There was an interesting take on the movie in this PluggedIn blog post I read last week.
It's a little bit of Marvel, dash of The A-Team, a touch each of Firefly and The Princess Bride,with a whole bunch of Star Wars, some Star Trek and quite a bit of its own creature. And it's hilarious. Also rather profane and almost all the main characters are jerks(but that's a necessary plot point and it's totally worth it). And there's a ton of pop-culture references thrown in there randomly, which is awesome. And it all adds up into (currently) one of the top-three highest-earning MCU films ever made.
A boy named Peter Quill is listening to his Walkman in a hospital hallway in 1988, where his mother is dying of cancer. Before she dies, the woman gives Peter a present that she tells him to open when she's gone, which is stuffed into his backpack. Wild with grief and anger, Peter sprints outside and collapses to the dewy grass exhausted. That's when he's kidnapped by a band of space pirates called the Ravagers. (Yes, this is truly the first scene.)
Twenty-six years later on the abandoned planet Morag, Quill, now calling himself "Star-Lord", plays with some T. rex-kangaroo rats and jams out to his Walkman before swiping this orb. That's when he's intercepted by Korath(the Dark Elf from The Dark World!) and several Chitauri(fromThe Avengers, that One-Shot "Item 47" and an episode of Agents). There's a great snarky line here: "Who are you?" "Star-Lord." (Korath looks confused.) "...Who?" "Star-Lord, man! Y'know, the legendary outlaw?" (Korath shakes his head.) Quill escapes from Korath in his ship, the Milano, and runs out on Yondu the Ravager chief, having a buyer for himself on the planet Xandar.
Now with a bounty on his head, and someone named Ronan involved, Quill's buyer backs out. An assassin named Gamora swipes the orb away from him, and while they fighting/chasing each other, the bounty hunters Rocket Raccoon and Groot the tree-thing are chasing Quill. A spectacularly-filmed scene follows, ending with all four getting arrested by the Nova Corps(the planet's police force/military) and taken to the Kyln, a high-security prison.
Almost all the inmates of this prison want to kill Gamora, since her adopted father is Thanos(Bin-Laden in space, kinda), including a revenge-minded massive warrior named Drax. Drax tries to murder Gamora, but a quick-talking Quill saves her, pointing out that Drax needs her alive in order to kill Ronan(who murdered Drax's family). Gamora betrayed Ronan because he is working with Thanos and planning to destroy entire planets if he possesses it.
Quote break: Quill, trying to convince Drax to spare Gamora, ends his plea with a slashing-throat gesture. Drax - "Why would I put my finger on his throat?" Also, a little later on: Rocket - "...his people are super literal, metaphors go over his head." Drax - "Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast, I would catch it."
The three of them, with Rocket and Groot, plan(improvise) and execute an escape, reclaiming the orb on their way out to meet with Gamora's contact, The Collector, on the mining station Knowhere. The Collector opens the orb, which everyone knows is valuable without knowing exactly why(a Maltese Falcon, in a way) and explains that it contains an Infinity Stone, and then explaining why that's so important. (Basically, if you have all six and set them into a glove called the Infinity Gauntlet, then you earn power above all imagination and become unstoppable. The Tesseract and the Aether are two of the other five.) Meanwhile, a drunk Drax summons Ronan to finally kill him. They pummel each other. The Collector's assistant is sick of being his slave, so she blows up his collection with the Inifnity Stone, committing suicide in the process. The group kind of runs every-being-for-itself out of there. Quill and Gamora are chased by her adopted sister Nebula(also working for Ronan), who blows up Gamora's ship and leaves her to freeze in space's vacuum. Ronan almost succeeds in murdering Drax, but Groot pulls him from drowning, and Rocket meets up with them. Quill saves Gamora's life and they're rescued by Yondu and the Ravagers. (Love the way Quill brags on himself excitedly right there. "I found something inside of me, something incredibly heroic!") Ronan gets away with the orb in his ship The Dark Aster. Rocket, Groot and Drax think that Yondu kidnapped Quill and Gamora, so they set out impulsively to rescue them(without thinking it through much). ("You tried to save us by THREATENING TO BLOW US UP?!" "Well.....yeah. It worked, didn't it?" "Yeah! But...how would that even have worked?!")
Quill gives a rousing inspirational speech, and then the five of them argue for a while about what to do next, finally settling on re-reclaiming the orb from Ronan's clutches, since he's on his way to destroy Xandar. This also kind of means certain death, but if they succeed he won't be able to destroy the galaxy. So, that's a plus. (Rocket - "Why would you want to save the galaxy?" Quill - "Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in it!" And during the council scene: Quill - "I have a plan." Rocket argues with everyone that that is a phrase of his own creation. Quill - "I have part of a plan." Drax - "What percentage of a plan do you have?" Pause for more argument. Rocket - "So, what percentage?" Quill - "I don't know....Twelve percent?" More argument over whether that's a plan. Gamora - "That's barely a concept." Groot - "I am Groot." Rocket - "So what, 'it's better than eleven percent'?" Quill to Groot - "Thank you." It's a great scene.) They get Yondu to agree to this plan by saying they'll give him the orb once Ronan is defeated.
A massive space-battle begins once inside Xandar's orbit, where the ragtag group of allies breaches The Dark Aster, Yondu wipes out a bunch of Chitauri on the ground with his whistle-arrow, the Nova Corps' ships create this incredibly-awesome force field, and the Ravagers defend from ground-level while the city is being evacuated. Drax kills Korath("Finger on throat means "death". Metaphor." Quill - "Eh....close enough.")
The energy wall is eventually breached and The Dark Aster looms down and crashes into the city. Rocket also wrecks Quill's ship somewhere in there. It seems like everyone will die in the wreck, but Groot perishes protecting his friends. And Quill does (yet another) extraordinary thing:He starts dancing. Ronan - "What are you doing?" "I challenge you do a dance-off." "What are you doing?" "I'm distracting you!" And then Rocket and Drax pile into Ronan with the MacGyvered laser cannon. It's wonderful. The remaining Guardians of the Galaxy together destroy Ronan and Nebula escapes, while the grateful Nova Corps expunges their criminal records and rebuilds the Milano.The Nova Corps is given the orb while Yondu is given a trick replica. An officer named Rhomann Dey, in explaining all this as they leave, reminds them not to do anything else illegal. Drax - "Supposing someone angered me and I wished to remove his spine?" Dey - "Yeah...That, um - That would be called murder, and that is one of the worst - Yeah. Please don't do that." Quill promises to keep an eye on things.
The Guardians of the Galaxy, with a sapling grafted from Groot, set out on their next adventure. Gamora - "What happens next?" Star-Lord - "Who knows? Something good? Something bad? A little of both?" "We'll follow your lead, Star-Lord." "All right, then. A little of both!"
He then finally opens the present his mother gave him as she was dying; a second cassette mixtape, and pops it in his stereo.
Quill's constant pop-culture references are awesome. He named his ship after his childhood celebrity crush, Who's The Boss? star Alyssa Milano, he says the Infinity Stone has a real Maltese Falcon, Ark of the Covenant-like vibe, his reference to an Earth-legend called Footloose(which leads to Gamora shouting excitedly while doing something heroic, "We're just like Kevin Bacon!"), how Earth is home to many legendary outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse James and John Stamos(who he'd know as Jesse from Full House), calling a Chitauri "Ninja Turtle", Rocket "Ranger Rick" at one point and Groot "The Giving Tree" (he meant it sarcastic, but that's actually a really great description of Groot's character).
Groot is simple, yes. But also unselfish and serving, almost parental at times. And they need somebody like that. Rocket's the most brashly money-hungry and me-against-the-world. But he was experimented on and is now half-machine. So his anger and misery is totally understandable. And his biting commentary throughout is terrific. Gamora did some terrible, awful, horrendous things, yes. But that was in the past, and she's learning how to atone for those errors somewhat by the end. Drax is motivated solely by his desire to avenge his family's murders(like a Fezzik-sized Inigo), but comes to realize there's more out there in the galaxy to live for than just vengeance. And Quill is this kind of wisecracking minor scoundrel just trying to survive(those make the best characters) who comes to find himself the leader of this outfit, and therefore charged with keeping things in some semblance of control.
Together, the Guardians of the Galaxy are a group of freewheeling by-necessity loners that don't really care what the rest of the galaxy thinks of them, who come to form a sort of family. Every family has their issues, and they're no exception. But like that PluggedIn post said, in a way they remind us of what our jobs as Christians in the church ought to look like. Paul talks in that different roles passage in 1 Corinthians 12 about our jobs and abilities might not all be the same, but they're all just as important and ought to be honored the same, since together they add up to a much greater purpose. "The church," says the article, "can be a little messy. It's made of less-than-perfect folks. But when its' people are united in a common cause, the result can be both beautiful and powerful." Aunt May, in Spider-Man 2, says she believes there's a hero inside all of us. And in Spider-Man 3,Peter Parker reminds us that "It's our choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right."
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