Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2014 for Guardians of the Galaxy, at once exterior to the MCU and yet somehow vitally integral.
- Guardians of this galaxy? Director James Gunn has been pretty unambiguous in saying that tying Guardians to the larger MCU is very low on his list of priorities. But at the same time, we know #ItsAllConnected, and this week saw confirmation that at least Star-Lord will appear in Infinity War. It’ll almost certainly be Thanos that brings the Guardians and the Avengers together, but it’s going to feel like a collision of worlds if handled improperly because Guardians has a quirky aesthetic – can you imagine Drax standing side-by-side with Pepper Potts? At any rate, going from space to earth and back to space without losing that in-universe feeling is a tough act to pull off.
- A few hypotheticals. Watching Guardians with a keener eye on points of connection, I have a weird feeling that the Guardians are going to get along best with Captain America. Cap and Star-Lord are both men out of time, disoriented by the ways earth has changed in their absence. Falcon will probably recommend a bunch of new music for the next Awesome Mix. Black Widow and Gamora can roll their eyes at the antics of the lads before promptly thrashing their enemies. And Rocket Raccoon is certainly going to scheme to get Bucky’s robotic arm. (Drax, meanwhile, will have too much in common with Thor to notice.) And at this point, Cap’s seen way too much to be fazed by a talking tree.
- Thanos, the family man. The greatest point of contact for Guardians to the MCU proper is, of course, Thanos himself. Josh Brolin imbues him with a wonderful sense of menace – “I will bathe the starways with your blood” – even if he doesn’t do much beyond sitting and standing. What is intriguing, though, is the notion that Thanos has two (adopted) daughters, Gamora and Nebula, neither of whom seems particularly fond of him. With both confirmed for Guardians 2 (though Thanos, apparently, will not to appear), we’ll have time to understand this curious bond a little more before one – or both – take part in Infinity War. One wonders, though, how they fit into Thanos’s endgame of collecting the Infinity Stones.
- Speaking of Stones... We get a major infodump on the Infinity Stones in an monologue of exposition courtesy of The Collector (last seen midcredits in Thor: The Dark World), who we know is also hoarding the Stones. The Collector informs us that the six Stones possess great power molded by ancient beings, that the Orb in this film holds the Power Stone, and that these things are incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands (e.g. The Collector’s destroyed base – speaking of, does that mean the Aether is loose?). If one Stone could level The Collector’s home and unleash Howard the Duck on the galaxy, how much more might six do?
- Mysteries aplenty. As much as Guardians feels like a foray away from the MCU, it raises some big questions about the future, even setting aside the whole Infinity Stone business. Now that we know there’s a Nova Corps out there, will one make his way to earth? Is alien abductee Peter Quill a famous ‘missing persons’ case on our planet? And what about the mystery of his father, described as “an angel . . . a being of pure light”? James Gunn has said it’s not J’son of Spartax, as in the comics, and we know Kurt Russell is playing him. But if he’s something the Nova Corps have never seen before, might he be more important to the MCU than just to answer a question of paternity?
1 comment:
This movie grew on me. I didn't think it was great the first time I saw it, though I liked the characters. But when I watched it at home later, I liked it better.
Per points 1 and 2, I also wonder how they'll blend it all together, and if it'll work. Age of Ultron, which I liked, was overstuffed and convoluted to the point where it almost collapsed under the weight, and that was just the Avengers (which is why my feeling heading into Civil War has been cautious optimism, though it's turning to regular excitement as the date gets closer). Splitting Infinity War in two will probably help, but it'll still be a task to juggle both the Avengers and the Guardians, not to mention new characters like Dr. Strange and Black Panther, the new Spiderman universe characters, and rumors that the Netflix shows or other characters we haven't seen on film yet will somehow be integrated.
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