A young Peter Quill and Yondu Udonta :’) This scene was brief but so memorable to me. Found families are very important…
gotg2 spoilers
I saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2 again today and noticed a bunch more things on the rewatch.
- First of all I was expecting to be bored at least some of the time (I mean, I just saw it a little over a week ago), but I never, ever was, not even once. This movie uses every minute so well. (Unlike the first one, where most of the Ronon and Thanos scenes dragged horribly even the first time, and were completely skippable on a rewatch.)
- I love how the end of the movie recontextualizes some of the earlier scenes. For example, Mantis’s misery and fear is so obvious when she first meets the gang, and in most of her scenes afterwards. The first time you watch it, her anxiety is easily read as nervousness around strangers. The second time, though, it’s such a gut-punch to see her standing behind Ego, wringing her hands, and knowing why.
- Drax mistaking Yondu for Peter’s actual father is another of those fantastically recontextualized scenes. The first time, it’s funny, just a tossed-off joke. The second time, though … right in the feels. Because Drax, for the most part, doesn’t get the whole concept of people pretending to be something other than what they are. He watches Yondu and Peter interact with each other and he totally gets the actual relationship in a way even they don’t.
- Speaking of which, there is some really brilliant editing in this movie. This time around, I noticed how it cut from Ego’s “I’m your dad, Peter” right to the first installment of Yondu’s storyline (which also involved interacting with his parental stand-in, Stakar). And none of the significance of this is clear if you don’t know the characters’ emotional context! You basically can only pick it up after having seen the movie once.
- The pacing on all the emotional arcs is so, so good. I didn’t even really notice, the first time around, how strong the Peter-Rocket arc is, from their fighting in the beginning, through Rocket not wanting to leave him on the planet, to their little moment of connection at the end.
- I still can’t get over how this movie has eight major characters (not counting Ego; let’s not count Ego) and every single one of them has a) an emotional arc of their own, b) at least one strong platonic relationship arc with a beginning, middle, and end, and c) at least one scene in which they get to be awesome and do something important. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Even the noncombatants. Even the baby!
- The first time around, I didn’t really notice how brutal Gamora and Nebula’s fight is. @sheronm pointed out how incredibly OTT Gamora picking up the ship cannon is (in a way female characters rarely get to be) but the whole fight is like that: brutal, dirty, vicious, and not sexualized in the slightest. Speaking of which …
- The only shirtless scenes in the whole movie are guys (Peter on the ship, and Yondu at the brothel). The closest the movie comes to a romance arc is Peter and Gamora flirting and dancing. I still adore how Mantis and Drax make it explicitly clear that they aren’t into each other in a sexual/romantic way, and yet the most important relationship either of them has in the movie is with each other, and he’s willing to die to save her in the end. The movie doesn’t completely ignore romantic love (the Peter/Gamora relationship is still important), and it is true that there are a few sexist jokes (like Peter hitting on the Sovereign queen – though he apologizes for it, which is a rare thing). But overwhelmingly, this is a movie that never dismisses its female characters to “love interest” or sexualizes them any more than the male characters are.
- When I saw this movie the first time, I thought the soundtrack and use of music was better in the first movie, but now that I’ve seen them both back to back, I was so, so wrong. They both have great music, they both have some great musical scenes, but I think it’s mostly that the first movie has a faster, more actiony soundtrack, while the second movie has a slower, gentler, more emotional soundtrack that I didn’t fully appreciate at first. But in the first movie, the music is mostly a (well-done!) melodic accompaniment to the action, while in the second movie, the songs are very carefully fit to the scenes in which they occur – whether the important thing is the peppy/awful contrast (“Come a Little Bit Closer” over the murder montage), or the whole point is that the song is so terribly, cheesily on point (“Brandy”), or sometimes because the song fits the emotional tone of the scene in the best fanvid kind of way (“Father & Son”, or the repeated use of “The Chain” for the characters being separated and then coming all back together in Peter’s love-epiphany/Power of Friendship™ moment at the end).
It’s just sooo goooood. I really didn’t expect a bombastic, ridiculous musical comedy in space to genuinely be one of the best movies I’ve seen in ages.
The first movie also carefully fits its songs to the scenes in which they occur emotionally as well. It’s just that the first movie is packed full of action, so it’s easier to focus on the zippy movement through the story and less on the character commentary.
1. I’m not in love – the theme of denial in this is very strong, as young Peter is in denial about his mom’s incipient death
2. Come and get your love – this is an entry to the audience AND to Peter– he’s after the orb, which means money, which means girls and fun as well as breaking away from Yondu–and it ultimately leads to the Guardians. His search for the orb is a metaphor for his search for a new family, echoed at large throughout the movie
3. Go all the Away – this song plays while he argues with Yondu, it’s about being committed to his course of action.
3a. Every time I watch the scene after the Guardians arrests I think about how James Gunn said originally Peter was going to be mouthing “Never Been to Spain” aggressively at the screen and they cut it for the bird gag. Never Been to Spain in this context would be a pretty defiant sort of tune.
4. Hooked on a Feeling – again with the foreshadowing as Peter walks into a difficult situation, but the Guardians all have each other’s back, if only for their own selfish reasons. Still, the team works and feels good
5. The real name of the Pina Colada song is ESCAPE and they are literally escaping from the Kiln, but also at this point Peter is flirting with the idea of the Guardians as his new crew, to replace the Ravagers, just like the people in the song flirt with the idea of an affair
6. Moonage Daydream was added post production so might not have the meaning of the other songs, but it both fits the trippy Knowhere location and is about a new love proving itself.
7. Fooled around and fell in love is obvious. The convenient alliance is growing more comfortable for Peter, plus he’s developing feelings for Gamora
8. Cherry Bomb is about embracing that which makes you different, as the Guardians set aside their personal damage to do the right thing. Their plan for defeating Ronan is highly dependent on their personal strengths and skills.
9. Ooh Child – We’ll get it together and we’ll get it all done – This song is a very straightforward one, all optimism and togetherness as teamwork and refusing to give up are the only things that stop Ronan
10. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough is a message from his mother to Peter, but it’s also about what Peter will do for his new-found family.
Oh yes, the first movie also does a great job with the music! They are both really well handled. One thing I hadn’t noticed ‘til @sheronm pointed it out is that the “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” sequence at the end, while it’s about Peter and his team, is also about Peter and Yondu – it hits the chorus just as Yondu opens the orb container with the troll doll, and his reaction to it.
I also feel that “Come and Get Your Love” at the beginning is just so well-chosen for that scene because of the contrast between the peppy, upbeat music and the dancing, and the fact that Peter is totally alone in that scene; the whole movie is about Peter’s search for love and finally finding it.
One final thing I love about the music in both of these movies is that, with only a couple of exceptions, it is nearly always played in the scene AND on the soundtrack, with the characters actually listening to it. A music montage may segue from Peter (and, in the second movie, other characters such as Rocket) listening to his headphones or stereo, to the music playing full volume over actual events in the movie – e.g. the Cherry Bomb scene, which starts with Peter listening to his headphones and then goes to the full-volume music sequence – but regardless of how it ends up, it almost always starts out with an in-movie excuse for the music to be playing at that point.
In those vanishingly rare instances when one of Peter’s songs is playing without an actual music player present in the scene – e.g. “The Chain” in the second movie – I think you could make an argument that the music is actually playing in Peter’s head and we’re just hearing it.
This is one thing I need to make a proper post about … I think this movie contains one of the most accurate and sympathetic depictions of the fannish way of thinking that I’ve ever seen in mainstream media. This is not a movie about fandom, but whether intentionally or not, I think it is actually more sympathetic to, and understanding of, the way people in fandom think and behave than 99% of TV or movies’ attempts to depict more classically fandom-associated things like fan conventions, fanfic, or cosplay.
These are movies about a guy who uses music and pop culture to process his emotions and provide a framework for thinking about the world, and while there are times when it’s played somewhat for laughs (e.g. trying to explain David Hasselhoff to Gamora), most of the time the movie is as sincere about it as Peter is. Even in the David Hasselhoff scene, Gamora doesn’t laugh; she might not fully understand, but she recognizes how important that fantasy was to Peter and just tells him that she thinks it’s sweet – I mean, if you think about it, what happened here is that the main protagonist in an action movie described a self-insert fantasy to a “cool” friend and got a sympathetic and understanding response. When does that EVER happen?
I like to think that Peter tries to track down the surviving family members of Ego’s other kids to give them some semblance of closure -reluctantheroine
OH GOSH ME TOO
I think James Gunn said in an interview that Ego killed all the other mothers, too, but there could well have been siblings/uncles/aunts/whatnot out there
possibly one of the biggest Moments in the whole of GOTG2 for me is when Yondu gives Peter the last spacesuit and Peter almost immediately, without even thinking about it, tries to take it off and give it back, even though that would almost certainly mean his death.
It says so much about their relationship, and about Peter as a person too.
aaaaaaa, THIS. ALL OF THIS. I will never be over how Peter’s first reaction as soon as he realizes what’s happening is to try to rip off the spacesuit and sacrifice himself for Yondu instead. (And Yondu knows that he tried, which somehow matters a lot to me – they never really got to have a relationship once they both got what they were to each other, how important they were to each other, but they did have that at the very end.)
I can’t stop thinking about this – that that was probably the last thing Yondu ever saw, Peter being so desperate to save him (and Yondu is someone he’d really be fairly justified in hating, and Yondu knows that…) that he was willing to die. That’s such a huge thing. Peter got most of his goodness from Meredith, of course, but – shall I quote the Return of the Jedi novelisation, a sentence I totally don’t know off by heart? This boy was good, and this boy had come from him, so there had to be good in him, too…
Yondu did do one thing right, it was Peter.
possibly one of the biggest Moments in the whole of GOTG2 for me is when Yondu gives Peter the last spacesuit and Peter almost immediately, without even thinking about it, tries to take it off and give it back, even though that would almost certainly mean his death.
It says so much about their relationship, and about Peter as a person too.
Things I really loved about Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 in earnest
Spoilers!!!!!
1. Yondu’s “I’m Mary Poppins y’all!” after Peter says he’s cool. Because yes, it’s a hilarious line, but it’s also such a DAD thing. Like, who can’t say that their dad wouldn’t be so proud to be considered cool by their son and it’s so unexpectedly sweet because of it.
2. The fact that Baby Groot cries like an actual baby once. Because it’s like it’s stabbing you in the heart, but it’s so effective because you really forget that he really is a baby with all the things he can do until then, and that brings you right back.
3. The symmetry in Yondu’s redemption. Yondu is damned because he brings Ego’s children to Ego and his planet to be sacrificed, and he’s redeemed by sacrificing himself to save Ego’s child (who really is HIS child) and bring him away from Ego’s planet.
4. Drax’s interaction with Mantis, especially him holding her while he drowns in Ego’s planet. Because Drax is like this big murderous comic relief character, but his screen time with Mantis was this lovely way to remind the audience that Drax has this soft side and this tragic past without shoving it in your face. Drax might laugh at your pain, but he’d also try to save you even as he was drowning, and it’s a perfect way to frame his character.
5. Ego’s “For the first time, I am truly not ALONE!” and his alieness in general. Because don’t get me wrong, Ego is absolutely a non redeemable wonky bonkers genocidal jerk off, but he’s got this great alien quality to him that I feel this series really needed. It’s not in how he looks, but his motives and how he acts. Ego is a millennia old being; a god in a world of mortals. His view point of the world and his actions are so very true to that idea that we almost can’t relate because no one can imagine what it must be like to be that old or that powerful. But when he yells that one line out, we really get it. Ego, for all his power, is just like us; he just doesn’t want to be alone. Coupled with his god like alien superiority, his ego – get it? ;) – he sees the expansion as the way to answer that feeling. If everything is him, after all, then he can’t be alone, see? What makes him a great villain is that he actually had the real answer all along – love, family – but he chose to destroy it because he felt it was beneath him; because of his subconscious disgust at his own desire to be “just like the rest of them.”
6. Nebula’s “You wanted to win and I just wanted a sister!” And how it turns the tables on how we view her relationship with Gamora. Because Nebula is clearly set up to be the ‘bad sister’ to Gamora’s ‘good sister’ and that one line really throws that on its head and shows that neither one of them are good or bad. I also love how it’s Gamora that ends up apologizing to Nebula, after everything, and Gamora who finally returns Nebula’s offer of sisterhood after all of those years.
7. “You shouldn’t have killed my mom and squished my Walkman!” Like, this line right here; the essence of Peter Quill in 10 words. Perfection.
8. The batteries as they relate to the parallel of Yondu’s and Rocket. Because them as a parallel is basically smashed over our heads, but I liked the subtle batteries parallel in that Rocket steals batteries he doesn’t need and Yondu steals Peter, who is used as a battery by Ego. It’s just a little thing but I found it really neat.
9. Rocket’s “I can only afford to lose one friend today,” line and how although it’s clearly framed to be about Peter, it’s also possibly about Yondu. Because no matter what, Rocket is losing a friend and it’s a great line to add to his character development from a guy who started trying to push his friends away to a guy who can’t lose them.
10. The contrast between how Peter reacts to the death of Ego and Yondu. He holds both as they die but he’s just silent and unaffected by Ego and he’s distraught and trying desperately to save Yondu, trying to pull off the suit to give to Yondu and save him instead. Can you say tears?
11. Don’t even talk to me about the Ravager funeral.
12. That the movie really was truly about family. Drax and his family and Mantis, Gamora and Nebula, Rocket and the Guardians, everyone parenting Groot and Peter realizing that the dad he’d wanted all along was actually the one he’d had. Often these superhero movies pull the “we’re family” card and it doesn’t feel earned, but man it does in this one. This movie is like Marvel’s “The Fast and The Furious IN SPACE” and it’s just great.
