Sibling 101: Yeeting.
nebula
(more infinity war spoilers)
Oh absolutely Peter Quill makes a mistake in this movie by allowing rage to overtake him at the last possible moment, but he doesnât really make any more mistakes than any other MCU hero made in this movie/the leadup to it. And what happened might well have happened anyway without him making said mistake? So no, heâs not the other villain of the movie, AV Club! Jeez! And also a slight âughâ.
Iâve become very protective of Peter since GOTG2. Heâs an abused kid who grew up with nothing, lost so much, and has to live out the rest of his life knowing he was essentially the product of a megalomaniac godâs creepy breeding program. Now he realises that Thanos has sacrificed Gamora in almost the exact same way his father sacrificed his mother? Of course heâs going to react like that! It wasnât done out of malice, just pure in-the-moment rage for everything thatâd been taken from him.
(And yeah, I doubt that the plan would have worked even if Peter hadnât snapped. Mantis is strong but Thanos is nigh-on indestructible.)
My main issue here is that no one but Peter and Thanos are allowed to be sad about this. Like, I can understand Peterâs actions. What I canât understand is Drax, who earlier this same movie blew the plan against Thanos because he wanted immediate revenge, not behaving similarly. What I canât understand is Mantis, who demonstribly doesnât just read emotions but feels them, not getting even slightly emotional when Thanos is apparently just so dang sadâlike, never mind that sheâs known Gamora for four years. What I understand least of all is Nebula, who for the first time on screen (thanks to @inbarfink for pointing this out) saw Gamora stand up to Thanos for her, figuring out what happened and then just dryly expositing about it.
And it comes down to this bullshit I already ranted about way back when I finished Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 6, where only men who can claim some measure of âownershipâ over women get to be sad when something bad happens to said women. Women donât get close friends. They get parents and lovers and maybe folks who pine over them, and thatâs it.
Peterâs rage in this movie is bad. But itâs not bad for the reasons everyone says it is.
Ah, see I agree with you to be honest. From a Doylist perspective (weee! I love using that word) everything about Gamoraâs death is terrible writing. But from a Watsonian perspective re: Peter, his all-consuming rage makes perfect sense. (It just took terrible writing to get to that perfect sense.)
It suddenly occurred to me how they could have so easily fixed all this. Keep Peterâs meltdown secondary to the other goings-on and give the big moment of destruction to Nebula.
