Disclaimer: I loved Guardians of the Galaxy. I love Guardians of the Galaxy. There’s not a clunker in the mix, it can do no wrong and if I’d seen it before I saw Casablanca, there’s some considerable chance that it might be my favoritist movie of all time.
Vol. 2 fast approaches and I thought I’d whip out the DVD and review prior to May 4th when I’ll be catching an early screening.
I’ve obviously seen Vol. 1 often enough as I am now starting to question bits and pieces of one of the few near-perfect SF flicks ever to be created.
Heresy, I know. One does not question perfection, one merely says “Thank you, may I please have another?”.
On the other hand, I can’t help myself and some of these are/may be interesting tidbits that inform, or at least give us something GotG to talk about over the next few days.
Spoiler alerts from here on in.
First question: Why doesn’t Quill need his helmet inside the building?
OK. Maybe the atmosphere on Morag is breathable (a fact we are not necessarily privy to at the beginning). Maybe he does take it off just so he can put on his Walkman headphones, but you’d think he might want to use its other technologies to help him see inside that dark building…
After the Marvel title run, we find Quill on Morag. He uses a hand held device to project the form of a large structure that is currently in ruins. Somehow he has learned that one of the infinity stones was stored there and the projector shows him where it was stored when the building was still intact.
The problem is, the infinity stone vault room shows as being on the second or third floor, floors that no longer exist in the present day.
Quill is never shown climbing steps to a second or third floor (not that he can, they don’t exist), and, while this incongruity may only be the result of edits and missing camera angles that would reveal more, it’s still 50-50 whether or not Peter is walking around on air above the rubble.
Now, we do see him exit from the second floor, but we never see him get there…
We’ll skip the missing rat-thing-microphone as most everyone has already touched on that.
Next up: Peter’s gravity trap. This is some kind of triangular, self-opening device that apparently generates a very strong gravity field or tractor beam, sufficient to pull the metallic sphere containing the infinity stone out of its energy-based safe.
Later, when escaping from Korath and his minions, Peter throws it at the group of soldiers standing near his ship. It opens and immediately sucks all of the soldiers to the ground.
Which begs the question: why wasn’t Peter and or the entire pedestal/safe the sphere floated in pulled down onto this device? If anything, Quill is standing closer to it than the soldiers were.
Moving on: Korath’s arrival is pretty interesting timing, don’t you think?
Later in the film we learn that Ronan the Accuser is seeking the stone, because only after it has been delivered to Thanos will Thanos help him destroy the Nova Corps. So.
Either they knew where the stone was and simply hadn’t collected it yet, or they knew the Ravagers had discovered its location and they were following them to find it, or they arrived at its newly discovered location at exactly the same time as Quill.
If they already knew where it was…why didn’t they collect it? If the Ravagers were retrieving it for Ronan, why did Korath bother showing up? (How did Korath get ahead of Yondu if Yondu was clueless about what Peter was doing?)
If the damn thing was so important to Ronan, why was he dithering on collecting it? How come Thanos doesn’t know where it is if the Ravagers and, maybe, Ronan do?
Fun thing: when Peter escapes Morag, Ronan’s minions try to bring him down with some kind of anti-ship heavy weapon. They miss three shots (because they have to…the bad guys always miss when it is necessary to the plot) and right before we cut away, one of the soldiers can be seen slapping the gunner upside the back of the head. A nice touch paying homage to this bad guys are bad shooters cliche.
More: Yondu calls Quill aboard his ship to threaten him over the stone. Clearly Yondu knows Quill has retrieved it. Later, Quill visits The Broker – “the best eyebrows in the business” – who clearly expects Yondu to be arriving with the stone at some point in the near future.
Yondu knows Quill has the stone. Yondu knows where Quill will be going with the stone. Yondu can make telephone calls across intergalactic distances. (Not to mention that since Bereet accepted the call from Yondu, he most likely knows precisely where Peter is at that moment.) Yondu might be constrained by distance (though no one in the movie ever seems to have distance over time issues) from Nova Prime, but he could have called the Broker.
(It is unlikely that Yondu and the other Ravagers could not get to Nova Prime at the same or nearly the same time as Peter, since they were at Morag when Yondu called Quill. )
And another thing: WHY? does Gamora strike that pose after jumping off the bridge to retrieve the sphere? Why?
And another thing: Why doesn’t Groot just extend a tendril into the water fountain after Rocket chastises him for drinking from it? Groot is portrayed as a bit of a dim bulb at this point, but – Plant. Water. That bulb thing was a plant pun.
Ok. Moving ahead in the film just a bit…the soon-to-be-Guardians have been transported to the Kyln prison. Gamora is recognized and threatened, but everyone backs off when Groot does his number on the blue guy with a fondness for Gunavian jelly (Gunn-avian…is this a reference/poke at the Great Bird of the Galaxy?), yet a little while later, Gamora is seen walking to her cell, unaccompanied by guards nor the rest of the Guardians, surrounded by prisoners who want to kill her. Why don’t they do it then? Later that night we learn that the Nova guards are not going to intervene, so why did they wait?
Aside. At some point in a future Guardians film, I’d like to see Bereet show up again and, in an amusing context, deliver the line “Peter, look, I’m going to be totally honest with you I forgot you were here”, at which point everyone else in the scene says “me too.” Later on in the same film, as a running joke, characters are discussing whether or not Peter was “there” and confessing that they either did or did not know he was there.
Anyway.
Obviously prison security drones, when in the employ of bad guys, are also very poor shots. Well, no, that’s not entirely the case. In fact, its quite the opposite. See, the bad guys – Klingons, Storm Troopers, Alliance operatives, whatever – are actually crack shots and very, very skilled. They’re missing our heroes because they want to. (It’s a conspiracy.)
Since Groot is capable of such prodigious growth in just a few seconds, why didn’t Rocket just have Groot grab everything he needed for the escape, all at once?
How did the Guardians know where to go on the Kyln to retrieve their stuff. OK, maybe Rocket the escape artist is familiar with the layout, but the ease with which they find their stuff bothers me just a little. (And how does Quill know where to find the “Metroid” who stole his Walkman?)
We’re only about half-way in…but now its time to watch the whole movie again. Thursday fast approaches.
