I don't often write about movies. This is not because I am
not a film enthusiast - on the contrary. There are few pleasures I enjoy more
than sitting down and enjoying a good work of cinematography. However, very few
movies elicit a response from me worth sharing. When I first saw The Avengers,
I had one such response. I wrote that I was impressed by how the movie managed
to weave together the narratives of different characters into a singular point
of narrative convergence, only to let each character go his or her own way,
only to have their narratives converge at a later date. I thought it was a
masterful implementation of cinema storytelling. Today, I saw a movie that
prompted from me a similar response. That movie was, of all things, Guardians
of the Galaxy.
Set in the Marvel Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy follows
the story of a young Peter Quill (aka Starlord) as he finds himself involved in
a struggle for one of the fabled Infinity Gems - objects of untold power. Involved
in this struggle are religious fanatic Ronan the Accuser, bounty hunter Yondu
Udonta, collector Taneleer Tivan, and Thanos, a purple being hailed as
"the most powerful being in the universe". This last entity, Thanos, will seem familiar
to those who saw the Avengers movie post-credits scene. He is the one who gave
Loki his armies and who laughed sinisterly when told that "to fight with
humans is to court death". Although Thanos is not the main antagonist of
Guardians of the Galaxy, he is most certainly the mastermind. Throughout the
movie, Starlord and the Guardians travel the region of the galaxy trying to
stop Ronan, who is working with Thanos, from acquiring the Infinity Stone.
Although Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't directly expand on
the Avengers storyline, it does open up the Marvel universe and shows viewers
that there is more "out there" than just Planet Earth and that the
struggle in which The Avengers have somehow found themselves in is not a
struggle for the planet as much as it is a struggle of galactic proportions
where the fate of the Universe might be at stake. It shows that in the grand
scheme of things, "Earth's Greatest Heroes" are at best just another
group of players in an enormous interstellar conflict and at worse some
insignificant folk from some green blue rock floating in the far off corner of
an unremarkable solar system of one particular galaxy. Perhaps more
interestingly, however, is that the movie seems to reframe the entire Marvel conflict.
The events from the first Iron Man movies, the first Thor
movie, and the first Captain America are a build-up to the first Avengers movie.
In addition to Thanos being revealed as an eventual enemy in The Avengers, Thor
treated viewers to a cameo of a gauntlet with six empty slots. This is the
Infinity Gauntlet, which - in the comic book Marvel Universe - is used as a
receptacle for the six Infinity Gems. Furthermore, in Captain America, the
Tesseract is shown to be an instrument of boundless energy. In Guardians of the
Galaxy, the Tesseract is revealed to be an artifact that holds one of the
Infinity Gems. In addition, the Aether Mist from Thor: The Dark World (Thor 2)
is also revealed to be an Infinity Stone. This leads us to Guardians of the
Galaxy.
This is an obvious statement, but Guardians of the Galaxy is
not an Avengers film. The only link between Guardians and Avengers is Thanos.
This leads me to think that the real main character - not the hero, but
certainly the character around whom everything revolves - is Thanos. Why? As I
saw Guardians of the Galaxy, it seemed to me that one of the main purposes of
the film was, in addition to show that it is a Marvel universe and not just
"the Earth", to build up Thanos as mastermind and incredibly powerful
entity. When Avengers 2 hit, we will see how the Avengers deal with an AI
threat. Will there be a Thanos reference? Who knows. What I do know is that
Guardians of the Galaxy, for me at least, reframed all of the Marvel firms from
"stories of characters" to "another event related to Thanos'
quest for the gems".
I know, this is very much not likely. It is incredibly rare
for a behind-the-curtains mastermind to be the main character of a story. But
hey, this is just an idea I found interesting, and with Thanos being the link
between Avengers and Non-Avengers films set in the same universe, it doesn't
seem that far-fetched. Perhaps a Thanos appearance in a Howard the Duck film
might be in order?
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