OK, I see, they drop a very important clue and the way they deliver it is through the suffering whispering of a dying woman. I had to rewatch the part about the light thing and I got it. The point is, whatever she babbles is barely audible. Even with darn headphones on and the nearby neighbourhood slaughtered during the night to be sure not to be disturbed.sonofccn wrote:Actually its said at least twice. Once after we're first introduced to the Ravagers and complaning Yondu has always been soft on the "boy", Star lord, they mentioned he was cargo and should have been delivered then at the end they specificly state they were hired by Star Lord's father to pick him up. And obviously the fact Star Lord's mother describes his father as an "angel" who came down in bright light in a movie with aliens was a bit of a hint. In fact watching it cold I assumed the alien ship was his father's.Mr. Oragahn wrote:It's really the mark of a damned fragile plot that missing one single line (and when did it happen?) makes the whole difference between WTF and ah ok.
When important points are, well, important, good movies do make sure that the point is properly conveyed.
I thought the man picking Peter in the hallway to be the father at first, until at some point his somewhat distant behaviour made me think he might be more of an uncle or some relative, until we hear the mother, in the same weak voice (but in a clearer way), say that dad will return and that the older dude is Quill's grand'pa. As for the "he was an angel" bit, it just sounded like the mother really loved her husband and saw him as perfect. Perhaps it's not a usual thing to say about a man in that part of the globe though. Like, you know, your kid/husband was an angel (read: sweet). It's not like his very mother called him my starlord, light of my heart, in her letter... wait. OOPS.
Yes, another wasted opportunity at making things clear when effin' needed. Too late is too late.
It's so badly delivered that our friend Lucky would have also pointed that out if it were so obvious and easy to catch.
This is where the movie is also dissonant. All the narrative is straight in your face in the most glaring way possible, but the one thing that would clearly and undoubtedly give a hint that Quill is rather special in some way is served in such a hush hush way that wants to be so convincing and subtle, with a drop of melo sauce ontop, that yes, you can totally miss the clue. And sorry, can't hit rewind in theaters.
One good way to make it clear would have been to have the kid run out, settle on some bench and perhaps look at some object given to him by his mom and which supposedly belonged to his father. Then, either we'd get a flashback of her mother telling him the backstory of she meeting his father with mommy saying something similar about the father's weird nature, or his mother's voice [off screen] saying he was an angel, eventually with the whispered word angel somehow echoing as the beam of light suddenly catches the kid.
We wouldn't even need to see the ship!
Then for the entire movie, besides watching what brings the whole band to become the oh so grand guardians of everywhere, we also know that there's an entire subplot involving the kid and his most likely otherwordly father.
Which, in fact, would be rather important. Like, you know, another kid in a distant galaxy who happened to have the Force flowing inside him because of daddy's good use of his male attributes.
Also, when do they say he's any kind of cargo? At best I picked the part of them picking up Quill (right after the prison), and that's about it. Nothing brining and new information since the beginning of the movie.
As for the end, I got that Quill was half man half deus ex machina, but where again is it said, specificly, that he had been collected by the Ravagers on his father's order?
Well if we go down that route, nothing really is important until the band unites to contain the infinity stone's magic purple and Quill utters we're the princes of the universe, thank you goodbye.But in any event its a minor problem and hardly damning since this movie isn't about how Star Lord got into space but rather how he and the rest became the, title drop, Guardians of the Galaxy and saved the universe.
I guess they really, really needed to shoehorn the title's at some point.
In reality, everything leads to this conclusion, every single character's backstory and the reason of their presence at this fateful verging moment in galactic history.
The fact is, as I and other critics pointed out, that said backstories get a shitty treatment and are massively neglected.
In Star Wars (ANH), you could say that why Obi-Wan and Luke meet because in the past Luke's father was killed by Darth Vader and blah blah has zero value. But it has, and it's delivered properly, clearly. That's also why ANH worked so well and why Guardians of the Galaxy is just flashy filler.
Some other noticeable issues:
- The huuuuge city gets evacuated in 11 minutes. Ha ha ha, not kidding you.
Really? Not a snowball's chance in hell. We surely didn't see the massive civilian fleet needed for that, nor the huge and desperate traffic jam resulting from his. Unless they have access to super teleportation tech, which we haven't seen a iota of, and which would have been very, very useful to save the city, as you can imagine. So we can safely rule that out.
- Also, a point I forgot earlier, there's Gamora who's kicking all sorts of arse and leaping over huge distances, resisting the electrolance used by the blue borgette that lit her up like a christmas tree, but she gets pinned down by two or three random thugs in the prison.
- The PG-13 rating is so solidly enforced that even Groot throwing a man, head and torso first, at the speed of something like 50 meters/second (that's 180 kph ok?) into a thick metallic beam, doesn't rupture the guy's skull or his ribcage. Nope. And he just happens to be conscious after that to fall and scream. That's cartoon physics right there and that's a reason why this damned movie should have been a CGI production for kids.
- You gotta love criminal records being expunged because a planet's been saved. Up to this day, Gamora was on Ronan's side, the same one precisely attacking the Nova Empire and killing people with joy, kids including as we're absolutely clearly reminded (see, that's what I call CLEAR information). She herself even points out that she never let Ronan down, never failed. So now, please picture Heinrich Himmler going rogue against Adolph Hitler, along a bunch of scumbags and they get Nazi HQ down for good so Himmler & pals get a medal, friendly smiles and handshakes from Eisenhower and Patton, plus a brand new plane which he hops into before leaving with style. Yeah erm I think that might be problematic. That's so retarded.
You thought Ronan was a pinch dramatic and over the top in his ideology. Well now you've given approximatively half the galaxy a good reason to nuke Xandar, including Xandarians themselves who lost relatives and are ready to start a civil war against Mrs Fruity Haircut's government. Who needs Thanos when your empire is ran by such dicks?