The Big Picture - ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ | Marvel Month

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

As ‘Avengers: Endgame’ inches closer, we continue our Marvel month with one of the most effective, influential, and surprising movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: James Gunn’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ We review the original ‘Guardians’ comics, then examine the movie’s star-making ability, its use of music, and its long-lasting impact on the MCU. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Season 8 of Game of Thrones begins this Sunday, which means Binge Mode Game of Thrones makes its long-awaited return, with your resident experts Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion guiding you through each episode. And to get your fix every Sunday night, Chris Ryan joins Mallory and Jason on Talk the Thrones, a Twitter aftershow recapping each episode throughout the season. So make sure you check out the Binge Mode podcast on Apple or Spotify, Talk the Thrones, a Twitter aftershow recapping each episode throughout the season. So make sure you check out the Binge Mode podcast on Apple or Spotify, Talk the Thrones on Twitter, and for even more Thrones coverage, you can head to theringer.com. I'm Sean Fennessy, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer,

and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We have talked about two films already in this Marvel Month series. The first was Captain America, the first Avenger with Amanda Dobbins. The second was Marvel's The Avengers with Chris Ryan. I am joined today by someone I would describe as a significantly deeper comic book expert. And we're going to talk about what I think is maybe the best Marvel movie. And that's kind of where I want to start. I'm here with David Shoemaker. David, what's up? Not much is up. It's been fun re-watching Guardians of the Galaxy on and

off over the past couple of weeks. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, you know, I really had a lot of fun listening to it. You know, we got a little bit of flack for some of the conversations we've had about these first two films, and the reason that we wanted to talk about those movies at the beginning of this series is because Marvel didn't totally have their tone and their approach figured out in the early stages of these films. Phase one, they were still kind of working out the kinks. They were figuring out who their characters were. They were figuring out how to portray them. Something about Guardians of the Galaxy, though, man,

I feel like things really click into place. Rewatching this movie, I found myself falling in love all over again. Yeah, I mean, it's really a spectacular movie, and it's hard to find a lot of fault with it. You know, part of that is because it's just such a, I mean, the other way I'm sure you, I know you've talked about this, that, that all of the Marvel movies, you know, what makes them work is that they sort of attach themselves to a, to a genre or to a style, but this is just so much like so much further than, you know, winter soldier is a

70 spy thriller. You know, this is just a straight up science fiction movie yes and uh and and it and it's able to sort of just relish in itself in a way that that you know it took a little bit more several movies of establishing this the background of the tone for something that someone like Iron Man to fully do yeah and I don't think Marvel ever could have started in space you know doing an outer space adventure is something they had to kind of work their way up to. And I think we'll talk about this a lot on this show, but it's interesting that that does seem like where Marvel writ large is going. You know, in a lot of ways,

Captain Marvel, of course, is totally a science fiction outer space movie. It seems like the quest to fight Thanos in the new Endgame movie is also going to largely take place intergalactically. Guardians of the Galaxy, though, it has this great tone. It is science fiction, but right from the jump in the movie, you're immediately thrust into a kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark adventure story, too.

What do you remember from your sort of anticipation of the movie beforehand as somebody who knows a little bit about the Guardians characters? Well, I mean, the Guardians characters that are in this movie are not the Guardians characters that I grew up with. I mean, there was a pretty famous Guardians of the Galaxy series that started in the late 90s that Jim Valentino did that was based on a group of characters by the same name from the 60s and 70s, I guess.

And that was just a little bit hammy. And, I mean, the comic book back then was, I mean, even the one in the 90s in the gritty era was supposed to be a departure from all the Wolverines and Lobos and Punishers around. It was a little bit more just straightforward, you know, upbeat adventure. And then they, the Guardians of the Galaxy

that's in the movie was a creation, I believe this team was put together in 2010 by Abnett and Lanning, who were just two really solid Marvel scribes of the cosmos. I mean, not just Marvel, they've written for everybody. They did a lot of Green Lantern and stuff like that too. But they made this, they put this team together, called them the Guardians of the Galaxy with sort of only a passing connection

to the original team. And then Kevin Feige was just like, you know, saw this happening and he was giving interviews sort of contemporaneously where he was like, yeah, there's this cool new comic called the Guardians of the Galaxy. They're doing some really interesting stuff. That said, you know, I think that we've had

this conversation before. I was never a big fan of like Cosmos and comic books, you know? I mean, even when like the X-Men went into outer space to fight the brood or something, I was always just a little bit, you know, I would rather see them back at the mansion playing softball. Um, I was the same way. I was not, I was not a, an outer space comic book consumer really at all. And even when things like secret wars were happening, I found myself somewhat detached from the storytelling because it almost felt too big. Yeah, I mean, there's I mean, yeah, you can certainly see the charm in the writing of some of these space opera, I don't even know how to say it, space opera composers, the Jim Starlins of the comic book world. But there's,

you know, obviously a lot of that and just like the science fiction novel world too. And again, I was much more of a fantasy guy, you know, than, than like this, than space opera novels. But you can see the charm in what they're doing now. I mean, it was this sort of super trippy, just like anything goes. I mean, you'd think anything could go in a Superman comic book, but, but this is really anything goes. You're just pulling, you're just creating alien races and superpowers and, you know, even the laws of like galactic physics don't need to apply. There's, the palette is so broad that sometimes the stories

can be a little bit more epic. I mean, obviously more epic, more kind of classical and Shakespearean and everything else. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity there and they really, you know, milked it for all it was worth. Yeah. And, you know, I found myself rewatching the Avengers and thinking that the whole Chitauri storyline was sort of underdeveloped and stupid and the phraseologies that were being thrown around was not well developed. This movie is not dissimilar in that it just throws a lot of terminology, a lot of planetary history, a lot

of like race war at you, and you never feel overwhelmed by it. If you don't fully understand it, it doesn't really matter. But if you take the time to unpack it, it's fun to learn about. And that is the sign of a movie that is extremely thoughtfully composed. You know, the entire world that James Gunn, who is the co-writer and director of this movie, puts together is really, really considered. I found that as I rewatched his, or as I watched for the first time, his commentary track on the movie, you can see he's given this stuff an extraordinary amount of thought. And sometimes that seems, that could seem like overkill, but in this case, it really pays off because everything feels easily understandable. Would you agree with that? Yeah. And if I were

at the table giving notes on the script, I'm sure I would have jumped out of my chair and said, no, you can't have three and a half layers of villains, right? I mean, that's just one example, but there's like, there's, it, it seems like it's going to be, I mean, to, to, to describe the plot is it's very complicated, but it's told immaculately. I mean, it's just, it seems it's just so simple and straightforward on the screen. And I think part of that is, I mean, we'll get into the, you know, MacGuffin conversation later on, but part of it is that like the actual plot is utterly empty. I mean, and I mean, it'll matter more going down. I mean, as we obviously get to the infinity war, um, but there's not, there's not a whole lot of, you know, exposition on technology or, you know,

exposition on, on this, you know, why on why we're pursuing this thing that we're pursuing. And that way, it does relate to Indiana Jones, at least more of like the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, like you mentioned, where you're in there looking for an idol and let's go. I want to pick up on that very quickly. But first, let me read some kind of key data points to this movie to situate us. So Guardians of the Galaxy was released on August 1st, 2014. Its director, as I mentioned, is James Gunn. His previous two movies as a director are the gross-out horror comedy Slither and 2010 superhero deconstructionist tale Super. His previous scripts, I think, are very interesting, and I want to spend a little bit of time talking about them at some point. They include the Troma movie Tromeo Juliet, and another superhero deconstruction called The Specials, Scooby-Doo, Dawn of the Dead, Scooby-Doo 2, Monsters Unleashed.

So he co-wrote this movie with Nicole Perlman, who was a part of the Marvel Writing Academy, and she wrote the first script. And then Gunn came in and reportedly rewrote most of the script. So the movie stars a lot of people who, at the time, I I think you would have thought, I'm not sure that this person should be in this movie. And now I feel like they're fundamental to the Marvel story, which is kind of an interesting tweak that they've made too. So it's Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, your beloved Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, who has appeared in all of James Gunn's films, Karen Gillan, Jaimanooker, who has appeared in all of James Gunn's films, Karen Gillan, Jaiman Hansu,

who we just saw recently in Captain Marvel, Glenn Close, and John C. Reilly. Hell of a cast. This movie made $773 million. Its runtime is a quaint and elegant 122 minutes. And it had a 91% score from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 92% score from audiences who gave it an A in cinema score. David, I feel like this movie is one of the few that is sort of effectively remembered. You know that it's like going back and re-watching

The Avengers, I forgot how much I had forgotten and this movie felt like I was back in a warm, cozy bed. Did have this a similar feeling going back to it i'm pretty sure i fully missed an iron man movie and didn't realize it until yes like four like three years ago yes yeah i i guess i i remember i remember this very well there's definitely parts that i that i didn't remember um and and sort of that i mean some of that's willful i mean when when thanos and Ronan are having their, you know, growly conversation, I mean, anytime that happens in a movie where, like, two gravel-voiced CGI villains are, like, having a talk,

you know, I just, my brain turns off. Yeah, it's not the best. But that's, like, what you were talking about. You don't need to understand, like, the finer points of, you know, the details of the story to really, to follow the the the tempo you know to follow the tune of the movie but uh in retrospect i mean i know that james gunn um wrote most or all of this but i but i kept wondering how much of a hand feige and the rest of just like whatever the the marvel the mcu brain trust had a hand i wonder how much power control they exerted over the script

because it has so much to do with everything that follows. That was exactly my impression too. I was like, it's incredible. The whole Infinity War saga is basically laid out in this movie. You know, we meet Thanos really for the first time, him talking as portrayed by Josh Brolin. We understand why the Infinity Gems matter. We understand why space and the quest

to kind of pursue all of these things matter. We understand the idea of like team building. You know, this movie is like weirdly a better team building movie than the Avengers in many ways. And also just tonally, you know, we talked about that Raiders of the Lost Ark moment, you know, right at the beginning of the movie

where Chris Pratt's character, Star-Lord, aka Peter Quill during the title title sequence is entering a cave, and it seems like he is questing for some sort of magical item. And then all of a sudden, Red Bones' Come and Get Your Love kicks in on the soundtrack. And this movie just sort of turns into singing in the rain inside of a cave. You know, Chris Pratt is kicking the water around. He's grabbing these rodent amphibian creatures and singing into them. And the tone has just completely shifted. And it shows a kind of like a lightness in the movie that I think these other movies have had and contained sequences, but the

Guardians of the Galaxy sort of like uses as its defining tone. I was just reminded again of just kind of like how generally happy that made me and how smart it was to make a movie that could be deemed silly if played straight, to make it silly so that it feels more straight. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, we've talked before on this podcast about how what really makes the Marvel Universe movies click that the MCU movies click,

that the DC movies, the X-Men movies don't all have, even some of the Spider-Man movies, is a level of self-awareness. You know, I mean, that they can just, that Robert Downey Jr. can wink at the camera in a way that someone else in that role wouldn't be able to. And certainly the direction from top down production really helps. You can be self-aware that you're making a comic book movie

only to a certain point because at the end of the day, you're still making a comic book movie. But what Guardians has is this vast history of sci-fi that they can kind of take the piss out of, right? They, I mean, they have, it's a, it's a much bigger, um, tapestry of,

of, uh, references that they can make and, and, and just, you know, much, many more,

you know, ETIs that they can, that they can wink at the camera with. And, and I, and just to, to, to,

to start off the movie with just such silliness. I don't think that, I don't think that could have played in the one of the, you know, in the first Iron Man, certainly not the first Thor, you know, the first Hulk,

anything like that. It would have seemed like it would have seemed just like silly, you know, and, and you need to, you, and when you're, when you're telling a story that's inherently silly,

you have to be a little bit earnest and they were just able to go right in with the silliness and, and it really affect effectively, like just dis disarmed or you know yeah disarm the entire audience which is you know i think that's why you see such high scores yeah i think also in that very first sequence you see that moment where star lord peter quill grabs the orb and then all of a sudden these kree soldiers arrive led by jiman honsu and Peter Quill does his whole explicative moment where he clarifies that he is Star-Lord and he's an international ravager

or an intergalactic ravager and Jimen Honsu's character just basically says like, who? Like he has no idea who he is and that's the same feeling that the audience has as we're watching this movie where it's like we don't know who the Guardians are, they're not Captain America, they're not Iron Man, they're not the Hulk and so kind of that self-referentiality is a tool that's wielded really effectively throughout this

movie. I was curious, how familiar were you with James Gunn and kind of what he did before this movie? Not at all. I mean, really, I was dimly aware of the superhero movie that he did. What was it called? It was called Super. Super, right. And I mean, but I had never seen it. My entire perception of James Gunn was hearing people say that's a good choice

when he was chosen. But all of those, I mean, at this point, I was just following blindly the brilliance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yeah, so Super is kind of an interesting text. Uh, it's essentially about a, a fry cook who,

after his wife leaves him, tries to become a vigilante superhero of some kind. Um, it's a very, it's a very, um, kind of, uh,

it's a, a not withholding movie. It's very violent. It's very crude. It's very angry. And it feels in keeping with guns background, which kind of comes out of Troma, which is this independent film studio based out of New York on The Ringer last year. We had a really great piece about the whole history of that studio.

And James Gunn kind of made his bones writing for this company, which is like very outlandish and very over the top and very exploitation friendly. And it requires an understanding of genre in a pretty deep and significant way. And so I thought that James Gunn was definitely an inspired choice when they brought him on. I don't think I realized quite how pop and colorful and as you said, sort of before sort of space operatic his movies could be mostly just because he'd been working with such small budgets in the past. And it's kind of amazing to say, James Gunn, here's $200 million, show me what you can do. It made me think that this more than anything set the template for how they would choose filmmakers in the future too.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, just to, I mean, listen, it's, you watch these movies and I don't want to like, you know, break kayfabe too much to use the wrestling term, but like, it's, you can't watch the entire, any number of these Marvel movies and not come away with the feeling that like, the directors are not in charge of CGI. Right. The directors are not in charge

of the color palette, of the, you know, of post-pro. You know, they're not, they're doing, they might have an incredible amount of control, but visually,

I mean, these decisions are being made from on high. And, you know know I don't know how much it I guess before the Marvel before the MCU I think that I don't know I don't know if every movie goer out there agreed with me but it did seem like that CGI you know this sort of sci-fi you know massive CGI enterprise was almost like a space reserve for a certain sort of like CGI auteur, you know, the sort of George Lucas, James Cameron, like you have to understand the technology from top to bottom to be able to make a movie this way. And I think what Marvel effectively

did was just kind of toss that out the window and say, like, don't worry, we'll handle that. You just make, you know, Robert Downey Jr. look funny and, you know, we'll fly the armor around and don't worry about it. You know, I mean, I think it was, this is obviously a much more complicated movie. And this is where Marvel goes in a really, you know, production heavy direction and give James Gunn all the credit for making that seem sort of seamless. Yeah, I agree. It's funny. If you watch the credits of these movies, you'll always see two or three executive producers bound together on the credit sequence. And one of those producers is usually the production producer. And one of those producers is usually the post production producer. And the post pro producer is the person who handles pre-visualization with

the designers and the people who are handling all the CGI execution and the way that they're staged. It's funny. I had David Sandberg, the director of Shazam on the show earlier this week. And something he said to me was very cool. He said, so for previs rather than do these massive story boards or, you know, you know, hire somebody to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to visualize them. What I do is I just set up a camera and I take a superhero toys and I just position them the way that I want to. And I filmed that. And I don't get the impression that that's the way that Guardians of the Galaxy was made. It's a little bit too grand of a stage to imagine something like that. And so I think you're right that one of Gunn's great successes, aside from

the tone and identifying the right inspirations and picking kind of a perfect cast, which we should talk about, was making that wham, bam, Marvel CGI stuff feel coherent and feel a part of his story. Let's talk about that cast a little bit. So at this point in 2014, Chris Pratt was a star of Parks and Recreation. Oh, yeah, shock wire! I call it that because if you take a shower and you touch the wire, you die! Sort of. He had played Scott Hattaberg in Moneyball. Hello? Scott?

Yes? It's Billy Bean of the Oakland A's. Yes. Can we talk? Uh, yeah. Do you want to let us in? Yeah. He was a very let us in? Yeah. He was a very strong dude in Zero Dark Thirty.

Excuse me, but what do we need this for in Libya? I mean, Qaddafi's anti-air is virtually non-existent. Maya, do you want to brief him? And a little bit earlier that year, he had voiced Emmett Borkowski in the Lego movie. I'll save you with my triple-decker couch! You know, maybe let us handle it. I don't know that I saw Chris Pratt becoming the most important action star of his generation,

but I feel like this is the movie that is largely responsible for that. Oh, 100%. This broke him out. Now, there was part of me in watching this movie and in considering how significant the comedy was before, I mean, where I wondered whether or not, you know, there was a whole sort of like media campaign about like the shock of him being cast in this part before the movie came out.

At least this is my recollection. Yeah, because he was Fat Andy from Parks and Rec. Exactly. I couldn't help but sit there and wonder how much of this was just totally canned. They knew they were going to have him in the movie whether or not he got a six-pack, and he was that important.

I mean, he clearly is that important to this film. But this definitely was what launched him, put him on that platform to be able to chase dinosaurs and make questionable decisions on space stations with Jennifer Lawrence. Oh, wow. I'm looking forward to having you back on this show for the passengers month where we'll be devoting a series of podcasts to the wonderful film passengers. What about Dave Bautista? You know a little bit about him. He is a key figure in this story.

Yeah. I think I saw this movie that, I'm trying to remember, the day after it came out. Um, because I, I know I saw it opening weekend, but I remember going in and the only thing that I had heard from people was I got a number of text messages that said, Bautista's really good. Yes. And like, they were all shocked he was certainly you can certainly put him in the he's a revelation category um Batista is how to describe Batista the professional wrestler he you know I mean I guess I should say plainly he came out of the WWE left a couple years before this left professional wrestling to pursue acting and it seemed totally misbegotten um because as great as as entertaining as he could have as he was as a wrestler no one

ever mistook him for The Rock. And I guess the fear was that he mistook himself for Dwayne Johnson. But he went out to Hollywood and just became an actor. He didn't seem particularly interested in being The Rock and he'll go on and on and every chance you put a tape recorder in front of his face now and say that and you know any comparisons of the rock are insulting because he's a character actor but i think i mean it's kind of true he could have been

cast for his body and i mean his literal body and and he ended up being in some ways sort of you know the he only say the heart of the film, but the sort of like, as far as like the sense of humor goes, he's, you know, he's the straight man. He's really important to everything that, you know, all the jokes that get told. I completely agree. It's funny. You can see in the early days of his acting career. So he leaves WWE in 2010 and his first couple of films are The Scorpion King 3, Battle for Redemption, The Man with the Iron Fists, Riddick. He's taking basically D-plus rock roles because that's probably all he could get. And I do feel like this movie not only reveals his talent as an actor and as a sort of a physical presence on screen, but it also unlocks his whole career.

I mean, it's very similar to Chris Pratt. I think without this script and this performance, he's not appearing in movies like Blade Runner 2049. You know what I mean? He's not appearing in, you know, this summer, he's in two different action comedies. He's not even a character actor anymore. He's like Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson in a lot of ways.

You know, he's going to be in Stuber and My Spy. And he's got this great hybrid of like Schwarzenegger meets Bruce Willis going on that is pretty unique in American movies in 2019. I also agree that like he has a lot of emotional weight in the movie because, you know, he's basically a character avenging his family's death at the hands of a mad titan and Ronan, who I think maybe we'll talk about a little bit. And he's also really funny, as you say. And he is a person who kind of unites this group about a little bit. And he's also really funny, as you say. And he is a person who kind of unites this group in a significant way. I'm curious to see where Dave Bautista's career goes from here. Zoe Saldana was the only person in this cast who I thought that makes

sense because she had already been a differently colored CGI-oriented character in Avatar. Yeah. And so it seemed like she was, she had the experience necessary to pull off Gamora. I didn't really know anything about Gamora coming into this movie, though, and she has turned out also

to be incredibly significant to the story. Incredibly significant, and honestly, as someone who wasn't the biggest Thanos head, like I said, going into this, I remember being slightly worried that she was settling for a smaller role than maybe she deserved in the MCU. But you see that over and over again, right?

There's so many of these superhero movies getting made that you wonder why anybody takes a small role. Any actor of any significance would take a small role because it's like, maybe if I hold out a year, I can get the lead in the next Marvel movie. Or I can be a superhero that, that has a chance to return. Now, listen, I mean, they,

they clearly have, I'm sure they're making some, some, you know, promises to people along the line. I don't think anybody watched this movie and thought that, that Karen Gillan's character was going to be, you know,

a returning hero or anything. And they, and, and that's panned out in a sort of interesting way. Yeah. I call this the Sebastian Stan corollary, you know sebastian stan came in and signed on for nine marvel movies with the expectation that at some point he was going to get to do something cool and it did take about nine of these movies and now he's getting to do cool stuff yeah it's true

um there's i mean the whole i mean we can we can go into the cast but i mean every everybody is just i mean i think it just goes to show the confidence to which they made the movie every decision was made with great confidence and everybody was cast with with confidence and it was either the confidence of um you know don't worry you're this this is a starring role even though you're in green face paint um you know for for some for for some people and then there's the confidence of like, yeah, I can make Dave Bautista into a major movie star. I mean, that's confidence of a different sort. But that just shows how, you know,

how James Gunn went about making this movie. Did you find yourself thinking this movie is going to unlock the future of all these stories as you were watching it? I mean, it certainly isn't. When we talked a it? I mean, it certainly is. When we talked a little bit about it, it certainly is a more sort of expansive, literally and metaphorically,

and just sort of more, you know, it's more generous with its humor and with its, I mean, it's a sort of just more extra version of all the Marvel movies that had come before. And that is definitely the direction that the film, I mean, that the films have gone. I don't know how much longer they can stay in space after this next movie,

because it is, you know, it's a very specific type of storytelling. But I, you know, yeah, I mean, I was, I did not realize that the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to be, you know, hopping in jets or hopping in space shuttles to go meet the Guardians of the Galaxy. I was expecting the reverse, that they would end up in Iron Man's New York at some point or something.

I was not prepared for how much this kind of laid the groundwork. Yeah, we really only experience Earth in that opening introductory story about Peter Quill as his mother is dying in a hospital bed and the kind of gift that she gives to him and the sort of message that she sends to him about his father. And then everything else is intergalactic.

I really love the inspirations for this movie that Gunn has talked about and that he even literalizes in the movie. I think at one point, Quill actually mentions both Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Maltese Falcon. I'm not totally sure how Peter Quill saw the Maltese Falcon

as a young boy on Earth, but that's maybe for another podcast. But you know, you've got a huge Dirty Dozen thing going on in this movie, and I tend to think that any time you put together a band of rapscallions, that's just going to work. Similarly, there's a straight-up visual homage to the usual

suspects. You know, that series of sequences after the guardians are arrested and brought to the kiln, which is like the prison. And they're sort of interviewed and identified as criminals. It's just overt usual suspect stuff going on. Would you think of any other movies as you were watching this? Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, you know, we mentioned the Indiana Jones stuff. There's definitely some Back to the Future vibes in the whole, in just, you know, the Peter Quill persona.

And just, and yeah, I mean, that was, besides the one you mentioned, I think that was the big one for me. I mean, there's certainly a lot of, it doesn't exist without Star Wars. it doesn't exist without star trek and actually one one of the kind of incidental um notes about the comic book is that the 90s version of the comic book was produced specifically to to try to uh siphon off some of the success of star trek star trek the next generation TV show. Oh,

interesting. But I mean, and that also shows how much our, you know, pop culture landscape has sort of been sent through a fun house mirror that like comic books are trying to get like a trickle down effect from a network television sci-fi show. But,

but, but yeah, I mean, I would say the movies you mentioned for sure. And just the sort of sci-fi show. But yeah, I mean, I would say the movies you mentioned for sure, and just the sort of sci-fi, you know, canon. I like to talk about the MacGuffins on this show. Partially because MacGuffins historically don't actually matter. There's something that the lead characters are in pursuit of that won't ultimately have a significant impact on the story. You know, think specifically of like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. That never

actually comes to bear what's in the briefcase or how powerful it is. Or if you think about noir movies from the 40s and 50s, like Mike Hammer movies where somebody's carrying an A-bomb in a briefcase, but you never actually see the A-bomb go off. It's just something that everybody's in pursuit of. These movies are different because the MacGuffins are actually meaningful. In this movie for the first hour, hour and a half, we think that the orb is the MacGuffins are actually meaningful. In this movie for the first hour, hour and a half, we think that the orb is the MacGuffin when in fact we meet the collector played in a absolutely absurd cameo by Benicio Del Toro as the collector who is in pursuit of the orb because inside exists the power stone. What do you, just generally, I'm curious for the David Shoemaker take on

the MacGuffinization of Marvel movies listen you can't I mean I said this before you can't bog a movie down in this stuff right I mean my one tried and true superhero movie take for the longest time and this is before I mean

this dates back to way before the MCU was that you had first of all you had to connect the plot of the movie and the origin story together right i mean the villain had to be involved because otherwise you spent the entire movie you mean you could spend an hour with the origin story and then all you're the sudden you're like and now let's explain how the penguin came to be you know or whatever it's just it became it's just too much too much backstory too much information to try to get to where we are oswald cobblepot yeah exactly um those there was no there wasn't a backstory in that movie that's that's just you know making stuff up but but any but but it's true that that um a batman backstory i should say but but but what these mcguffins

you know mcguffin like the power orb or whatever accomplish is that like they literally, it's literally meaningless, right? I mean, the fact that it goes on to matter so significantly is brilliant. But if it were called anything even 1% more complicated than that, it would have been too confusing, right? I mean, it was just, it's, the point is there's a glowing thing that they have to keep away from the bad guy. It's a, just a, it's just a cosmic hot potato and they, and anything more complicated than that would have totally derailed the momentum of the film. And I think that just being, being aware of that as part of the genius. I agree. And I think also it's a, it's a good way of explaining why someone is evil, just saying like, this thing is very powerful and and the person wants to get his hands on it,

wants to do so towards evil means is effective storytelling. So, you know, we meet Ronan the Accuser who is played by the aforementioned Lee Pace, who I guess is a sort of a creed general, a creed leader of some kind. And he is- He, by the way, auditioned for the role of Peter Quill.

Sorry. Yes, and very thankfully did not get the role because I don't think Lee Pace would have been right for this. But that goes back to my other thing. It's like Lee Pace is in there auditioning to be the leading man. They're like, do you want to be this blue-faced, growly guy? And he's just like, yeah, sure, whatever. It's like, why would... I don't know, that was sort of the Lee Pace moment.

I bet he wishes he would have held out for, you know, D-Man or just some other Marvel character with, you know, a little bit more face time. But, yeah, I mean, Ronan the Accuser, it's just one of the characters from comic book lore that they, you know, use pretty effectively. I think what I will say this about Lee Pace's performance he vamps a lot as this character

he sure does but he doesn't but he's not playing it for laughs no or at least he's not outwardly he's not

he's not being silly and I think that's again part of what makes it really work because if you have if this is like an Austin Powers villain then

Star- then Peter Quill playing against him doesn't have the same kind of humor. Do you think that Guardians of the Galaxy exists inside of the Austin Powers universe? I think that that's an interesting question. We should see if Goldmember's going to be in Endgame. Did he get erased in Endgame?

Yeah, you're completely right though. Ronan the Accuser is played very, very straight. And that's true maybe only of Nebula. And every other character has kind of a wink and a nod thing going on. Even Thanos, you know,

has a smirky Josh Brolin, I'm in charge kind of affectation to the character. And Lee Pace is, you know, he's not, this is not pushing days

he's Lee Pace. This is like a thunderous, angry, almost like when you would cast, you know, Derek Jacoby or Laurence Olivier in a preposterous movie near the end of their career to almost like certify that there is something serious going on here. What do you think of Yondu Odonta, who is kind of a villain and kind of an ally of Peter Quill played by the wonderful lunatic actor Michael Rooker. I think he's fantastic. I mean, I think that, I mean, there's,

talk about references. When he first pops up, you definitely get a little bit of that Max Hedrum vibe. Yes. And I'm sure people listening to this about like 1% are old enough to remember that. But yeah, I mean, the fact that he like first comes, his first appearance is just on the sort of like video phone and he's just like really like comically just, you know, getting pissed off at,

at, at Peter Quill. Um, I, you know, I think that, I think that the, the, he's the total opposite of, you know, Lee Pace's Ronan. He's, he, he is, he's just ham, you know, and the grease running off of it. He's, he's, he's, he's just playing this up. I mean, he's just, he's just so extra in this movie and, and I, and, and everything that he's done for them since. And that's who Michael Rooker is. But I think it was a, it's a, it's a cool look for that character too. He has a much longer comic book history than some of these other ones, it's uh yeah i just i i i was i was a big fan

of that of that character i mean he felt very much like a successful star wars supporting cast member like from like from the second trilogy but one of the people you actually really liked yeah you know i mean that he he i don't know i thought it was really good what did you think yeah no i agree there's it's this is not a jar jar banks thing um it's he's interesting because he is elemental to quill story uh he's a person who's largely responsible for like rescuing quill from um what could have been imprisonment or death and he's got a he's got a badass weapon you know that sort of whistle arrow that he uses is, you know, is kind of the stuff of great CGI set pieces.

You know what I mean? That sequence where he breaks it out and kind of simultaneously kills seven or eight Kree soldiers in one fell swoop. It's just like really fun movie stuff. I remember being in the theater when that came out and people just be like, oh shit, you know, and you want to have stuff like that in these movies with characters like this i know that i'm sure that these conversations took place and they'd be so interesting to listen to you know to be able to go back in time and listen to but throughout this movie they did a really

good job of having uh these sort of like really like incredible weapons you know like almost like unbeatable weapons but but deep but they have but but they are beatable i don't i don't really know exactly how to say this but they have you know these these plasma guns that can or you know ray guns that can like that can shoot a demigod and knock him on his ass yes i believe it's a hadron gun is what the rocket is holding but they find so many ways to so many ways to make the users and the weapons themselves sort of fallible in other instances. I mean, when you go back and watch the scene where they all meet for the first time, where Peter Quill has the orb thing and Gamora and then separately Rocket and Groot are there trying to steal it from him. Put him in the bag. Put him in the bag.

No. Not her hand. Learn genders, man. You're outriding. That's not fair. I mean, it's just it's, it's a foot race, right? And there's a bunch of space, sci-fi weaponry involved in the hijinks. But at the end of the day, it's like running and tripping and falling and getting tossed in a bag. simplicity and like just tactile simplicity to the way that this universe is constructed that that i think is really helpful and like you know making it seem recognizable i can make it completely agree i mean it's it's an amazing thing to say about a movie that features a giant humanoid tree

and a anthropomorphic machine gun toting raccoon that this movie feels tactile and it feels real in some respects but it is true and you can see that james gunn is bringing a little bit of that um you know that physical handmade kind of creation that he got from troma that he got from slither that he got from super and is bringing it into this world that is you know often overrun with cgi the movie was entirely made at Shepperton Studios in England and a lot of it is on green screen. But you don't know, you don't feel that way, you know? Like, you know, if you watch a movie like Mortal Engines

and you're like, no one ever saw a real landscape while they were making this movie. This is not that. This feels like when they're in the kiln, it feels like they're in the kiln. You know, when they're in the ship, it feels like they're in a broken down old ship, much like the Millennium Falcon. You know, that's the kind of feeling that you want to have while watching these movies.

Total testament to design, really. It's just the design of the movie that happens ahead of time. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, they made all the, I mean, there's so many different ways this conversation can go. But all of the decisions, you know, all of those obvious, simple decisions were made just accidentally or deliberately. I mean, everything just was done. It just seems so perfectly. Talk to me a little bit about Rocket Raccoon and Groot.

I think we've talked about a lot of characters thus far. My perception of them, without much historical knowledge, is that these are the characters that unlock this movie for a wider audience. That this is what takes it into nine-year-olds want to see this. I know my dear friend Zach is endlessly fascinated and amused by Rocket Raccoon and Bradley Cooper's decision to use his power of celebrity to voice this raccoon. What do you make of the way that they're used here as two-fifths of the Guardians of the Galaxy? Yeah, I mean, they're great. It's like you take what would normally be,

I would say, one comic relief character and you make it almost half the team. I mean, and listen, there's no shortage of comedy in any other quarters of the Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, one thing I was going to say when we were talking about Batista and Drax that I didn't say was that, you know, one of the reasons why he's really important is that there is a lot of CGI on the team. And, you know, the fact that his, despite the fact that he's under, you know, pancaked, you know, green makeup, his face, you know, his human face is very important, you know, I mean, and being able to show some real emotion.

But Rocket and Groot are, you know, very, very well done, you know, and there's not, and especially, you know, in Guardians 2, you get a lot more of the human side, I guess that's the wrong term, but whatever, the human side of Rocket, and the younger Groot certainly has a different sort of appeal but yeah they do they unlock they unlock a you know the kids audience i think they unlock a you know just a just a general generally like a non-sci-fi non-superhero audience too because they're just like they're just they're

they're cute characters they could be they could be in a Pixar movie, you know? But they're also foul-mouthed, or at least in Rocket's part, and they're action characters as well. Let's do a little casting what-ifs. We borrowed this category from our sister show, The Rewatchables. You mentioned that Lee Pace went up for Peter Quill. Here are some other people that went up for this role. Joel Edgerton, Jack Houston of Boardwalk Empire fame,

Jim Sturgis, and Eddie Redmayne all tested for the role and did not get it. The other actors who were considered were Zachary Levi, who you may know now as Shazam, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Rosenbaum, and John Gallagher Jr. of The newsroom. This just, I don't think any of those people really would have made sense. It's interesting how... Zachary Levi would have been really interesting. Yeah, I guess he could have pulled it off. But yeah, I mean, I think that they, and part of that's why I think that you reading that made me think that Chris Pratt was

probably a given and that there was, I mean, more so than they let on at the beginning. Maybe not. I mean, maybe it did seem sort of ridiculous at the time, but I mean, he's just so, it's hard to imagine, and it's hard to imagine reading any of those people into the role after he's done it. Yeah, I'm very thankful that it was Pratt. As far as Drax the Destroyer goes, there were a few what-ifs that are also kind of interesting relative to the DC universe. Isaiah Mustafa was up for the role. You may remember him from the Old Spice commercials. Brian Patrick Wade, who has had a run on the Big Bang Theory, and Jason Momoa, who is of course now Aquaman, who I think you and I last podcasted about him when we spoke about comic book movies for that movie in December. I'm glad it was Dave Bautista. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was definitely

the right choice. And again, it was an unlikely choice. I mean, not that any of those other names were givens. There was no Arnold Schwarzenegger in the running or anything. But yeah, I mean, Dave Bautista was definitely the right choice in retrospect. You know, one other thing that we didn't really talk about is the presence of John C. Reilly and Glenn Close, who are quite literally two of the greatest actors of their respective generations. We have to talk about them. They're very important. So I don't know very much about Nova Prime and the Nova Initiative and this entire group of fighting force. They're sort of like an international police on Xandar.

I remember Nova, the character. I'm very hazy on this stuff. There's a character named Nova whose comics I read on and off who I guess was a member of this police force, but he was back on Earth or I don't know, something to that effect. The Nova

core obviously just sort of has the stock function in these movies as the galactic police force. But as far as, you know, we're talking about the comedy in the movie and all the casting decisions that were made. This movie, when you watch it, both in the very first trailer that you saw, the way, I mean, it's interesting to go back and watch the first trailers because they have like traditional Marvel music

until the very end. They're sort of like trying to, it's trying to put itself over as like a sci-fi movie, as a sort of serious movie. And then you see the characters and they're sort of, you know, implicitly, inherently a little bit funny, but it's the existence of John C.

Riley that cues the, the, the viewer in on the fact that this is going to be a tongue in cheek movie. Most definitely. And, and he serves that purpose in the movie too, because there's funny moments, way,

many funny moments before he pops up, but to have him show up and arrest Peter Quill and just be like, Hey, I know this guy, this guy's got a code name. And it just takes the piss out of the entire Enterprise in a just lovely way. And I can't imagine anybody else. I mean, of all of the roles in the movie, I actually think he might be the most irreplaceable. That's really funny. I mean, it's interesting because you're right, but I also got the impression that John C. Reilly's character was going to be more important when I first saw

the film. And he's not necessarily elemental to the story, even though you're right that he unlocks something about the tone of the movie when you see him. What about Glenn Close? You know, if you're going to spend the Glenn Close dollar, is this the character you want to spend it on? I don't know. I mean, I don't know that there's... I mean, at this point in the Marvel... I mean, they obviously had planned very far out. I don't know if there's another role

that would have been more appropriate for her. She definitely brings a little bit of gravitas to the movie, and John C. Reilly as well, in a different way that that that the movie wouldn't have otherwise had you know i mean we do have scenes with just them talking and those scenes are important to the film you know and and if those were just two character actors who were you know available to strap on a spacesuit like they would not have been the same film it would not it wouldn't have felt the same you're right but shoemaker picture this glenn close is thanos

you in hmm 100 in yes uh i think one of the most important aspects of this movie is the music Shoemaker, picture this. Glenn Close is Thanos. You in? Hmm. 100% in, yes. I think one of the most important aspects of this movie is the music. I mentioned earlier the Redbone moment at the very beginning, which indicates what kind of movie we're going to have here. Here's a little bit of information about how James Gunn landed on this. He said, when choosing the songs, Gunn revealed that he started the process by reading the Billboard charts for all of the top hits of the 70s, downloading a few hundred songs that were semi-familiar, ones you would recognize but might not be able to name off the top of your head, and creating a playlist for all the songs that would fit the film tonally. He added that he would listen to the playlist on his speakers around the house.

Sometimes he would be inspired to create a scene around a song, and other times he had a scene that needed music. He would listen through the playlist, visualizing various songs, figuring out which would work best. Now, I think that this, for the most part, is how many filmmakers make their musical choices. You know, I've talked to a lot of directors on this show. They all have Spotify playlists of songs in the back of their head that they want to use in a movie at some point. I heard James Gunn recently say that the Redbone song that I mentioned is the song that he had heard the most of any song in his entire life, which is an interesting way to set this out. You know, Gunn is a child of the 70s as well. And so you can feel a kind of admiration for certain aspects of like, I want to say like a pop rock that no longer exists in this country.

You know, I think Blue Swedes hooked on a feeling. It has become like the emblematic song from this movie. Let's hear Blue Swedes, Hooked on a Feeling, has become like the emblematic song from this movie. Let's hear a little bit of Hooked on a Feeling. Bring me on. Ah, Hooked on a feeling. I'm high on believing that you're in love with me. And so I think somewhat surprisingly, maybe even to Disney,

this soundtrack kind of took off a little bit, and these songs became really powerful because of the way that it's told with Peter Quill and his Walkman and the mixtape that he receives from his mom and the songs that he leans on. What did you think of the integration of the music in this story? I mean, again, I think just being in space allows you to just do something that would have seemed corny. I mean, even though this is the opposite of space, right? This is bringing earth and outer space. But yeah, I mean, listen, if you had said, and again, if you're sitting at the notes, giving notes at the table

read of the script or something, and you're just like, wait, the main character has a Walkman from the planet earth that has the hits of the seventies on it. And it's just like, wait, the main character has a Walkman from the planet Earth that has the hits of the 70s on it? It's just like, give me a break. You know, that's just, come on. But it just works. You know, it absolutely works. And it, you know, the movie opens, obviously, with Peter Quill's backstory, or at least, you know,

the inciting incident in it. But the music does do a good job of reminding you throughout that this is not luke skywalker or han solo this is a human you know i mean i guess we don't want to spoil too much about how that's not entirely true but how this is a human uh being who's just you know traveling through space uh fish out of water. I mean, even though he's very comfortable in the water and that sort of, you know, really helps you identify with him as your central character. Yeah, I agree. I think the soundtrack in particular is a good mix too of extremely identifiable songs. Like the movie ends with Jackson 5's I Want You Back and Baby

Groot dancing to that song. But you've also got The Raspberries Go All the Way and Elvin Bishop's Fooled Around and Fell in Love. You know, these are songs that the minute that you hear them, you know exactly what they are, but you probably couldn't name the artist. And that's a smart trick. It's a trick so smart that I feel like he's basically pulling specifically from

what Richard Linklater did in Dazed and Confused, which, you know, there's some crossover here in terms of the songs that are chosen. And also K. Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s from Reservoir Dogs. I would say that, you know, Tarantino kind of invented this strategy. Yes.

This is, I don't feel like, and I love Tarantino. I don't feel like James Gunn is patting himself on the back when he's pulling these songs together. You're absolutely right. I mean, this is right these are songs specifically chosen because of their familiarity to elicit a reaction they're not the most familiar songs

but they're familiar songs he's not saying it's a Spotify playlist he was talking about he's not talking about pulling vinyl from the back of an old warehouse this is a it's a love letter to a certain era of American music, but it's an era that, you know, many viewers were present for, or at least have experienced on, you know, oldies radio. No, you're absolutely right. And that's the right way to think about

it, that this is a, it's a pop confection in a lot of ways ways the movie is meant to reach a lot of people the same way that fooled around and fell in love is was meant to reach a lot of people in 1977 um yes i i'm kind of generally interested in the idea of whether or not this movie is a deconstruction because you know as i mentioned this movie the specials that gunn wrote over 15 years ago now, and then Super, and he's also a producer in this movie that's coming out in May called Brightburn. I'm not sure how familiar you are with that one that's coming soon, David. No, not at all.

So it's essentially a superhero origin story about a young kid who is imbued with powers, but who breaks bad, who turns evil. And so it's a sort of superhero horror movie, and I haven't seen it. It looks very good, and it definitely has Gunn's thumbprint on it. But all of those stories

are sort of fundamentally disassembling the things we think we know about superheroes and trying to underline what's interesting about them. One movie that we didn't discuss up top when we were talking about supers that I was trying to think of is The Specials, which he wrote and didn't direct. But it was a superhero movie with, again,

a sort of star-studded cast for the scale of the film with Thomas Hayden Church and Rob Lowe and Judy Greer, Padgett Brewster, amongst others. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's always been very interested in deconstructing the form. And I think it's sort of interesting that he ended up on guardians of the galaxy because it's the least of the form,

right? I mean, it's, it's, it's not a, this isn't the Avengers. This, or at least it hasn't,

it hasn't really evolved into the Avengers yet, but he's able to take, um, you know, the parts of superhero movies that, that, you know, or comic books that we, um, that we love, you know,

like, you know, seeing, seeing the heroes on the, on the cover of the comic book about to fight, you know what I mean? That's like a central part of my, my childhood experience. I can't wait to see Wolverine and the Hulk go at it before they team up for whatever mission they have. Um, all that stuff. I mean, he, he, he knows the formula frontwards and backwards. And so he's able to, you know, play around with it in a way that I don't think every director, even in the Marvel, even in the MCU is able to. Yeah. There's this great quote from Joss Whedon, who is still consulting on these movies at this time in the run-up to Ultron. And he was asked about why James Gunn was the right person to make this movie. And he says,

James Gunn is what makes me think it will work. He is so off the wall and so crazy, but so smart, such a craftsman and he builds from his heart. He loves the raccoon, needs the raccoon. He has a very twisted take on it, but it all comes from a real love for the material. It's going to be hard for the human characters to keep up. He needs the raccoon is something maybe consider that for my tombstone, David. I, I am sort of impressed by how seriously he's willing to take this stuff. And as you say, he kind of knows the form backwards and forwards.

I, I'm just kind of shocked by how, how he pulled this off. Yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, there's,

there's, there's nothing you, I mean, there's, there's no, you know, high enough level of praise for, I mean, for this movie in terms of execution, you know, I mean, there's nothing you, I mean, there's no, you know, high enough level of praise for, I mean, for this movie in terms of execution. You know, I mean, you can take exception to a lot of individual elements, I'm sure, if you desperately wanted to. But of all of the Marvel movies, I don't remember, I mean, there's none of them where I walked out of the theater just being as, like, satisfied in a really positive way. Like, there was just, there was nothing nothing there was nothing wrong with this movie what do you think about Guardians becoming like a springboard for the rest of the story uh at the

end of it you know what do you think of Guardians 2 what do you think of how they've integrated the characters in another wider story um I mean I think I think they've I mean I like it you know I mean there's there's definitely uh with the there's definitely with the most recent Avengers movie, there's a little bit of that excitement. I mean, there's not more than a little bit. There's a lot of excitement to see your favorite characters from literally different universes coming together and teaming up. Again, that's, you know, a central part of comic book,

the comic book tradition. And that they're kind of, like I said earlier, going into the Guardian's turf to fight this battle is intriguing. I'm always going to be a little bit cautious about, you know, how far you can take space stories. Like I said from the very beginning of this podcast, that's never been my cup of tea in the comic book world. But in the movie world, you know, I can't get enough of it.

And I think that they've given me really no reason to doubt that this is a good direction forward. I mean, listen, everything is science fiction, right? I mean, all of these superhero stories are definitionally like science fiction stories. They're not necessarily space stories. I mean, most of them are not. But the tradition of science fiction storytelling is, it encompasses all of this stuff. So it's not that much of a stretch to, you know, shove all these characters together. Yeah, I agree. And even though I don't think that this movie, even though it clearly sets the stage for a lot of things that are going to come, one of the things that I do like about it

is the stingers on this movie, the sort of after credit sequences are largely inconsequential to the future of the series. We see dancing baby Groot, as I said, dancing to the Jackson 5 song. And then at the very end of the film we see the collector again and he is sitting in the destroyed ravages wreckage of his all of his collections and sitting there drinking some sort of neon green cocktail is Howard the Duck

who of course was the star once upon a time of a movie of his own produced by George Lucas a very unsuccessful movie you know I tend to forget that Howard the Duck is a Marvel creation. What was your reaction upon seeing that? I mean, it was hilarious, right? I mean, it was very interesting and thought-provoking in terms of the future of the MCU. I don't know if they're actively producing any movie, you know, a Howard

the Duck movie, although that was certainly the expectation at the time yeah I feel like that went away you know I feel like there was a yeah there was a conversation about that now it's gone I know that we use the I know that we we use the phrase that that's a that's a flex uh maybe too much in the ringer uh headquarters but I mean to to to pull off Guardians of the Galaxy, which going in seemed like a real long shot, and then at the end be so confident in what you've just done that you can just be like, and now Howard the Duck? That's a real flex. Even if you're never going to put him in anything else.

I think in some ways it just shows that, um, no matter how ridiculous you think that thing you just experienced was, there's further they could go. So, you know, um, be happy with what you have a little bit. We should also just talk a little bit at the end here about the James Gunn controversies and kind of how everything has come full circle. Um, last July, James Gunn was fired from the guardians of the galaxy series after making two very successful guardians movies um he had been writing and plotting

guardians 3 and a series of old tweets were uh dredged up very distasteful uh pretty unfunny tweets i would say but tweets from 7 8, ten years earlier, you know, that included such controversial topics as pedophilia and rape. Disney took the, I would say, unusual measure of firing gun from the series after making two films with him for those tweets, which he apologized for. I can recall at the time, I don't remember how you felt about this, but I can certainly recall at the time thinking, well, this is not the right choice and this is not how you handle an issue like this. Not for someone you've employed for coming up on a decade. And then lo and behold, Gunn was a free agent. He signed on with the DC Universe to make a follow-up to David Ayer's Suicide Squad movie. And then for some reason earlier this year, Marvel backtracked and has decided to rehire James Gunn to make Guardians 3. You know, in retrospect, what do

you think about the last nine months of public flagellation for James Gunn and the fact that we are basically where we started now? It's weird. I mean, it's just weird. I don't, it's, I mean, I'll make another wrestling reference don't, I, it's, um, I, I mean, I'll make a, a, another wrestling reference that nobody will understand, but it felt like when WWE fired Daniel Bryan, uh, early on in his career, he like, he was part of a, uh, a bunch of wrestlers ran in and sort of just like attacked everybody at ringside and beat up the announcers and stuff. And Daniel Bryan, unfortunately choked the ring, the, uh, ring announcer with his tie Daniel Bryan, unfortunately, choked the ring announcer with his tie. And the act of like choking him with a tie was deemed a bridge too far.

And like the toy companies that advertised on the show just took exception to it. So they had to fire him, but they all knew he was coming back. So they fired him. And then he went and he just did a world tour and wrestled around and all the indie promotions he used to work. And then he just showed back up a few months later and everybody was excited and all of the, you know,

all of the, the complaining advertisers felt like, okay, like we've got our pound of flesh. Um, it's weird in this case that like they let him go so cleanly that he went and made a movie for DC and then they just welcomed him back with open arms, which,

and not only was it such a, uh, you know, I don't know if maya culpa is the right word but they're i mean they it was it was so clear that they knew they had made the wrong decision but they were they they weren't canny enough to sort of say just like sit back and we'll get you back on this thing they they functionally delayed you know another guardians of the galaxy movie probably for a year and, you know, might have given a huge leg up to the competition. It's the whole thing is just, it's really just a bizarre turn of events. Yeah, that's what struck me too. I think I'm reluctant to play, try to play, you know,

intellectual chess with people's IP, but they definitely just gave an opening to DC, which was already in the process of figuring out how to make better and more coherent movies out of their properties. And James Gunn, as you might have learned from listening to an hour of this podcast, is really good at making these movies. And even if Guardians 2, I think, is a little bit less successful than the original, it's still a very fun and clever movie that sort of animates what's great about some of the MCU. And so him getting a chance to basically right the wrongs of the original Suicide Squad is just a net loss for Marvel. And I wonder if that more than some sort of moral reckoning is what made them realize that they should bring him back into the fold. Also, something that I noticed as I was reading about this movie,

there's a real love affair between the actors in the movie and gun. And they came out very strongly for him when he got fired and they really united. They were, I believe they wrote a Facebook letter of some kinds to, to Disney to have him back. And there seems to have been a genuine bond forged among them in part, I think,

because gun either helped launch their careers in a significant way with these characters or gave them something new to do that challenged them and made them a little bit more interesting to the wider world. And that's actually kind of rare. You know, I think a lot of the time when you have a comic book movie and a comic book series, it's a little bit of a for hire thing. You know, you're bringing in somebody to kind of execute on a continuity strategy. And Guardians is one of the few pieces inside of this MCU that actually,

even though it links everybody together, kind of stands on its own. And that's one of the things I like about it. And I suspect that's one of the reasons why he's back. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, one of the best things that's come out of this movie is the sort of online persona

of woke Dave Bautista, you know? And he was more, you know, and, and he, and he was, he was more, uh, you know, outwardly supportive of James Gunn through that whole process than anybody else. Um, and, and I'm sure part of that was that, you know, Gunn gave him an opportunity and, and, and trusted him and, and, and together they, they found their way through to this, you know, really surprisingly important and central character in, in, in the MCU. Um, but, you know, and, and, and as terrible as those, you know, really surprisingly important and central character in the MCU. But, you know, and as terrible as those, you know, those jokes were, I mean, this, it's obviously a different, it's just a different situation than some of the other ways that

people have been, you know, brought down over the past several years. And I don't, I mean, obviously we don't need to go into whether or not the witch hunt, you know, was in good faith or not. But, but yeah, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, at least career-wise, at least commercially, it's a real validation or vindication for James Gunn. Because it's, you know, regardless of what happened before, it's clear that Disney decided that they didn't want to do a movie without him. Yeah, and in many ways Disney decided that like they didn't want to do a movie without it. Yeah. And in many ways, I'm glad they did.

David, any final reflections on guardians of the galaxy? We've put a lot of, a lot of feeling out there. I know there's a whole lot, right? I don't really have anything final to say, except what I said at the top,

which was, it's been a real joy to rewatch it, you know, with some, you know, earnest concentration, but as excited joy to rewatch it, you know, with some, you know, earnest concentration. But as excited as I'll keep being, as I'll continue to be for future movies and to see these people in the Avengers movies and all the other MCU things, the longer this sort of serial plays out, the better.

Because this is, seeing these characters together is great. But that first, but this movie is just, it's fantastic. I mean, it's just a, it's just a gem, you know? And it's just really impressive how they've sort of pulled all those pieces, all these disparate parts together and made just like, again, I don't want to say unobjectionable

because it sounds like faint praise, but I really mean, it's just like, if anybody had come up and told you that they're making a space movie with some comic book characters that nobody really knew of, the comic book fans weren't even like, these weren't part of the firmament. And there was a talking raccoon with guns and a tree and two different green people that aren't actually related and a human at the center of the whole thing and that literally every member of your family would dig it, that would have been impossible to wrap your head around, but they made it work.

It's really cool. David, would you say that we are Groot? Now and forever. We are always Groot. Thanks, David. I really appreciate this. Thank you, man. you