Movie Musings: Guardians of the Galaxy
Approximately fifty billion years after the rest of the internet, I have finally seen Guardians of the Galaxy. While it was indeed a great popcorn movie with a script that seemed tighter and a bit cleverer than average and many scenes of Zoe Saldana being awesome, I had a persistent feeling of being off-kilter throughout which couldn’t entirely be explained by being way up past my bedtime during the holidays. I decided to go all writing clinic and take the thing apart to see something really was off balance.
I left aside questions like, “Why does Space Prison keep important electronic components in a room where tall people can easily rip them off the walls, or failing that, not let tree-people into areas designed for shorter prisoners?” and, “Just what kind of special modifications and secret inherited alien traits do Green!Zoe Saldana and Star-Lord Peter have that lets them survive hard vacuum without so much as frostbite?” I ignored the mildly annoying effect of the smartass talking raccoon. Those weren't central to the movie's structure.
One of the big things writers focus on is the main character's motivation and what’s at stake for hir in the story, for good reason. After all, if they just sort of happen into a story, don’t particularly care about the events, and then stumble out again, or if there’s a big galactic hoopla and Dramatic Monologues over the protagonist’s shopping excursion, why should we care? It’s usually more effective if the main character has reason to be or quickly become deeply invested in whatever plot is afoot.
With that in mind, I took a look at the movie’s core characters. Rocket and Groot fit nicely into their comedy sidekick roles, and for most of the movie have little motivation other than a payday-which can be a driving motivation in another kind of story, but not so much this one. Drax has a dead wife and vengeance quest, which has been plenty of motivation for protagonists in other movies. We know so little about him otherwise, though, that he’s probably still best as supporting cast.
Star-Lord Peter has Dead Mom Angst and Missing Dad Angst and Getting Kidnapped By Alien Pirates… something, but these things don’t actually matter for the plot. His mom dying and the abduction accomplish nothing but getting Peter into space where he can have adventures (okay, and giving him a love of ‘80s music and a narrative excuse to be less than perfectly heroic, but there’s other ways to manage that). His blue pirate foster family isn’t around enough to inspire any emotion; just about anyone/anything else could have filled their plot device functions. The whole Absent Alien Angel Dad thing is mentioned twice in the entire movie and is transparently a setup for the plot of the next movie, not this one. As far as the plot of this movie, Peter spends most of it being extremely reactive and unengaged: he steals a mystery orb, gets chased and beat up and stuff because of it, helps more competent partners break out of prison because he doesn’t want to stay in prison, goes to pick up some exposition, and then finally starts getting into the idea of maybe stopping a supervillain just in time for the ending. Wanting to make sure no one can use a superweapon to destroy half the galaxy he lives in isn’t bad as a motivation, but it takes a while to get there. (At least we have a good soundtrack in the meantime.)
Peter’s plot-irrelevant backstory regardless, the Man Squad alone would make for a light caper-turned-heroism story. In itself, that’s a perfectly great story.
It’s Gamora who unbalances the scales. She has an awesome superhero origin story, amazing skills, relationships fraught with dramatic potential, and best of all, her goals are thoroughly entwined with the plot and the stakes are high. She’s Harry Potter and Bruce Wayne and Elektra and [insert your hero backstory of choice here]. She has all the attributes of a main character… but is instead main supporting cast, a primary sidekick/love interest with some character development of her own, while some other guy gets to use up screentime on his sequel-bait-but-currently-IRRELEVANT backstory. Her story makes the light “scoundrels who fall into the hero business” one look thin and pointless by comparison-why are we wasting time with Peter’s irrelevant backstory when Gamora’s matters?
Let’s review. After being raised as an assassin by the supervillain who murdered her family, she wants to escape and gain redemption for her crimes. So when she learns that her dad’s supervillain buddy is after a superweapon he plans to use to destroy a planet, she betrays them all and runs off to keep the superweapon out of their hands, save the planet, and hopefully atone for her past crimes and get a life of her own. In the process, she also comes across one of the victims of her employer, someone who blames her for all the crimes she committed on Ronan’s behalf, putting her chance at redemption into question. But she needs his help to stop the planned massacre. This battle also pits her against her own sister (and their relationship may not have been great, but Nebula says she hated Gamora the least, so maybe they had their moments). Now there’s stakes! And relationships with lots of meaning and dramatic potential!
Then, after a lifetime of trying to be an honorable person while living with a supervillain dad who killed her family and multiple hostile assassin sisters, she finds herself among people who turn out to have more honor than they initially displayed-and one of them not only introduces her to some pleasing melodies, but actually risks his life to save her for no benefit to himself. Then they all sign up to risk their lives to save the galaxy. She gets to escape her evil family, save lives instead of take them, and even gets a fresh start and mostly-honorable friends in the bargain. Now that is a character arc!
SO WHY ISN’T SHE THE MAIN CHARACTER?
Opening the movie with Gamora’s family being murdered and Thanos sending her off to assassin school/upgrades lab would give us more information about the villains and set us up to really, really care about stopping those villains’ plans. We’d know that a planet’s survival was at stake earlier on, so all the zany fight scenes and prison break would have extra tension from the higher stakes. Drax would gain more interest through her eyes as someone whose forgiveness she wants-in fact, instead of her just working for the guy who killed Drax’s family, why not have her have been one of the killers? Nebula could get a few more minutes of screentime and become more than just a cool-looking person to fight, but someone we know, someone with whom Gamora has a complicated history of affection, hatred, jealousy, and fear. Even more drama! Peter would work very well as the primary sidekick/Manic Pixie Dream Guy love interest with hints of a sequelicious backstory of his own. Saving a planet full of people would be more meaningful for the character who has been forced to kill in the past but is tormented by a strong sense of righteousness than it was for Peter, who merely realized after two thirds of the movie that he might prefer it if lots of people didn’t die actually. Her declaration that after spending her life among enemies, she would be glad to die among friends, would have more impact if we’d seen her living among enemies first. And the ending with her escaping her family and getting a chance to start over with people who like and trust her-but with her sister having escaped to potentially bring it all crashing back down someday-would have been a much greater journey than Peter feeling vaguely lonely sometimes and then feeling kind of good about himself.
Again, the Peter-focused storyline of quirky mercenaries who accidentally get the opportunity to become heroes isn’t a bad story. It’s excellent. It’s just that Gamora arriving with her superhero origin story so early on makes the movie feel out of focus to me, bizarrely shifting back toward characters who care less and have less at stake no matter how often the inescapable gravitational well of Gamora’s more relevant and dramatic story pulls the action toward itself.
I wish the writers had given in to that pull and focused the movie around her story. It would have felt more cohesive and balanced. And Peter could still have had the sequel.
I left aside questions like, “Why does Space Prison keep important electronic components in a room where tall people can easily rip them off the walls, or failing that, not let tree-people into areas designed for shorter prisoners?” and, “Just what kind of special modifications and secret inherited alien traits do Green!Zoe Saldana and Star-Lord Peter have that lets them survive hard vacuum without so much as frostbite?” I ignored the mildly annoying effect of the smartass talking raccoon. Those weren't central to the movie's structure.
One of the big things writers focus on is the main character's motivation and what’s at stake for hir in the story, for good reason. After all, if they just sort of happen into a story, don’t particularly care about the events, and then stumble out again, or if there’s a big galactic hoopla and Dramatic Monologues over the protagonist’s shopping excursion, why should we care? It’s usually more effective if the main character has reason to be or quickly become deeply invested in whatever plot is afoot.
With that in mind, I took a look at the movie’s core characters. Rocket and Groot fit nicely into their comedy sidekick roles, and for most of the movie have little motivation other than a payday-which can be a driving motivation in another kind of story, but not so much this one. Drax has a dead wife and vengeance quest, which has been plenty of motivation for protagonists in other movies. We know so little about him otherwise, though, that he’s probably still best as supporting cast.
Star-Lord Peter has Dead Mom Angst and Missing Dad Angst and Getting Kidnapped By Alien Pirates… something, but these things don’t actually matter for the plot. His mom dying and the abduction accomplish nothing but getting Peter into space where he can have adventures (okay, and giving him a love of ‘80s music and a narrative excuse to be less than perfectly heroic, but there’s other ways to manage that). His blue pirate foster family isn’t around enough to inspire any emotion; just about anyone/anything else could have filled their plot device functions. The whole Absent Alien Angel Dad thing is mentioned twice in the entire movie and is transparently a setup for the plot of the next movie, not this one. As far as the plot of this movie, Peter spends most of it being extremely reactive and unengaged: he steals a mystery orb, gets chased and beat up and stuff because of it, helps more competent partners break out of prison because he doesn’t want to stay in prison, goes to pick up some exposition, and then finally starts getting into the idea of maybe stopping a supervillain just in time for the ending. Wanting to make sure no one can use a superweapon to destroy half the galaxy he lives in isn’t bad as a motivation, but it takes a while to get there. (At least we have a good soundtrack in the meantime.)
Peter’s plot-irrelevant backstory regardless, the Man Squad alone would make for a light caper-turned-heroism story. In itself, that’s a perfectly great story.
It’s Gamora who unbalances the scales. She has an awesome superhero origin story, amazing skills, relationships fraught with dramatic potential, and best of all, her goals are thoroughly entwined with the plot and the stakes are high. She’s Harry Potter and Bruce Wayne and Elektra and [insert your hero backstory of choice here]. She has all the attributes of a main character… but is instead main supporting cast, a primary sidekick/love interest with some character development of her own, while some other guy gets to use up screentime on his sequel-bait-but-currently-IRRELEVANT backstory. Her story makes the light “scoundrels who fall into the hero business” one look thin and pointless by comparison-why are we wasting time with Peter’s irrelevant backstory when Gamora’s matters?
Let’s review. After being raised as an assassin by the supervillain who murdered her family, she wants to escape and gain redemption for her crimes. So when she learns that her dad’s supervillain buddy is after a superweapon he plans to use to destroy a planet, she betrays them all and runs off to keep the superweapon out of their hands, save the planet, and hopefully atone for her past crimes and get a life of her own. In the process, she also comes across one of the victims of her employer, someone who blames her for all the crimes she committed on Ronan’s behalf, putting her chance at redemption into question. But she needs his help to stop the planned massacre. This battle also pits her against her own sister (and their relationship may not have been great, but Nebula says she hated Gamora the least, so maybe they had their moments). Now there’s stakes! And relationships with lots of meaning and dramatic potential!
Then, after a lifetime of trying to be an honorable person while living with a supervillain dad who killed her family and multiple hostile assassin sisters, she finds herself among people who turn out to have more honor than they initially displayed-and one of them not only introduces her to some pleasing melodies, but actually risks his life to save her for no benefit to himself. Then they all sign up to risk their lives to save the galaxy. She gets to escape her evil family, save lives instead of take them, and even gets a fresh start and mostly-honorable friends in the bargain. Now that is a character arc!
SO WHY ISN’T SHE THE MAIN CHARACTER?
Opening the movie with Gamora’s family being murdered and Thanos sending her off to assassin school/upgrades lab would give us more information about the villains and set us up to really, really care about stopping those villains’ plans. We’d know that a planet’s survival was at stake earlier on, so all the zany fight scenes and prison break would have extra tension from the higher stakes. Drax would gain more interest through her eyes as someone whose forgiveness she wants-in fact, instead of her just working for the guy who killed Drax’s family, why not have her have been one of the killers? Nebula could get a few more minutes of screentime and become more than just a cool-looking person to fight, but someone we know, someone with whom Gamora has a complicated history of affection, hatred, jealousy, and fear. Even more drama! Peter would work very well as the primary sidekick/Manic Pixie Dream Guy love interest with hints of a sequelicious backstory of his own. Saving a planet full of people would be more meaningful for the character who has been forced to kill in the past but is tormented by a strong sense of righteousness than it was for Peter, who merely realized after two thirds of the movie that he might prefer it if lots of people didn’t die actually. Her declaration that after spending her life among enemies, she would be glad to die among friends, would have more impact if we’d seen her living among enemies first. And the ending with her escaping her family and getting a chance to start over with people who like and trust her-but with her sister having escaped to potentially bring it all crashing back down someday-would have been a much greater journey than Peter feeling vaguely lonely sometimes and then feeling kind of good about himself.
Again, the Peter-focused storyline of quirky mercenaries who accidentally get the opportunity to become heroes isn’t a bad story. It’s excellent. It’s just that Gamora arriving with her superhero origin story so early on makes the movie feel out of focus to me, bizarrely shifting back toward characters who care less and have less at stake no matter how often the inescapable gravitational well of Gamora’s more relevant and dramatic story pulls the action toward itself.
I wish the writers had given in to that pull and focused the movie around her story. It would have felt more cohesive and balanced. And Peter could still have had the sequel.