“Guardians of the Galaxy is, to me, more than anything else, about adults who were abused as children starting to heal, uneasily and in fits and starts, by building relationships with other adults who were abused as children.“ – James Gunn
I saw this quote a few days ago, and I’ve been worrying at it ever since. Because on the one hand, you can definitely see where Gunn is coming from. The Nebula/Gamora reconciliation, Rocket realizing that he doesn’t need to keep testing his friends, Quill figuring out who his real father was, these are all successful subplots about damaged people finding a family in each other.
But on the other hand, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is such a mean-spirited movie. The further I get away from it, the nastier it feels, whether it’s Drax’s unpleasant sense of humor, or the way he keeps tearing Mantis down, or the fact that the middle act of the movie is basically two long scenes of photogenic slaughter, as first Yondu’s loyalists are spaced, and then he kills the mutineers one by one. And it’s not just that the characters are assholes – you can write a story about assholes who are mean to one another but are also learning how to be better people. It’s that the movie is mean, and expects us to take pleasure in clearly mean-spirited humor.
I don’t know. Maybe a better writer would have been able to strike a balance between nasty humor and real heart. Or maybe a writer who isn’t burdened with Marvel’s need to create a four-quarter blockbuster could have managed it. But what lingers with me about GOTG2 isn’t the connections between the characters, but the way the movie expected me to laugh at them being mean to one another.
I can’t think of much to write here beyond “I didn’t feel that way at all.” I get that the Drax/Mantis stuff is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, but –
– I know I’m opening a can of worms here, but I still see Drax as being basically autistic, which is an idea that’s been passed around a lot, so I see their interactions through that prism I guess. He clearly adores her and is willing to give his life for her even, he just doesn’t understand that calling someone ugly, however logically he means it, might not be the best foundation on which to build a relationship. (Fortunately Gamora is on hand to reassure Mantis she’s not in fact ugly, but Mantis doesn’t.. actually seem to mind how she’s perceived in those terms.)
And I definitely don’t see the scene where Yondu’s loyalists are killed as being photogenic, I find that bit quite horrifying in fact. Especially seeing the Ravagers laughing and mocking as they kill Tullk, and Yondu sitting there too utterly broken and injured to do anything about it.
I know you could get a whole thesis out of why audiences (including me) find the arrow slaughter scene totally badass instead of totally horrifying, and I get that, but I think some of it comes from the catharsis of seeing such horrible people, who murder their crewmates and torment a toddler for fun, getting their just desserts.
Basically I think a key part of the movie is Peter being presented with the perfect thing he’s always wanted – a father who seems to love him and who is powerful and wealthy and amazing – and finding out it’s all literally built on bones. But the Guardians are the other way around: on the surface they’re mean to each other and bicker the way siblings do, but under that it’s all love and respect. Drax actually seems to get that first. “All you do is argue, you’re not even friends.” “No, we’re family.” They’re all really messed-up people with a terrifying load of trauma between them, but they can make it work, and they do.
(”I can’t think of much to write here” *writes four paragraphs*)
Drax is always tricky for me because he is incredibly inconsistently written–the literalness, for example, gets jettisoned whenever a particularly hi-larious one liner presents itself (cf. the infamous ‘green whore’ line from Vol 1), and so does his general compassion levels. Some of that is consistent–Drax, like Gamora, does not have a lot of uses for strangers outside “his” people, and he holds one hell of a grudge–and some of it is not, like his very real empathy for Mantis earlier in the movie combined with his gleeful “ha, I didn’t believe you at all” moment right after her crowning achievement with Ego.
As an Autistic ™, Drax is actually the single character that I can’t fucking stand as written in canon. I can work with him to try to interpret him into a person that I can genuinely empathize with and like, but it’s always a conscious effort from me to create interpretations that do not make me want to punch him in the nose. I put up with Drax for the sake of literally everyone else, but I do not enjoy his time on screen because so many of his jokes are very mean spirited–for example, setting Mantis up to horrify Rocket by petting him; sniping “except you” to Nebula; aggressively interpreting Mantis trying to wake him up in a terror as sexual interest from her; undercutting his belief in Mantis immediately in the aftermath of her success. Even his friendship with Rocket seems to actively enable Rocket’s more obnoxious behaviors, and I genuinely do think that Drax thought setting up that entirely predictable fight about who was the best pilot was funny.
Part of that is that Drax is not an autistic child, he’s an autistic adult, and as such I expect him to act like one. He… does not. I am not surprised that many small autistic boys identify with him, because his characterization oscillates unpredictably from very parental autistic adult to small autistic boy, and unfortunately for me those things ain’t fucking compatible. You can’t have the perspective necessary to offer genuinely adult, parental advice to another approximate adult while also making the kinds of errors without any visible attempt or effort to course correct that Drax does. And I get really resentful about the behavior of small autistic boys defining the characterization of adult characters coded autistic in media (cf assholes like Sheldon Cooper, for example) in part because those portrayals happen in a context of mainstream media treating autism as a disease of prepubescent boys.
I can appreciate and tolerate his treatment of Mantis in part because she genuinely doesn’t seem to mind much–she doesn’t seem to give a much of a shit about ugliness, which is actually one of several markers that code her as autistic-like herself–and in part because with Mantis he does actually try to walk his bullshit back when she visibly calls him on it, and she does when she’s annoyed. (“I don’t even like the kind of thing you are!”) But I still want him to fucking do better, and his characterization grates on me like that bullshit line from Thor about Loki being adopted in Avengers or Steve’s Ultron “language!” line grates on me: actual empathic characterization and consistency sacrificed for a cheap one liner. It’s all the worse in Guardians because it’s contrasted against all this genuinely beautiful writing and work, and it drives me nuts.
Now, do I agree with the characterization of Guardians generally as mean spirited? Absolutely not–and I think it’s telling how hard those movies work to show the reasons behind hurtful behaviors and attempts to meaningfully atone and apologize from, say, Rocket and Yondu and Gamora and Peter, and the conspicuous absence of that atonement from the true villains of the movies (Ronan and Ego).
But the way canon portrays Drax? Makes me want to punch a fucking wall a significant portion of the time.
I do feel that. I’ve never been diagnosed as autistic (never asked) but it would make a lot of Brain Things (stimmy stuff since childhood, pain-in-the-ass OCD, etc…) make a bit more sense, and when Mantis tells Drax “I do not understand the intricacies of social interaction” and immediately gets a cruel prank played on her by him, because she doesn’t understand the intricacies… well, I felt that too. That’s a real playground-bully move. I was MUCH more Mantis in that scene. Have pretty much been Mantis in that scene. (And I do think she’s autistic too, in the sense that anyone “officially” is in these movies. Coded autistic?)
….Anyway that one scene is quite mean-spirited come to think of it. God knows why it’s in there. So we feel sorrier for Mantis? Or angry at Drax? It’s mean to Rocket too actually because of course he wouldn’t want to be touched by a stranger. I don’t know. I do like Drax quite a bit generally, the scene where he attempts to save Mantis at his own expense really broke my heart. But it feels like there’s something missing inbetween that scene and the aforementioned one.
(Though I am okay with him saying “except you” to Nebula. She’s still kinda an unrepentant supervillain in his eyes. On the other hand it’s not very sympathetic to Gamora’s point of view, and she’s standing right there…)