re: Guardians of the Galaxy (Spoilers thread)

Film Critic Hulk on Guardians and the purpose of its humor, why it works, why the film struck a chord so quickly. Not a bad read.

Used ConvertCase, so be wary of the link.

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But perhaps this whole "method of alleviation" business is best exemplified all throughout the film's best scene...

Which is of course just five people talking in a room.

You may have already guessed but hulk is indeed referencing the scene that is about 2/3 of the way into the movie, wherein the guardians sit down and have one of those discussion that posits whether they (the heroes) should turn and run or if they should rally together to save the day (aka "should we have the last act of our movie?"). As such, the scene is filled with all the standard rhetoric you see in these movies to lend weight to the nature of the herculean task before them, along with calls of empathy. And yeah yeah, it's all the cliche stuff about characters expressing reasons to care and being logistically pigeonholed into doing it... The core difference in guardians is that almost every one of these bits of rhetoric is then undercut by a joke. Like when groot delivers his one repeated "i am groot!" line as rocket miraculously understands / reacts / and translates back with complexity. Then there's the moment where groot supports peter and peter lauds him for it, only to be undercut when they see groot vacantly eating flower off his own arm. Then there's the discussion on the percentage of the plan, or the great moment where drax admits he wasn't listening, or the debate over rocket's fake laugh. When you look at the scene structurally, you realize the real obstacle in the scene isn't the magnitude of their decision before them... It's the jokes. Everytime they try to accomplish something, they joke it away. But remember! The jokes come from character, right? So you then realized they are using a comedy roundtable to showcase that real obstacle to them making this heroic decision is each other and each others' perspective. Which is exactly why the scene works like gangbusters. It's perfect conflict-oriented storytelling through humor alone. Every line is just a character coming at another with perspective, spitting venom, and inverting our expectations while somehow being completely straight within the reality of the moment. And best of all, the scene has one big emotional exchange left in the tank for when it finally turns with a moment of surprising honesty. Suddenly, the film gets real real and rocket expresses to the truth at the center of all these "rallying the heroes" scenes we've seen time and time again, all by saying "... You are asking us to die." and when that fact hits them, there's no jokes. Just the meaning. And it's free to sit there and hit us for real.

It's a tactic people often don't realize is incredibly useful. A lot of films try to wrangle emotion out of you by incrementally ratcheting up the emotion through constant escalation, but a lot of times it just makes everything feel "the same." emotional swoons sometimes aren't about "the level of intensity," but the swing of how far you came to get there. If you start in a place of comfort and laughter and then are suddenly hit with a bit of bittersweet emotion, you will feel it more readily. Keep in mind you have to be careful with this. Audiences are sensitive to "too drastic" an exchange and will get angry if they feel caught too off guard, but it's still one of the most effective (and underused) mechanisms you can use in storytelling (though admittedly a lot of adolescents go overboard and don't like any kind of tonal changes at all, as they feel like it's a "cheap" play at their emotions... Open yourself up, dudes. Movies inherently manipulate. It's what they do). But in guardians? The suddenly-serious-switch works wonderfully. Through that honesty, they can all come to the admittance that they are losers, in the sense that they have lost and have nothing except each other. Thus, they can be happy going off to die together. This honesty is not only what gets rocket to (reluctantly) come around ot the plan, but this turn is also a big movement in his character arc (as he's the guy least willing to stick his neck out). But even if it's his triumphant moment, even as the film is right on the edge of over-playing the sappy nature of their heroics, it knows to go back to one last emotional exchange of dramatic alleviation and smartly turns the rallying-cry right back into a joke with rocket's: "there! We're all standing in a circle!" which is not only a really funny calling out of a popular trope, but it also alleviates us from the seriousness of the trope itself.

It really is a kick-arse scene. It's funny. It's full of coherent story construction. It's true to character. And it's ultimately engaging something we've seen time and time again, but in a way that feels fresh. And they pulled it off without turning it all into a dumb meta joke because there's no wink. There's no hint from the mise en scene or performance that they're breaking their own reality to engage the joke itself. It's all true within the character's interactions. They believe it. We know they believe it. We have seen enough evidence to understand that this is who they are. And the scene perfectly highlights the interplay between the five of them. So is the scene just laced top to bottom with jokes? Sure! But by using the exact right kind of basic mechanisms with those jokes, it shows the heart of the film's rousing success.

Humor is powerful stuff.

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Article

ConvertCase.Net - To Convert for Easier Reading

It almost got to the point to where I was expecting Yondu to be his dad. The way he almost seemed happy to keep getting fooled by Starlord. Like he knew and was proud of him.

I'm leaning towards Starhawk being Starlord's dad. Starlord's mom said his dad was an angel composed of light and if you have seen Starhawk before in the comics he fits that description. He used to be teamed up with Yondu in the comics too in the original GotG group, and was kind of a jackass as Yondu says in the movie. Just a guess.

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I'm leaning towards Starhawk being Starlord's dad. Starlord's mom said his dad was an angel composed of light and if you have seen Starhawk before in the comics he fits that description. He used to be teamed up with Yondu in the comics too in the original GotG group, and was kind of a jackass as Yondu says in the movie. Just a guess.

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Yeah. For a hero, Starhawk could get pretty annoying with all that "one who knows" crap.

The full video of Groot dancing got released today for everyone's viewing pleasure


LINK

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If they sell dancing Grootlings that are not pieces of shite, they will make so much money.

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Yup. It's crazy how well that turned out, Apparently, in an interview with Gunn about it today, it was a mid credit scene and he thought it was so good that people had to see it so he moved it up despite the slight continuity jump.

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Best part is that the dancing Grootling is in fact James Gunn dancing

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That's fantastic. So glad Gunn finally got a big hit, he deserves to get more work as a director.

I kind of wanted Rocket to get that guy's eye.

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He really wanted it. The question is, did he want it more than that guy did?

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That shite was so funny.