It JUST NOW clicked for me that in GotG2 we go from this:
Kraglin: No matter how many times Quill betrays you, you protect him! Like none of the rest of us matter!
to …
Kraglin: *apologizes for accidentally starting a mutiny* Yondu: *gives him another chance pretty much instantly*
I mean, obviously I knew both of those things happened in the movie, and I might be the last person to get from Point A to Point B. But it’d never occurred to me that there’s such strong mirroring between the two scenes – Kraglin’s main source of resentment is that he’s the loyal one, while disloyal Peter screws up and turns away from the Ravagers and is still forgiven; but when Kraglin ends up in Peter’s shoes, as the betrayer, Yondu does treat him just like he treats Peter, and takes him back. By the end of the movie, Kraglin knows Peter better than he’s ever known him. He’s been him.
… In general, Yondu’s inability to hold a grudge against people he cares about is breaking my heart completely at odds, in a very Yondu kind of way, with his hardened space pirate persona. It’s not just Peter and Kraglin, but also Stakar – he’s furious at Stakar, but what he wants isn’t revenge or compensation, it’s just to be let back into the Ravager family that cast him out.
And it’s not little things. It’s Peter costing him the score of a lifetime, inadvertently turning part of his crew against him, and running off across the galaxy with a new family; it’s Kraglin turning the rest of his crew against him and getting most of his loyal crewmates killed; it’s Stakar exiling him from the only home and family he’s ever known.
He’s just so damn … complicated. He’s a thief and a liar and a killer. He’s also a guy who loves with all his heart (no matter how hard he tries to stamp out that loyal-to-the-death part of himself because he considers it a weakness) and … gah … I just have a lot of feelings about Yondu.
@sevi007 pointed out awhile back that the two people in Yondu’s crew who he apparently spent the most time around, and therefore had the most influence on (Peter and Kraglin) are also the two kindest, most open and empathic and generally sweetest people in the whole gang. They both ended up resenting him too, because, well, Yondu and his A+ people skills, but it’s just a fascinating thing that people who’ve been on the receiving end of Yondu’s mentoring seem to turn out reasonably decent; there’s something fundamentally decent in Yondu that he doesn’t manage to hide as much as he tries to.
Yes!
It’s an interesting mirror again between him and Stakar, who didn’t forgive him until his death (for good reasons, imo, and the nature and magnitude of Yondu’s offence was totally different); maybe some of his reluctance to hold grudges arises from having betrayed his first family himself, or maybe he just doesn’t want to lose more people.
I was thinking about this the other day because I’ve lost control of my life and was wondering why Stakar appealed to me so much after .002 seconds but honestly it’s because that confrontation scene was so effective. Aside from my initial (and admittedly embarrassingly verbal) response being ‘is that fucking stallone’, that was a killer casting move for that sequence and here’s why:
Gunn gave usevery reason to expect violence from that scene and then fucking flipped it into an emotional Thing and frankly how dare he.
Check it out: He immediately establishes Yondu as vulnerable, then brings in a literal icon of violent action movies and the first thing he is is pissed off upon seeing Yondu (even though the first thing Yondu does is approach him in the most respectful, docile way possible).
Stakar chooses to walk away while explaining that there are 100 Ravager factions, and this outpost has lost the business of 99 of them by serving Yondu’s. This immediately establishes Stakar as the Dominant Force here. Even while stating it’s Yondu’s involvement that would end a business relationship, it heavily implies that Stakar is the man to make that call. We have a snapped-finger realization that this is the Guy In Charge, and not a dude to be fucked with.
And then — and then– Yondu gets pissed, breaks something, and yells at him. Both of these guys (who are more or less the same height and stature, btw– an excellent choice on it’s own, given Yondu’s character progression and the mirroring of their relationship) storm towards each other yelling–and we see the difference between their current standing; Stakar’s men turn and follow him. Yondu’s don’t. And it’s a fantastic, subtle insight into their leadership. Yondu always talks about following the code and the Ravagers are a family–because that’s how the Ravagers were when he was a part of the original crew.
Lo and behold: Stakar’s team is Right There by his side when he’s getting threatened, and we find out (during this scene!!) that at least half of Yondu’s team joined up with him ‘because he’s not afraid of doing what needs to be done’, meaning breaking the code. Yondu says later that the only thing Stakar asked in exchange for joining them was that he follow the code. But, for all the reasons that may be, Yondu’s collected an assortment of Ravagers who don’t care jack shit about the code (he was young, he was greedy–for a boy who had nothing and meant nothing, wanting a bit of power and a lot of cash makes a lot of sense), and this scene highlights the difference really nicely.
BUT HERE’S MY FAVORITE PART: Stakar and Yondu are yelling in each others’ faces, getting heated, and you still have every reason to believe they’re about to throw down. But not only does Stakar verbally disarm him, he grabs him by the collar–and again, they’ve cast an actor known for fighting people in movies–and his line is basically ‘I hate this, you hurt all of us.’
Literally have fucking Rambo say ‘you broke all our hearts’, let him go, and walk away. Gunn set us up to expect a Literal Beat Down and gave us an ‘I’m not mad, I’m just very disappointed’ for Yondu.
I love that counter-intuitive shit, you guys. And learning that Stakar was initially a pacifist in the comics made it even better
It’s also really insightful because it implies that Stakar likely didn’t want to exile Yondu (even though, obviously, the reasons were Wholly Justified –and if they keep certain aspects of the Ogords’ story intact, offensive on a personal level). But as a leader and someone who might’ve created the code himself (or with Aleta and/or the other OG Captains), he’s got a responsibility to the rest of his team.
But WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!
The reason I wanted to break that down first is because the truly Great and Powerfully Subtle Thing about that scene was Martinex.
Gunn didn’t just parallel Yondu and Peter with Stakar and Yondu. He mirrored Kraglin with Martinex.
The guy who’s probably watched Yondu get into trouble over and over again, probably watched Stakar forgive him more times than he could count, and most painfully probably watched someone who was like a rowdy brother to him Fuck Up So Hard that even Stakar couldn’t look past it. When Stakar’s team turns (with him) to walk away, Martinex steps into Yondu’s eyepath. He literally blocks Yondu’s view of Stakar, and doesn’t move until Yondu makes eye contact with him. That’s such a beautiful fucking moment. It doubles down on the ‘You broke all our hearts’ line. It’s an ‘I’ve Been Here Through All of This and He Still Feels Bad for You’ moment. It’s wonderful, especially as applied as a Kraglin parallel.
Like Kraglin, Martinex is the one who had to deal with the shitstorm Yondu left behind. Martinex is the one who stayed with the Captain that brought Yondu on board, only to be betrayed by him. Martinex is the one who is still dealing with the fact that his Captain apparently feels guilty for this shit thirty odd years after the fact–and like Kraglin, it’s Martinex who offers a few words of redemption in Yondu’s favor at the end of the film and, in doing so, offers his captain some peace of mind (like Kraglin did in Vol 1–luckily Stakar’s response wasn’t ‘yeah, that guy was an asshole’).
I KIND OF DERAILED BUT MY POINT IN RELATING TO THE ABOVE STUFF WAS THIS:
The thing for me is, I don’t think Yondu is genuinely furious at Kraglin, or Peter, or Stakar. I don’t think he every truly blamed any of them for the things that happened. Yondu seems to outwardly blame everyone else while internally battering himself for fucking up. And I only say that because of that same confrontation scene: When Stakar turns around and starts dropping truth bombs on Yondu, his aggression instantly dissolves into shame. He can’t look at Stakar. Even when Stakar grabs him and tries to meet his eyes, Yondu’s looking down, and doesn’t look back up again until Stakar has gone, and he (hesitantly) looks to Martinex, before looking around to see who’s witnessed his defeat (and to see that literally no one had his back during that whole thing).
Yondu’s Ravagers–the ones that were killed, plus Peter and Kraglin–were most likely closest to resemble his relationship to the OG Team before he was a captain in his own right. Yondu thinks of himself as a failure, but he probably never realized what a good job he did passing down all the little things that changed his life when he was part of his first family. The members of his crew that were killed off were the ones that genuinely loved Yondu as a person and a leader, but Yondu likely didn’t have the frame of mind to let that sink in–and given the current state of his crew, wouldn’t likely believe it anyway.
Point is I love all of this meta and Yondu’s a fantastic character and I wish Rocket had called like ten minutes earlier to tell the OG crew to go save him so he could hang out with his old buddies again while Kraglin joined Peter’s team and everything was Okay.
Reblogging for A+++++ additions! All of this is WONDERFUL; there are so many points here I hadn’t even thought thought about, especially the Stakar-Yondu confrontation being set up in a way that (according to classic action movie tropes) should lead to violence, and then leads to Talking About Feelings instead; and the brilliant staging of it, with Stakar’s crew backing him up, and Yondu all alone out there.
This also made me think about how loyal the loyalist half of Yondu’s crew actually were, in the end – even though they didn’t back him up against Stakar the way Stakar’s crew did, they were loyal into exile, and literally loyal to the death. For all the dissatisfaction that he bred in the crew with his favoritism of Peter, there were still people around who were not only die-hard faithful but genuinely liked/loved him as a person (e.g. whoever it was – Tullk? – in the Contraxia scene trying to get Yondu to come out and have fun in the snow with them). He probably never realized what a good job he did passing down all the little things that changed his life when he was part of his first family – gaaAAAAaaaaah.
And he had to watch all of them murdered in front of him, with Taserface pointing out at every opportunity that it was his fault.
Y’know, I never thought about that – Sylvester Stallone, sort of the ultimate Macho Man in his prime at least, being cast as a guy who *doesn’t* use violence as his go-to move. I dig it
Y’know I’m still not entirely convinced that Yondu/Michael Rooker isn’t going to show up in Infinity War. Not alive, of course, but for a tiny flashback or something…
What the hell must Peter have thought, I wonder, when he saw the little troll doll among Yondu’s console toys? It must have been an absolute gut punch. Yondu guessed what was going on with the orbs after all, and not only forgave Peter for tricking him but was downright impressed that he had, and kept the toy around because he was proud of Peter, because he missed Peter…
(And now Peter has to put it on his funeral pyre.)
Peter was managing to hold it together okay until he found the damn troll doll.
It helped to have something to do. He was all right as long as he could just keep doing things instead of thinking about things. Kraglin was off finding and preparing fabric for the binding of the dead (old spacer custom; Peter had no idea where it had come from, but a lot of space-nomad cultures like the Ravagers seemed to have something similar) and Peter had decided to scour the Quadrant for items to lay on the bier. He’d last seen Groot sitting in Rocket’s lap with Mantis beside him, the little tree sprouting flower after flower, to be carefully plucked from his body and placed on the growing pile. Drax and Gamora were preparing the body itself.
Honestly, Peter hadn’t expected everyone to pitch in. He’d thought it would just be him and Kraglin. He couldn’t let himself think about it right now, about the enormity of all these willing hands working together to prepare the funeral arrangements for someone most of them had hardly even known, as if all of them had lost –
As if they’d lost a member of their family.
Because that’s how family worked, wasn’t it? It wasn’t people you liked, necessarily. It was people you were tied to, people who were tied to you, tied with bonds that not even death could break –
Stop, he told himself, blanking his mind as he carefully picked up handfuls of toys in the captain’s quarters. They were everywhere, stashed into drawers, tucked into nooks and crevices.
He craved his music to get him through this. He hadn’t wanted his Walkman so badly since his early days on the Eclector, when the loss of his mother and his world had been a raw, gaping hole through his chest. He just wanted to put on the earphones and tune out reality for awhile.
Instead, he stuffed his pockets full of toys and went up to the flight deck, where Yondu’s favorites would be.
He didn’t see Nebula sitting in the pilot’s chair until he started skimming toys off the armrest and then the suddenly dawning awareness of a very still presence in the chair made him jump so hard he dropped the entire handful.
“Thanks for giving me a heart attack,” he muttered, crouching to pick them up and hiding his face while he could blink back the tears that had been springing up, despite his best efforts, throughout this entire process. “Do you mind?”
“Someone has to fly the ship.” There was no intonation in her voice.
Peter cleared his throat. He recognized the toy in his hand, a little round-headed red thing; it had been sitting up here since Peter had been a teenager. Dealing with the ones he didn’t recognize, acquired since he left the ship, had been easier; these were going to be hell. “What I’m saying is, could I have a few minutes? I won’t take long.”
There was no answer, in fact there was no sound whatsoever, but when he dared to look up, she had vanished.
Probably hiding in the shadows, waiting to slide a knife between my shoulder blades, he thought, trying to reassert a tiny amount of normalcy in his own head. He went around to the other side, trying to blank his mind and just let his hands go through the motions of picking up the toys one at a time. Little jeweled cat thing he might’ve seen in the Broker’s shop once upon a time … a winged serpent that he knew they gave away as tourist geegaws on Bel-Set III … and, oh …
All else was forgotten. The items he was holding slid from his nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor as he reached to pick up the troll doll with exquisite care.
Probably the only troll doll in outer space. He’d had it with him, in his backpack, when he was
(picked up)
abducted on Earth. Last seen when he’d sealed it into the orb containment device and handed it into Yondu’s waiting palm on Xandar.
He’d expected Yondu would figure out the trick eventually.
Expected Yondu would open it, sooner or later.
Expected he’d be pissed.
But he wasn’t expecting to find it here – not just among Yondu’s collection, but in the place where Yondu put his very favorites, the ones he liked to keep around to look at, pick up, and run through his fingers while he thought about things. As a kid, Peter used to shuffle the order around, even swipe one occasionally just to mess with him … but he’d always, always made sure he didn’t lose it and put it back, since he had a feeling that Yondu wasn’t going to spare the arrow on a scrawny Terran brat who meant less to him than most of the trinkets in that collection –
Peter clutched the troll doll so tightly he could feel the plastic deforming under his fingers. He pressed it to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t stop the pressure building behind his eyelids, the tightness twisting his throat shut.
“You son of a bitch,” he choked out. “You son of a bitch. You couldn’t say any of this while – while there was still time –”
He folded slowly to the floor, curled around that damn doll, and cried.
There was the vague awareness, in some part of his mind not given over to abject grief, that it almost seemed as if something settled on his back, a calm and steady pressure like that of a strong hand, palm flat against his back, pressing soothingly between his shoulder blades. But he was too deep in his misery to notice it except on a superficial level, until it morphed somehow into a smaller hand, just as strong, stroking down his spine – a familiar presence, kneeling at his side.
“Peter?” Gamora’s quiet voice asked.
“I’m good,” he gasped. “I’m good.” He dragged a fist across his eyes, took a few deep, gulping breaths, and carefully smoothed down the troll doll’s wild hair where it had been crumpled in his fist. “Do you, uh – there’s some more on the –”
“I’ve got them,” Gamora said softly, displaying a handful of toys. “Peter, we’re ready to prepare the pyre.”
Peter could only nod, not trusting his voice. Gamora helped him to his feet and released him once he was standing, but stayed at his side, near enough to touch and yet giving him a bit of space. When she moved forward, he did too, though not without a glance behind him at the stars standing silent vigil outside the ship.
For a brief instant before he set foot on the ladder leading down to the rest of the ship, he had to pause, as if something had touched his shoulder ever so briefly – the light pressure of a hand, there and gone in a quick squeeze – and then he followed her down to the funeral.
What the hell must Peter have thought, I wonder, when he saw the little troll doll among Yondu’s console toys? It must have been an absolute gut punch. Yondu guessed what was going on with the orbs after all, and not only forgave Peter for tricking him but was downright impressed that he had, and kept the toy around because he was proud of Peter, because he missed Peter…
(And now Peter has to put it on his funeral pyre.)
