It JUST NOW clicked for me that in GotG2 we go from this:
Kraglin: No matter how many times Quill betrays you, you protect him! Like none of the rest of us matter!
to …
Kraglin: *apologizes for accidentally starting a mutiny*
Yondu: *gives him another chance pretty much instantly*I mean, obviously I knew both of those things happened in the movie, and I might be the last person to get from Point A to Point B. But it’d never occurred to me that there’s such strong mirroring between the two scenes – Kraglin’s main source of resentment is that he’s the loyal one, while disloyal Peter screws up and turns away from the Ravagers and is still forgiven; but when Kraglin ends up in Peter’s shoes, as the betrayer, Yondu does treat him just like he treats Peter, and takes him back. By the end of the movie, Kraglin knows Peter better than he’s ever known him. He’s been him.
… In general, Yondu’s inability to hold a grudge against people he cares about is
breaking my heartcompletely at odds, in a very Yondu kind of way, with his hardened space pirate persona. It’s not just Peter and Kraglin, but also Stakar – he’s furious at Stakar, but what he wants isn’t revenge or compensation, it’s just to be let back into the Ravager family that cast him out.And it’s not little things. It’s Peter costing him the score of a lifetime, inadvertently turning part of his crew against him, and running off across the galaxy with a new family; it’s Kraglin turning the rest of his crew against him and getting most of his loyal crewmates killed; it’s Stakar exiling him from the only home and family he’s ever known.
He’s just so damn … complicated. He’s a thief and a liar and a killer. He’s also a guy who loves with all his heart (no matter how hard he tries to stamp out that loyal-to-the-death part of himself because he considers it a weakness) and … gah … I just have a lot of feelings about Yondu.
@sevi007 pointed out awhile back that the two people in Yondu’s crew who he apparently spent the most time around, and therefore had the most influence on (Peter and Kraglin) are also the two kindest, most open and empathic and generally sweetest people in the whole gang. They both ended up resenting him too, because, well, Yondu and his A+ people skills, but it’s just a fascinating thing that people who’ve been on the receiving end of Yondu’s mentoring seem to turn out reasonably decent; there’s something fundamentally decent in Yondu that he doesn’t manage to hide as much as he tries to.
Yes!
It’s an interesting mirror again between him and Stakar, who didn’t forgive him until his death (for good reasons, imo, and the nature and magnitude of Yondu’s offence was totally different); maybe some of his reluctance to hold grudges arises from having betrayed his first family himself, or maybe he just doesn’t want to lose more people.
OKAY BUT LISTEN I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THIS
I was thinking about this the other day because I’ve lost control of my life and was wondering why Stakar appealed to me so much after .002 seconds but honestly it’s because that confrontation scene was so effective. Aside from my initial (and admittedly embarrassingly verbal) response being ‘is that fucking stallone’, that was a killer casting move for that sequence and here’s why:
Gunn gave us every reason to expect violence from that scene and then fucking flipped it into an emotional Thing and frankly how dare he.
Check it out: He immediately establishes Yondu as vulnerable, then brings in a literal icon of violent action movies and the first thing he is is pissed off upon seeing Yondu (even though the first thing Yondu does is approach him in the most respectful, docile way possible).
Stakar chooses to walk away while explaining that there are 100 Ravager factions, and this outpost has lost the business of 99 of them by serving Yondu’s. This immediately establishes Stakar as the Dominant Force here. Even while stating it’s Yondu’s involvement that would end a business relationship, it heavily implies that Stakar is the man to make that call. We have a snapped-finger realization that this is the Guy In Charge, and not a dude to be fucked with.
And then — and then– Yondu gets pissed, breaks something, and yells at him. Both of these guys (who are more or less the same height and stature, btw– an excellent choice on it’s own, given Yondu’s character progression and the mirroring of their relationship) storm towards each other yelling–and we see the difference between their current standing; Stakar’s men turn and follow him. Yondu’s don’t. And it’s a fantastic, subtle insight into their leadership. Yondu always talks about following the code and the Ravagers are a family–because that’s how the Ravagers were when he was a part of the original crew.
Lo and behold: Stakar’s team is Right There by his side when he’s getting threatened, and we find out (during this scene!!) that at least half of Yondu’s team joined up with him ‘because he’s not afraid of doing what needs to be done’, meaning breaking the code. Yondu says later that the only thing Stakar asked in exchange for joining them was that he follow the code. But, for all the reasons that may be, Yondu’s collected an assortment of Ravagers who don’t care jack shit about the code (he was young, he was greedy–for a boy who had nothing and meant nothing, wanting a bit of power and a lot of cash makes a lot of sense), and this scene highlights the difference really nicely.
BUT HERE’S MY FAVORITE PART: Stakar and Yondu are yelling in each others’ faces, getting heated, and you still have every reason to believe they’re about to throw down. But not only does Stakar verbally disarm him, he grabs him by the collar–and again, they’ve cast an actor known for fighting people in movies–and his line is basically ‘I hate this, you hurt all of us.’
Literally have fucking Rambo say ‘you broke all our hearts’, let him go, and walk away. Gunn set us up to expect a Literal Beat Down and gave us an ‘I’m not mad, I’m just very disappointed’ for Yondu.
I love that counter-intuitive shit, you guys.
And learning that Stakar was initially a pacifist in the comics made it even betterIt’s also really insightful because it implies that Stakar likely didn’t want to exile Yondu (even though, obviously, the reasons were Wholly Justified –and if they keep certain aspects of the Ogords’ story intact, offensive on a personal level). But as a leader and someone who might’ve created the code himself (or with Aleta and/or the other OG Captains), he’s got a responsibility to the rest of his team.
But WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!
The reason I wanted to break that down first is because the truly Great and Powerfully Subtle Thing about that scene was Martinex.
Gunn didn’t just parallel Yondu and Peter with Stakar and Yondu. He mirrored Kraglin with Martinex.
The guy who’s probably watched Yondu get into trouble over and over again, probably watched Stakar forgive him more times than he could count, and most painfully probably watched someone who was like a rowdy brother to him Fuck Up So Hard that even Stakar couldn’t look past it. When Stakar’s team turns (with him) to walk away, Martinex steps into Yondu’s eyepath. He literally blocks Yondu’s view of Stakar, and doesn’t move until Yondu makes eye contact with him. That’s such a beautiful fucking moment. It doubles down on the ‘You broke all our hearts’ line. It’s an ‘I’ve Been Here Through All of This and He Still Feels Bad for You’ moment. It’s wonderful, especially as applied as a Kraglin parallel.
Like Kraglin, Martinex is the one who had to deal with the shitstorm Yondu left behind. Martinex is the one who stayed with the Captain that brought Yondu on board, only to be betrayed by him. Martinex is the one who is still dealing with the fact that his Captain apparently feels guilty for this shit thirty odd years after the fact–and like Kraglin, it’s Martinex who offers a few words of redemption in Yondu’s favor at the end of the film and, in doing so, offers his captain some peace of mind (like Kraglin did in Vol 1–luckily Stakar’s response wasn’t ‘yeah, that guy was an asshole’).
I KIND OF DERAILED BUT MY POINT IN RELATING TO THE ABOVE STUFF WAS THIS:
The thing for me is, I don’t think Yondu is genuinely furious at Kraglin, or Peter, or Stakar. I don’t think he every truly blamed any of them for the things that happened. Yondu seems to outwardly blame everyone else while internally battering himself for fucking up. And I only say that because of that same confrontation scene: When Stakar turns around and starts dropping truth bombs on Yondu, his aggression instantly dissolves into shame. He can’t look at Stakar. Even when Stakar grabs him and tries to meet his eyes, Yondu’s looking down, and doesn’t look back up again until Stakar has gone, and he (hesitantly) looks to Martinex, before looking around to see who’s witnessed his defeat (and to see that literally no one had his back during that whole thing).
Yondu’s Ravagers–the ones that were killed, plus Peter and Kraglin–were most likely closest to resemble his relationship to the OG Team before he was a captain in his own right. Yondu thinks of himself as a failure, but he probably never realized what a good job he did passing down all the little things that changed his life when he was part of his first family. The members of his crew that were killed off were the ones that genuinely loved Yondu as a person and a leader, but Yondu likely didn’t have the frame of mind to let that sink in–and given the current state of his crew, wouldn’t likely believe it anyway.
Point is I love all of this meta and Yondu’s a fantastic character and I wish Rocket had called like ten minutes earlier to tell the OG crew to go save him so he could hang out with his old buddies again while Kraglin joined Peter’s team and everything was Okay.
Reblogging for A+++++ additions! All of this is WONDERFUL; there are so many points here I hadn’t even thought thought about, especially the Stakar-Yondu confrontation being set up in a way that (according to classic action movie tropes) should lead to violence, and then leads to Talking About Feelings instead; and the brilliant staging of it, with Stakar’s crew backing him up, and Yondu all alone out there.
This also made me think about how loyal the loyalist half of Yondu’s crew actually were, in the end – even though they didn’t back him up against Stakar the way Stakar’s crew did, they were loyal into exile, and literally loyal to the death. For all the dissatisfaction that he bred in the crew with his favoritism of Peter, there were still people around who were not only die-hard faithful but genuinely liked/loved him as a person (e.g. whoever it was – Tullk? – in the Contraxia scene trying to get Yondu to come out and have fun in the snow with them). He probably never realized what a good job he did passing down all the little things that changed his life when he was part of his first family – gaaAAAAaaaaah.
And he had to watch all of them murdered in front of him, with Taserface pointing out at every opportunity that it was his fault.
Y’know, I never thought about that – Sylvester Stallone, sort of the ultimate Macho Man in his prime at least, being cast as a guy who *doesn’t* use violence as his go-to move. I dig it