The Guardians of the Galaxy dvd comes out next week (BluRay following a few weeks later) and director James Gunn is making the press rounds to promote the extras, including stuff that was left out of the ending:
There are three characters that got cut out [of the "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" montage]: Nebula, the Collector and Grandpa Quill. Nebula and Collector we decided, at a certain point, they’re kind of bad guys in the first movie. It was a real joyous experience with that finale so we thought we’d keep it to the characters that were part of “the good team.” Which includes Yondu. He did fight on the good guys side. So we thought we would keep it to them.
Grandpa Quill we cut because he was in old age make up and we were a little afraid people wouldn’t recognize that it was him from the beginning of the movie. And also, it was a pretty sad moment. It was Grandpa Quill and he has this photograph of Meredith and Peter as a little boy and he looks up at the stars and we go up to the stars and it was really sweet. It means that he must have seen Quill getting abducted at the end of that day and is still waiting for him to return but it was freaking sad so we took it out.
Nebula’s was actually my favorite. Nebula’s I really liked a lot because she’s lost her arm and she’s just pissed off and she’s just walking through this field all pissed off with a busted Ravager vehicle behind her. And she’s just pissed off and I loved it.
You can see how all of these might have added to the film a bit. The Mary Sue link above does a good job of showing how adding to Nebula’s story would have been cool, as her arc with Gamora wasn’t really worked out all the way. But the bit with the grandpa…yes it sounds sad, and I know the ending was all Buckaroo Banzai triumphal stuff…but would it really hurt to be LITTLE sad sometime, Marvel? Not Agent Coulson is dead but he’s getting his own TV series sad, but human beings are frail and life is tragic and beautiful and it isn’t all exoskeletons and CGI sad. Feelings. Guardians broke a lot of MArvel molds, but it ended up being a ragtag bunch of heroes who save the whole freakin’ universe again. Superhero movies have fallen into a rote pattern of gaudy noisiness without much actual human emotion involved. I mean we don’t have to have Cinema Paradiso or Alexander Payne, but like…a sad grandpa? Is that really too much?
None of these scenes will be on the DVD BTW. Saving them for the ultra super deluxe version I guess. OH and here’s the trailer for the DVD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYaWDFFIkX0
You won me over with the Cinema Paradiso reference. That’s such a gem of a film.
So sad that the galaxy has just one guard.
GotG had a few touching moments so I don’t think the authors criticism is fair. The great thing about Marvel movie is that they are fun and the audience has a good time. I had a few quibbles about GotG but because the movie overall is such a fun ride-you let them slide. The same cannot be said for the serious nature of DC’s movies thus far. Not sure I would take young children to a DC movie-they seem to be made for adults only.
Right, because that opening scene wasn’t sad. The tone of this particular film didn’t really support sad endings and Marvel has made it clear that there are some bad times coming in some future films. I don’t know why there’s so many bloggers on the internet that have to write about these films with an agenda. “DC doesn’t allow fun.”, “Marvel doesn’t allow sadness.” It’s absolutely idiotic take sides for brands as if they were sports teams. Maybe this isn’t you, but I can’t help but have a knee jerk reaction to these generalizations at this point.
I don’t see anything that suggests sadness is banned. I do see them cutting out a sad scene that would not have worked with the rest of the scenes around it to keep the tone of the film from abruptly shifting back and forth.
Well then I’m just a huge softy because watching Peter’s emaciated, bald cancer ridden dying mom begging him to take her hand and his refusual to do so until she then utters her final breath and his realization all too late that he will never get that chance again had me sobbing. I guess watching a little boy’s mom die from cancer isn’t sad for some people. like heartless movie critics looking for chance to take a cheap shot at this very successful franchise. Yes but “sadness” has been “banned” from the MCU. Really? Probably should’ve waited before immortalizing that piece of BS. That’s sad too.
Child Quill watches mother die of cancer.
Cap visits Alzheimer’s afflicted Sharon Carter.
Coulson’s “death” in the Avengers.
Bucky’s confusion and distress from years of torture and mind control.
The commenters here are dead right. The author needs to reread the recent Kibbles and Bits article criticizing the state of comics reporting.
The ragtag band of misfits save the freakin’ universe isn’t just the underpinnings of Marvel’s adventure movies, that is basically the underpinning of every big budget adventure film since Star Wars. The main characters are always the Rebels, the underdogs who shouldn’t work well together, but do — and they’re that way because audiences respond to it. Or I should say there is one audience who responds strongly to it and it’s easy to guess who that is as one of the only other places where similar occurs are fantasy novels and young adult adventure fiction. It does suggest that, at least in adolescence, everyone considers themselves the misunderstood underdog, even the prom king and the superstar quarterback.
And that’s fair. If that’s who’s buying the bulk of the opening weekend tickets, then it’s just good business sense to play to the traits you know they’ll respond to.
The only thing that really grates are the filmmakers and storytellers who act like they’re the ones who discovered it and somehow they’re doing something new and different. This is the way these films have been made for the past 40 years.
And The Dirty Dozen beat Star Wars by ten years.
I knew nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy before I saw the movie, but was a bit apprehensive that it would be yet another monolithic comic-book-based-CGI mess, full of exhausted cliches and tropes.
Instead, I really enjoyed it. My guess is that the public does NOT care about a movie’s absolute adherence to the gospel of the ‘Comic truth’. They just want to feel something, care about someone, eat popcorn and be told a good story.