Every week, a group of friends and I are rewatching a Marvel movie in preparation for the Avengers: Endgame. Might as well talk about them on the way, right?
It’s a shame that Chris Pratt is a creepy cultist, because I liked him a lot up until this weekend. Guardians of the Galaxy is a wonderful adventure ride that will now be forever tainted by the fact that… he’s a weird, creepy cultist.
Everyone’s pretty much in agreement that Space Avengers Guardians is a great movie, so what I actually want to talk about is how weirdly sexist the whole thing is. I hope it turns out this is a case of “Shit Matt, where the hell were you on this one?”, because I’ve never actually heard anyone discuss it.
Throughout the film, Gamora is exclusively referred to as “girl”, “woman” and at one point, by Drax, saying that she was his friend, “Green Whore”. I almost made an argument of “Well, everyone calls everyone ‘man’ in every movie,” but “man” is never used derisively. In Guardians… feminine forms of address are never respectful. And all the alien women wore skirts- from the slaves to the heads of government. But hey, Glenn Close!
Speaking of Glenn Close… what in the world, Glenn Close? And John C. Reilly? Two big names totally wasted. Was this one of those things where James Gunn hired big-name actors in minor roles to make sure people would go see the movie, kinda like how Marlon Brando was “in” the original Superman series? What a cop-out.
Speaking of James Gunn… I, like most internet folk, think Disney should bring him back immediately. They won’t, but hey maybe Robert Iger is a fan of my blog. I can dream, right? Gunn said some shitty things long ago, but you can tell by his actions that he has changed for the better.
Of course, Gunn is at least partially responsible for the sexism I mentioned up top, and Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t quite 5 years old yet. This is a fine example of a man with good intentions not realizing what he’s doing is harmful. It’s not okay to be harmful, but not everyone knows everything, and we shouldn’t rush to judgment on everyone who has done a bad thing. I believe Gunn is sincerely sorry for his record of shitty, problematic humor, and I’m glad the cast of Guardians stood up for him. That said, Chris Pratt issued a weird non-apology for being a weird creepy cultist and that is something we should judge him for.
I’m supposed to be talking about the movie, right?
In the context of the MCU, Guardians stands out as the most Marvel-tropey movie yet. That’s not explicitly a bad thing, but it does mark an escalation of how the movies are being constructed. They’ve always used lots of tonal dissonance for humor, going back to the first Iron Man, but Guardians took a sharp turn from tonal dissonance into bathos. Bathos can be funny, but too much is too much. Guardians strikes a good balance of drama and humor, but as we’ll discuss next week, Marvel is not going to maintain that balance.
Everyone loves the soundtrack. I’m going to take the unpopular route and say that selecting a list hit songs, proven to stand up to criticism nearly 3 decades, isn’t particularly remarkable. I actually think the original score to Guardians is really good, bordering on great, and that’s a more important feat in my opinion. There are a lot of interesting musical themes that, if explored a little more deeply, might be the kind of Star Wars-y, Jurassic Park-y stuff you hum when you’re in the shower or whatever.
I’m not the only one who does that with Star Wars and Jurassic Park music, right?
I wish they’d used the Tesseract theme from Captain America and The Avengers when they were describing the Infinity Stones. Marvel desperately needs someone to oversee the scores for the franchise.
Finally, we get to Thanos. His first speaking appearance is pretty standard evil-space-tyrant stuff, and thankfully he has only the most minor role, so it doesn’t get tedious. I’m planning to dive deep into the Thanos character when we get to Infinity War, but for now, it makes sense for him to be a typical space-tyrant character- he’s got a long way to go before he threatens (half of) the universe.
Karen Gillan did a great job in her first appearance as Nebula- probably one of the best performances in the movie. She didn’t get a ton of screen time, but she really utilized what she had. Honestly, much of what went on with Nebula was so understated I didn’t notice it until this most recent watching. I didn’t care about the character when I went into Guardians 2 in 2017, so I’m really looking forward to that in a few weeks.
Boring Marvel villain is boring. Guardians works because the heroes are so damn charming. Rocket is great. Drax is a little funny, but mostly flat. Star Lord shows up to play the role of Chris Pratt.
The final thing I want to talk about is one of my favorite characters in all of film: Groot. I love Groot. Groot is incredible. People make fun of Vin Diesel for getting super weird about the role and wearing stilts to embody the character, or write him off for taking an “easy” role, and all y’all can stuff it. It’s a nearly perfect performance- any negative criticisms I have are so minor as to be irrelevant. The animators who created the visuals of the character should be celebrities of the same caliber as the cast. Groot, who only says, “I am Groot”, is a deep, feeling, emotionally intelligent being and that is why audiences resonated with him so deeply. He’s gold. It’s a shame that he’s dead- the baby Groot we meet at the very end is not a clone or a regrowth of Groot, but his son, says James Gunn. Baby Groot is cute and all, but I feel like he lacks the charm of the original.
Anyway this is over a thousand words now so I’m gonna peace out.
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