Continuing my MCU rewatch

[fac]

Best timer counting down scene was in Special Bulletin, if you consider it that type of scene (as I write this not sure now if there was a timer per se, but still I am mentioning it) when the bomb squad is trying to disarm the nuclear device and realize they triggered it instead.

Can watch on YouTube -

- they have about 20 minutes to disarm. Starts around the 1 hr 22 minute mark. (FYI - Special Bulletin is a really good TV of the week movie - it is low budget of course but holds up well)

 

[Damien]

Like I said, it's a weird thing to focus on, but being a fish out of water was kind of Captain America's thing. It was unique to him, and by making him fit in to the modern world, we're losing a distinct character trait. Although I admit that I liked when he shut down Natasha by saying he's familiar with the movie War Games (but also not quite ready for someone with a pierced lip.) It's just a visual cue that I miss.

I totally get it. I think what I'm saying is that it's a bit of a damned-if-you-do..... situation. You either maintain that visual cue that he's a man-out-of-time, and somewhat inadvertently land him in a position where he doesn't grow as a character over the years of living in modern times, or you put him in a position where he's trying to adapt and lose some of those visual cues. I don't think there's a 'right' answer so much as a 'what they decided on' answer.

Does Galaxy Quest count? I know it was played for a laugh, but a timer that didn't stop counting down when they did the thing was briefly terrifying.

I fuckin' love Galaxy Quest and it gets a pass on anything and everything. I miss the days when Tim Allen wasn't a douchebag.

 

[Fletch]

Guardians of the Galaxy

This movie is how I learned there was a contemporary-era version of the team different from the future version I saw in the Korvac Saga. I can't say how accurate it is to the comics at the time. I knew of James Gunn from the Scooby Doo movie and a very under-rated horror reality competition show called Scream Queens. After hitting us with the "big names," the MCU showed its commitment to the deepest reaches of the Marvel Universe, and that was invigorating. Or maybe the Guardians of the Galaxy were Marvel's biggest sellers at the time. I don't know.

1. "Your daddy is an angel made of pure light and he's coming to get you." And they all thought she was crazy!! Peter's refusal to acknowledge his mother's death was set up as some kind of roadblock to his maturing. It's a good thru-line for the character, but overcoming it by taking Gamora's hand at the end doesn't seem like it was needed or influential. Just a parallel.
   
   
2. This was the first time I'd seen Chris Pratt and he was a perfect match for the character as they designed him. Clever but dim, skilled but clumsy, charismatic but childish. And none of that seemed to be at odds with each other. Such a great character. Zoe Saldana I'd at least seen before in the Losers as a bad-ass chick, and she played a decent bad-ass chick here too. I was kind of surprised at how heroic the two of them turned out to be at the end, just wanting to save people, but I had to confess on this viewing that there's nothing in the story up until then that would suggest they weren't already natively heroic and just looking for the opportunity to show it (which Peter literally spells out after the space rescue). Bradley Cooper is the absolute MVP of the movie. He owns every scene he's in, whether it's for comedy or drama. I would not have expected it of him, since I'd always thought he was just a handsome. But take the face away and he's an acting powerhouse.
   
   
3. Dave Bautista's likeability as a person has disguised the fact that Drax in this movie is really lame. He's an idiot who's strong in a team with Groot and a knife fighter in a team with Gamora. It doesn't help that he's introduced separately from the rest of the team in the Kiln. Like, you get an introduction to the other four together in the donnybrook on Xandar, but he just appears sitting there looking at Gamora once they're all in jail. And since he wants to kill Gamora, it doesn't feel like it'd be a reach to just have him be in the mix-up on Xandar too. On the same hand, Lee Pace's Ronan was so flat. He *should've* been cool. He was a Mandarin-like terrorist, surrounded by mysticism and ritual, who I think had zombie soldiers and flew around in a giant stone spaceship. But he only had one setting: angry. He was just angry all the time, with no let up.
   
   
4. I'm annoyed in general by people who try to impress me with how cool their musical tastes are. It's why I'll never watch Baby Driver. I didn't yet know that's what Gunn's thing was, so here I was just able to enjoy the unique flavor the distinctive soundtrack gave to the movie. Especially since it was such an important character trait to Star Lord. Point of order, though. No way those headphone foams survived 26 years.
   
   
5. Ooh, a digitizing, microtech disappearing helmet. How advanced and alien. We've got centuries to go on Earth before we catch up.
   
   
6. Hah! The prison line-up scene has Peter's alias listed as "Space-Lord."
   
   
7. We were just talking about un-tense countdowns. Here we have the guard captain specifically telling his guys to fire their bazookas one at a time, at different windows, until it's finally time to fire them all together at the end of his slow countdown. It's agonizing. It's going on my list with "flashback intros" of tropes that need to die
   
   
8. "Knowhere" is a play on words that *only* works in English. It's too clever for its own good.
   
   
9. The MCU really came along at a time when CG technology was able to do everything the creators were asking it to do. It started with a flawless Iron Man suit, and by the time we get to GotG, we've got fully realized and very elaborate space setting. I label Rocket as the MVP of this movie, but he'd be nothing without the level of CG tech. If they'd started the MCU, like, five years earlier, it would've looked like garbage.
   
   
10. Everybody gets a scene describing their sad backstory, and they feel so by the numbers. Drax's family was killed, Gamora was tortured and raised as an assassin. Boo hoo. But then Rocket drops his drunken "I didn't ask for this" and it's heartbreaking.
    
    
11. Wait, it was Ronan who killed Drax's family? I think I was trained from the comics that it was Thanos, and I never bothered to listen to who it was in the movie. I guess they had to make it more personal for him in this particular movie, but then at the end it's an unfulfilled quest as *now* he needs to go after Thanos. Plus, he got his ass 100% whooped by Ronan. I really hate Drax in this movie.
    
    
12. I forgot to talk about Karen Gillen as Nebula. She's kind of terrible. I really like her as Amy Pond in Dr. Who, but she really does not deliver here. I can't even say what she was going for. Jealous of her sister because she wants to impress her father, but also joins Ronan because she wants to betray her father?
    
    
13. I like the storytelling and imagery of the Nova Corps and Ravagers winding up on the same side against Ronan. And they go one step farther by swapping places, with the Corps engaging Ronan and the pirates protecting the city. Some great storytelling there.
    
    
14. I really hate they the end this movie with Peter being revealed to be half "powerful energy being" or whatever and that's how he survived touching the power stone. Make him half alien and throw in the Kraglin line about how they should've delivered him to his dad, but being a powerful being kills the team-up moment with the stone. See, they'd foreshadowed during the Collectors presentation that there were some beings who'd managed to contain the power briefly as a group, and I thought the big moment was that the Guardians are all now unified in purpose, sharing the burden, and able to withstand the forces tearing them apart. Now I know that Peter would've been fine and everybody else just endured a bunch of pain unnecessarily. They had a good ending until they decided they didn't want it.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this movie really walks that tightrope between drama and humor. There's a bunch of laughs, but it seems to enhance the drama rather than undercut it. I think it's because the jokes are used to build character, not interrupt it. Future MCU movies would learn the absolute wrong lessons from this movie's surprising success. I imagine there were a lot of producers notes saying something to the effect of "needs more jokes and pop music."

 

[fac]

Future MCU movies would learn the absolute wrong lessons from this movie's surprising success. I imagine there were a lot of producers notes saying something to the effect of "needs more jokes and pop music."

I think you are correct, the films did get a bit more jokey after this to the detriment of being serious when needed - although Waititi would have likely had the same tone for his Thor films regardless as that is also his style.

 

[Justice]

This movie is how I learned there was a contemporary-era version of the team different from the future version I saw in the Korvac Saga.

So wait a minute... I'm a big fan of the original GoTG team in the comics but I've read not a single comic appearance of Star Lord or this other team. Obviously I know the Vance Astro/Martinex/Starhawk team is from far in the future, but in the comics is Star Lord's team contemporary to the other Marvel Universe we all know and love?

 

[Fletch]

So wait a minute... I'm a big fan of the original GoTG team in the comics but I've read not a single comic appearance of Star Lord or this other team. Obviously I know the Vance Astro/Martinex/Starhawk team is from far in the future, but in the comics is Star Lord's team contemporary to the other Marvel Universe we all know and love?

The Star Lord team formed out of the Annihilation Wave comic event. I didn't read it, so I'm not sure if they were also a bunch of losers (although I doubt it).

 

[AceofKnaves]

I'm not sure if they were also a bunch of losers

The whole “lovable a-holes” thing is all the movies. Go check out the “Michael Korvac” episode of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes for a taste of how the contemporary GotG vibed before the Gunn film. Star-Lord used to be a capable, aloof guy. None of them were “funny”.

 

[Ru1977]

Also, supposedly Drax is written to be neurodivergent.

 

[AceofKnaves]

Also, supposedly Drax is written to be neurodivergent.

Which is a HUGE improvement over the post-Infinity Gauntlet portrayal of Drax, which boiled down to “he got bigger and stronger, and therefore also less smart”.

 

[Fletch]

Also, supposedly Drax is written to be neurodivergent.

Very unflattering to neurodivergent people, then. I remember him being especially useless in GotG2, but with fresh eyes it seems to have been there from the start. Really just there to be laughed at for how he doesn't understand metaphors and losing every fight he's in. It took until GotG3 and unlocking his Dad Mode before he actually had a unique and positive roll with the team.

Which is a shame because I like Dave Bautista as a human and think that was shielding my perceptions a bit on first viewing.

 

[joshsquash729]

Been a while since I rewatched Guardians 1 and 2, but if I'm remembering correctly, didn't Drax also kinda fall victim to the "Thor-ification", where he got progressively sillier with each movie? I seem to remember his humor in part 1 being much more dry and less slapstick, but he definitely became more of the big oaf/himbo as the movies went along. Which isn't a bad thing- I think it helps set him aside from Gamora a bit, who's more the serious one and, if she's being humorous, it's usually situationally. I liked the "Zarg Nuts, invisible, Why is Gamora" Drax, but it was nice to see him return to combat mode, however briefly. I think the Guardians of the Galaxy game actually nailed the tone of him pretty well.

 

[Damien]

Also, supposedly Drax is written to be neurodivergent.

This actively makes everything worse.

I kind of liked Drax from the perspective that we're seeing a character from a humanoid species that is, in all other respects, wildly different from us. He speaks like he does and interacts like he does because he's talking in a language he theoretically knows, but cannot grasp the nuances of because EVERYTHING about the way we interact with each other is a little off, a little sideways, from how his people do. It reminds me a lot of coming up in the industry around a lot of foreign workers (mostly Mexican and a few other Spanish-speaking countries) and there were really interesting hurdles and weirdness to our communication sometimes even though they were mostly speaking pretty damn good English.
Multiply that problem by 10,000 when you're dealing with someone from another planet, in another solar system, in another galaxy, etc etc. The idea of him being someone that was trying to interact on a human level that he couldn't really ever fully understand on an almost biological level was pretty engaging - even if it was a bit of head-canon.

The idea that he's just a shitty autism stereotype is bullshit and actively ruins the character for me.

 

[fac]

I would be surprised if the intent was for Drax to represent neurodivergent behavior.

I think the intent was simply that he was an alien with a overly serious and literal mind so wordplay, allegory, jokes was lost on him.

 

[Ru1977]

I dunno. There were several articles and posts etc about it when the movie came out.

Why Guardians of the Galaxy depicts Autism BETTER than Rain Man - Autistic & Unapologetic

Guardians of the Galaxy has often been praised as 'the new Star Wars', but today, I ask the question: Is Guardians of the Galaxy 'the new Rain Man'?

autisticandunapologetic.com

How Guardians Of The Galaxy Taught A Kid With Autism To Be A Superhero

In this story, a moviegoer talks about how their autistic younger brother identified with Drax The Destroyer. As part of his condition, he cannot comprehend metaphors; much like Drax's literal mindedness in Guardians Of The Galaxy.

www.cinemablend.com

Why 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' hero Drax resonates with the autism community

For Matt Asner, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" was more than just a fun superhero film to take his boys to this past weekend.

abcnews.go.com

Gunn has never confirmed it, but was sharing a lot of reactions on social media by neurodivergent people to Drax. I don't really have a stake in this, but regret mentioning it.

 

[fac]

Interesting, thank for sharing. Still not sure I think it was purposely written that way, as in Gunn thinking "what if I had a character on the spectrum", as much as "what if this character was very literal surrounded by the quipsters I will be writing".