken apart…
Nebula and the others throw Gamora out into open space.
Slight tangent, but a bare human thrown into space is said to have their blood boil and then freeze.
The film gets that right, which is a nice touch lol
Quill puts his own body on the line to save her.
This is the moment Quill wakes up to doing the right thing.
He must have felt it properly: leave this alone and a lot of people die.
Gamora over the Orb.
Hero material.
Rocket’s rallying speech was great.
Really great.
Drax lost his wife and child, so nobody can say much about what he did — and Rocket says no, that’s not it.
Pretty cool, that.
Thanos isn’t exactly loved…
Well, he has ruled that harshly…
And now they’re teaming up with the Ravagers lol
Yondu has such a soft spot for Quill.
The moment they land, it’s over for our side.
This is the moment they face the enemy for real, not just because the mood took them.
Quill’s face lol
Our fleet vs the enemy warship
Electrifying!!!
Unbelievably electrifying!!!!!!
Saal of the Nova Corps is far too cool!!!!
The Nova Corps link up and throw a net of light across the sky.
Beautiful and dreamlike.
With a touch of sadness in it too, which is lovely.
Fragile.
Yondu is far too strong!!!!!
Rocket saves the people of Xandar while swearing at Saal of the Nova Corps the whole way.
Groot here is far too strong!!
Slightly psychopathic about it, mind lol
The Nova Corps falling one by one.
This scene
has the highest body count of the lot lol
Nebula slips away somewhere.
The bad blood between those two isn’t going anywhere.
This scene feels like the final battle, and it’s a favourite.
The close-ups, that sort of thing.
Of course the weapon doesn’t finish him.
Standard issue.
Groot…
All he could ever say was “I am Groot”, and then: “We are Groot.”
The sense of it being: together, always.
A great scene.
Groot saves them, but Ronan is still alive.
A hopeless situation.
He finishes his speech and looks set to blow the planet apart, and then…
DANCE-OFF!!!
And in that opening they smash the hammer!!!
Nice teamwork!!!!
Quill grabs the Infinity Stone without thinking
Gamora’s “take my hand” brings his mother’s last moments back
The hand he couldn’t take back then
But this time Quill
takes it!!!
Not like last time!!
Paired with the opening scene, and it’s genuinely moving!!!
The idea of joining hands against the Infinity Stone must have come from what he learned in the Collector’s museum.
Still, what a rush!!
Corny!!!
And that’s exactly why it works!!!!
Join forces, beat the enemy!!
Magnificent!!!
Yondu quietly helps himself.
The man beside him, Kraglin (played by Sean Gunn), becomes an important figure in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Knew it lol
Drax comforting him. I cried.
Who his father is comes out in the sequel.
This fight changed his life completely.
And so he finally opens the present from his mother.
This bit!!!
This scene right here!!!
This is what makes the film a classic!!!!
First, he opens the thing he could never open, and inside there’s a letter.
A message of love from his mother.
Realising all over again that he was loved. Moving stuff.
And on top of that, why he calls himself Star-Lord
It was his mother’s pet name for him
He’d been holding his mother close the whole time. I cried.
And then this song!!
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
No obstacle is too big to get over
Call and I’ll come running
That’s the song.
With that in mind…
This scene, the moment he grips the Infinity Stone
You realise the mother he loved has been beside him the whole time
What a song. Truly.
Yondu laughs, even after being conned.
Something like “you little…” lol
Family, when it comes down to it.
The mother and child Rocket saved turned out to be that man’s wife and daughter.
So glad it didn’t end up like Drax’s terrible past.
A good ending.
Very them.
So glad Groot is alive!!!!
Wonder what the Collector does from here.
Honestly, so much fun!!!!
Unlike the rest of the MCU it’s loud and set out in space — a proper space opera!!
Everyone should see this one.
Vol. 2 is here!!!!
https://movie-paradise-blog.com/en/2017/05/2017-05-13-045341/
