I do think Peter Quill’s trauma tends to be a bit overlooked in fandom. When you realise how long the list of traumatic things is, and how many of those things are discomfortingly realistic I guess, it kind of… jumps out at you. (trigger warnings: child abuse , child murder and some discussion of rape. spoiler warnings: Infinity War.)
Y’know after Vol 2, there was a brief wave of people saying “God, Peter’s been through so much, it’s amazing he hasn’t completely snapped.” That one scene in Infinity War which people are calling him a villain or a man-child over? That was him snapping.
I don’t wanna get too deep into plot hole bullshit, but I feel like I gotta point out the, like.
“The Celestials are basically gods. They can handle an ancient weapon of pure explosion without exploding. They can create matter at will. They can project their consciousness across millions of lightyears. Also, if you strap a small bomb to their brain, it will kill them instantly.”
Ah, but that was more or less the exact same thing he did to Meredith. So I like to think he was killed by the concept of Justice
Confused about this is exchange between Yondu and Peter:
Yondu Udonta: I’m here on Morag. Ain’t no Orb, ain’t no you.
Peter Quill: Well, I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d save you the hassle.
Yondu makes it sound like there was a plan to meet Peter on Morag, but then Peters response is like he just happened to be in the area. What’s the deal? Any insight?
that’s a good question. I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe they were meant to meet there before moving on the orb, and Peter is saying since he was there already he didn’t bother waiting. Or, since Peter seemed aware of Yondu’s preparations for collecting the orb – “making a few calls”etc – he was actually with the others on the ship when they were settling things with the Broker, and just slipped away first to beat everyone else there. So Yondu knows he’s missing, and then when the Orb is too, he knows what’s up.
But it is phrased a little oddly, I think.
Yeah, I just figured he meant something along the lines of “I know we were meeting there on Tuesday, but I just happened to be in the area on Monday and figured I’d do it while I was there anyway.” (Or, you know, the super-advanced-galaxy version of that.) My general understanding of the whole thing is that they were supposed to do the heist together, presumably had coordinated it that way, but Peter intentionally beat him there and grabbed the thing.
James Gunn talked about this at some point… maybe the Director’s commentary? Basically, Morag is the victim of extreme climate change, and it’s been underwater. The waters only recede enough to access the temple that housed the orb once every 300 years when the planets align enough to pull the water away. (Which is why it’s still just sitting there when Peter shows up. It’s been pretty well protected).
But the Broker got the map gun somewhere (probably from the Collector.) I don’t think he mentioned how Peter gets the map gun without Yondu being around. But he does and he hightails it to Morag and lands pretty much the minute the water is gone. Gunn says that Peter rushed it and is actually landed before it’s safe to be there, which his why the water is all whooshy-splashy in the beginning and then it’s receded more when Yondu gets there.
So yeah, Peter was supposed to meet Yondu when it was actually safe to land and instead he risked his life to snag it and leave before Yondu got there. Yondu expected him to be there and Peter is just ad libbing badly, since he didn’t expect to need an excuse for Yondu.
OMG, Peter rushing in before it’s safe in order to steal the thing out from under Yondu’s nose is EVEN BETTER. :D Somehow the fact that he had not thought ahead to actually having a decent excuse ready (or whatever he had planned to say went straight out of his head as soon as Dad called to yell at him) is very, very Peter Quill.
I suspect he was just planning on not answering the calls at all.
Poor Bereet, getting dragged along on a life-threatening mission just because Peter forgot she was there, lol. Pre-movies Peter really was kind of a jerk.
It’s funny because Peter in the very beginning of GOTG is everything I hate in a male character (wait! hear me out!) He has little regard for the women he sleeps with, he’s inconsiderate, he randomly kicks small animals while dancing (what the heck, Peter?!), he’s just… Not That Great. And then throughout the film you start to pick up on where all that comes from (the Ravagers. It came from the Ravagers) and then –
– you meet Ego, who is basically all Peter’s bad aspects turned up to 11(000). Ego cares so little about women he outright murders the ones he sleeps with, he doesn’t give one shit about life forms other than himself, he’s like the biggest most utterly irredeemable monster the MCU has ever seen and he still… shares some qualities with Peter…
…so it’s SO SO DAMN SATISFYING when Peter rejects all Ego has to offer. Ooh I love it.
script to screen: guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 | [11/?]
EGO
You think you love them. But love is merely an evolutionary trick in the service of reproduction. We are beyond such things.QUILL
Yes.(requested by malecisendgameaf)
What is it about a cute song describing a girl wanting to dance with a guy for a night that goes so well with a jailbreak scene featuring a blue man with a magic arrow killing everyone and a raccoon with guns shooting up the rest?
aha you see I examined this song when I was writing some Meredith meta and I think the answer is:
the girl in the song also wants to break free!
The narrator of the song sees this girl in a cafe and they begin mutually flirting. (”She was just sittin’ there giving me looks that made my mouth water”). But the narrator also knows that the girl “belonged to bad man Jose” and well… the use of the word belonged to in the context of a romantic relationship is rarely gonna be a good one. So this girl dances with/kisses the narrator, and tells him twice “I’m all alone, and the night is so long.” Her relationship with Jose the Bad Man isn’t a fulfilling one, clearly.
“Then the music stopped/When I looked the cafe was empty/Then I heard Jose say/Man, you know you’re in trouble plenty” Jose turns up and is pissed at the narrator for taking “his” girl. He’s also sufficiently scary enough, it seems, to clear out the whole cafe when he’s looking for a fight. The narrator flees, but
as he does he hears the girl repeating the “Come a little bit closer/I’m all alone and the night is so long” verse to Jose. Which could read as her trying to convince him to not go after the narrator and beat him up/kill him.
So it’s sort of a song about someone (the girl) romantically cheating, I guess. But if Jose really is as bad as he comes across, she’s probably not at all happy in her relationship (if he’s violent to other men, is he also violent to her?) and is looking for an out in the form of another man, which she doesn’t get.
And the song sort of forms a thematic link between Yondu, Ego and Meredith! Meredith, of course, is the one who put the song on the Awesome Mix, so it must have been one of her favourite songs. And yet like so many of the songs on the Awesome Mix, it’s a song about a woman who is in some way in the claws of a dangerous, unfaithful, or otherwise objectionable man.
Just like Meredith herself…
All that, and “I’m all alone and the night is so long” perfectly sums up Yondu’s state of mind at that point. His friends are dead, his crew has mutinied, his son is in danger and if he goes to fight Ego he’ll probably die. Luckily, unlike the girl in the song, he may not be quite as alone as he thinks.
DAMN it’s a well chosen song. The whole of the Awesome Mix Vol 2 is just friggin’ amazing.
