With sci-fi adventure and cast of cosmic misfits that includes a talking raccoon and his best
friend, a tree, it’s no surprise that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a big hit for
kids when it hit theaters.
All the adults who saw it, however, might’ve noticed a few other things that flew right
over the younger viewers’ heads.
Destination Earth
Even though he was taken from Earth as a child and raised among the outlaws known as the
Ravagers, one of the key components of Peter Quill’s character is his intense connection
to his homeworld.
It’s exemplified through the Awesome Mix cassette tape, given to him by his mother
before she died, which he listens to nonstop to form the film’s soundtrack.
When we see Peter as an adult, it’s been 26 years since he was abducted into space
by the Ravagers, and he’s still holding onto the mixtape, his backpack, a Troll doll,
and the few other mementos he has of his old home.
He’s also a capable pilot who knows his way around the galaxy and even has his own
spaceship, named after the decidedly Earth-based celebrity Alyssa Milano, so… he definitely
tried to go back to Earth at some point, right?
Maybe not recently, since he seems to have settled into the life of a space-faring outlaw,
but it’s hard to imagine a universe in which Star-Lord didn’t run away from the Ravagers
and head back home at the first chance he got, even if it was just to see if the Jackson
5 ever put out another song.
Unfortunately, that’s not a story we’ve ever seen, unless he spent a few years undercover
in Pawnee, Indiana.
"There's only one man for the job: Burt Macklin."
Tale of the Tape
Peter's trusty Walkman, and the mixtape contained within it, are more than just a playlist.
It’s his main attachment to the memory of his mother, and it became the essential hallmark
of the film, too.
It's embedded in the very fabric of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, so much so that when
he has to escape from space prison, Peter risks his life and his freedom just to get
the tape back.
And it also represents a genuine miracle in audio preservation technology.
As anyone who was actually around in the ‘80s knows, cassette tapes aren’t exactly the
most durable format, especially if you’re playing them over and over for, say 26 years.
And yet, Peter’s mixtape and the walkman he uses to play it are in perfect working
condition after being bounced around the universe for a quarter of a century.
And that's not the only tape-tech Peter has.
Either Sony has a repair tech in Knowhere, or Peter just happened to run into the only
member of the Nova Corps who could hook him up with a tape deck pulled straight out of
the dashboard of a custom van.
Zero G
When the team is taken to the Kyln prison, it's up to Rocket to come up with a way to
get out, and what he comes up with actually ends up working pretty well.
The escape plan hinges on the team getting up into the guard tower, turning off the artificial
gravity in the prison, and then simply flying away.
It's a good idea, but it also involves at least one very large chunk of luck.
For some reason, when the artificial gravity goes off, the Kyln guards, many of whom had
previously been holding riot shields and rocket launchers, just start madly flailing around
as they float.
Not only do they never recover as the Guardians make their escape, they also drop their weapons.
Obviously, suddenly losing gravity would have an element of surprise, but if you’re going
to build a super-secure prison in the depths of space, you’d think training your guards
to fight in zero G would be one of the first things you’d do.
The second thing?
Telling them not to drop their guns at the first sign of trouble.
The Ravager diet
Peter is abducted from Earth as a boy by the Ravagers, a group of outlaws with their own
code and system of command who were hired by Peter's still-mysterious father to bring
him back.
Yondu, the leader of this particular faction of Ravagers, decides to keep Peter and raise
him like a murderous, outer space Mary Poppins.
“I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!”
Rather than dosing his medicine with a spoonful of sugar, though, Yondu keeps young Peter
in line by reminding him that he saved him more than once from being eaten by his fellow
Ravagers.
They seem pretty eager to find out what creatures from this distant planet called Earth taste
like.
"When I picked you up on Terra…"
"Picked me up."
"...these boys of mine wanted to eat you."
"Yeah?"
"They ain't never tasted any Terran before.
I stopped 'em!"
So are Ravagers space cannibals, or do they just consider human beings to be livestock?
They’re made up of all manner of alien species, so if they were that willing to drop a clearly
sentient Peter Quill onto their plates at lunchtime, have they also eaten members of
each others’ species, too?
That could make for some pretty awkward conversation around the table, but the movie never bothers
to answer this question, even though we’re hungry for answers.
Love and the single alien
Star-Lord definitely fits into the "lovable scoundrel" category, and apparently that includes
all definitions of “lovable.”
He apparently has a tendency toward meaningless flings with all manner of alien species.
He has a woman, whose name he's forgotten, in his ship when we first meet him, he hits
on Gamora when he sees her, and later he tells Drax various stories about alien women who've
attacked him after he romanced his way out of, and into, plenty of trouble.
If you’ve ever watched Star Trek and seen Captain Kirk’s attitude towards the prime
directive when it comes to green women, you already know this isn’t exactly a new element
for sci-fi.
Still, we have to ask: do all humanoid-looking aliens have compatible reproductive organs?
The only elaboration we get from Peter is a story about flirting with a woman who had
"tentacles and needles for teeth."
He says he only spent time with her in a quest for information, but what would have happened
if he'd taken that interaction to the next level?
Maybe we're better off not knowing.
Lazy, Lazy Thanos
After Avengers: Infinity War, we all know Thanos as a supervillain who could be not
just a mastermind, but a punishing and relentless force.
Before Infinity War, though, his major abilities seem less built around fistfighting gods,
and more about delegating tasks to lesser villains.
This is especially evident in Guardians of the Galaxy.
As he did in The Avengers, Thanos sends someone else, Ronan the Accuser, to obtain an Infinity
Stone for him.
Rather than doing anything himself, he spends all of his time seated on a floating throne
in space, hurling threats and giving orders but never actually showing the audience why
he's so dangerous.
It definitely works in the context of the larger MCU, but if you were to watch this
film on its own, you'd essentially just be taking everyone at their word that Thanos
is a bad dude.
Here, he's basically a guy who tells everyone else to go do something for him while he kicks
back and gets irritated when they fail.
No wonder Ronan decided to strike out on his own when he realized he had an Infinity Stone
in his possession.
Mint condition
When the Guardians realize they need to get rid of the Orb before it falls into the wrong
hands, Gamora's plan is to sell it to the Collector, an ancient and powerful being who…
well, collects things.
If they give it to him, she reasons, they can both no longer be responsible for it and
get paid.
The Collector is happy to oblige, but while the group is in his home he notices something
else he'd like to buy: Groot.
"You must allow me to pay you now so that I may own your carcass… at the moment of
your death, of course."
While it's certainly nice of him to pay up front and wait for Groot to live a full life,
the film also makes it pretty clear that the Collector has no such scruples about other
specimens in his collection.
Numerous living, seemingly sentient things are visible in his display cases, including
Marvel’s own Cosmo the Space Dog and Howard the Duck.
Here’s hoping they were offered a better deal than the one Groot was going to get.
You know how to whistle, don’t you?
Of all the interesting space technology on display in Guardians of the Galaxy, there’s
nothing more intriguing than Yondu’s Yaka Arrow.
Lifted straight from the comic page, the incredible sharp and fast weapon is controlled through
whistling and a technological fin on Yondu’s head, and it’s powerful enough to slaughter
a whole group of enemies with a simple melody.
It's a neat piece of gear, and while it's certainly very effective in its current form,
it's hard to watch the Yaka Arrow in action and wonder why Yondu isn't thinking bigger.
Sure, the Arrow is elegant, but what about a rocket launcher that works the same way,
or a drone, or a whole ship?
Perhaps it requires more mental energy and control than Yondu's whistle can summon, or
maybe it’s just limited by being in range of the whistle’s sound, meaning that he
couldn’t fly the arrow through the silent depths of space, but it seems like they might
be shooting pretty low.
Even though it's remarkably effective.