Before the sequel, I read Peter’s interactions with Gamora as being a lot sleazier and less sincere than I actually think they are. He’s introduced as a misogynist and kind of a douchebag, and we know he’s hot for Gamora from the first moment, so it just comes off like the usual Dude Tries To Put Moves on Leading Lady, We’re Supposed to Care. But paying closer attention, I think Pratt plays him as sincerely falling for her. He doesn’t put any moves on her until Knowhere, right after he learns that her moral center comes from watching her adopted, abusive father murder her real parents in front of her. Immediately afterward she asks why he risked his life for the walkman from his mother, and, intensely, with his eyes right on hers, he says it was from his mother. He can’t say anything further about his mother being dead, or why that matters, but you can tell that he wants to; then a moment later, he puts the headphones on her as the song Fooled Around and Fell in Love plays.
I could always tell that was a cornball move, but it doesn’t seem like a move anymore. Peter sharing his mom’s music with Gamora, that song in particular, is his attempt to share himself with her.
I also think, upon post-sequel-rewatch, that when he shouts “this is why none of you have any friends! moments after you meet somebody you’re trying to kill them!” at Rocket and the others a moment later, the fact that he briefly locks eyes with Gamora is him having a childish overreaction to her rejection moments earlier.
And you can’t see his expression when Gamora shouts that he’s “descpicable – dishonorable – faithless” but he’s dead silent, which I think means he’s taking it personally, and is, I think, one of the reasons he so readily sacrifices his well-being and possibly his life to save hers a short while later. The streak of Peter doing things both genuinely and a little performatively for the sake of Gamora’s good opinion of him definitely continues into the sequel, but even though he’s already into her by Knowhere, that’s the place it seems to really take root – wondering why this murdering “lackey to a genocidal maniac” who insists that those people are not family to her would have such a pronounced streak of goodness turns into an inner sense of kinship when he learns it comes from her loss of – and her valuing of – family.
I really hated this forced relationship when I first saw this movie (seriously they associate her entirely with Meredith the whole film long and it’s weird, okay, women don’t exist to replace your mom, dudes), and it wasn’t until their altered dynamic in the sequel that I cared about them or could see them as a couple, but now I can see that the things I liked in the sequel were already there, they just weren’t very well served by the narrative.
Y’know, I loathed Peter’s misogynistic streak in the first film. I remember around the time it came out, there was a popular post on here that read something like “If you introduce your lead male character by showing him in bed with a woman who’s name he’s forgotten, I already hate him” and whenever it would cross my dash I always though “heh, this is about Star-Lord, isn’t it” –
– but the sequel changed all that purely by introducing Ego. He’s the ultimate abuser of women, seeing them as little more than objects or incubators, killing them whenever he gets the whim and reducing them to nothing more than faceless statues in a vast trophy hall. And I guess it’s kinda like – knowing that Peter shared even a tiny bit of his father’s misogyny, it makes it so damn satisfying when he violently, furiously, and utterly rejects Ego (because, specifically, of what he did to a woman) at the end. It makes the Peter/Gamora scene at the end just feel that bit more earned too I guess, even though the seeds had already been sown for it. Now Peter just has to demonstrate in Infinity War that he’s a completely changed man re: women and we’re golden.
(whether any of this was intended by the writers is another matter, I guess. Although oh man am I glad that the camera stopped creepily panning around Gamora’s arse for the sequel)