My Mom Doesn’t Know “Mr. Blue Sky” and Other Things I Had Feelings About During Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Well, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sure was a thing I watched.

I should start with a positive, right? It had a great soundtrack. (Although I was shocked to discover that I recognized some of the songs and my music aficionado mom did not.)

Also, I’d definitely argue that it was better than its predecessor. If you’ll recall my review, I left Vol. 1 deeply disappointed, and I felt like this movie offered a lot of the character beats and emotional high notes that I wished the first film had hit. It also improved the representation on the team by giving us the first MCU team-up with some semblance of gender parity.

That said, I’m not sure what this story adds to the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe worldbuilding, and being a band-aid for the previous film’s issues isn’t necessarily a good look for a sequel.

(via bleedingcool)

Spoilers after the jump!

Trailer Tuesdays: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

So I have this problem.

This is the problem: a younger, more naïve Saika was so, so excited for the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. The trailers were so good; it was a different and new premise from the typical Marvel formula… and then she was massively disappointed by the movie itself.

An older, wiser Saika then sat down to watch this trailer. And found, to her great surprise, that she was once again interested in the shenanigans of these space-faring assholes. Is it too much to ask for that this movie will be the GotG we deserve and not the fratsplosion we got last time?

My fingers are Pollyanna-optimistically crossed.

Sexualized Saturdays: Rape, Agency, and Marvel’s Women

It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt… also a woman first. (x)

Vague spoilers for Jessica Jones and a trigger warning for rape throughout this post.

I’ve spent the last week watching Marvel’s Jessica Jones miniseries on Netflix. (I’ve still got a few episodes left, so no spoilers for the finale, please!) While it’s very good, it also seems to buy into a common problem that plagues female characters, especially the hard-boiled/hero types: whether mentally or physically or both, its women have been violated.

Fanfiction Fridays: A Sure Thing by thingswithwings

Nebula leaves gifts for Gamora to find.

The first is a bomb, the big, impressive kind of bomb that Nebula tends to favour, slick polished metal, beautiful in the way that Nebula is beautiful. It is sitting obtrusively in the prison cell with the Selenian diplomat that she and Quill and the others are trying to rescue, wired so that they will have to disarm it in order to free hir.

“What the fuck,” Rocket says, delving into the machinery. “I don’t even know what this is.”

Gamora glances down, but only for a moment; she’s charged herself with keeping watch over Rocket while he works, and it’s a responsibility she takes seriously. She’s never known anyone except Nebula who built explosives like this, and if Nebula is trying to kill them, there may yet be more to her plan.

“Don’t touch it,” she hisses, right before Rocket’s wicked little claw comes in contact with the glass. He freezes, listening to instructions for once. “It’s vibration-sensitive, it’ll set the whole bomb off.”

“Your sister’s a real prize, you know that?”

“I do,” Gamora says. It’s not an untrue statement, in its way.

As anyone who’s been in my vicinity since the Guardians of the Galaxy movie premiered knows, I think it could have been so much better than it was. One of my biggest peeves about the movie was that it totally wasted the massive potential present in Gamora and Nebula. They had so much going for them—codependent rivals, adopted sisters and daughters of a dog-eat-dog father, cybernetically enhanced child soldiers all grown up—and yet none of that was really developed on-screen.

Apparently there was a movie prequel comic, though.

Thankfully, there is such a thing as fanfiction. And while A Sure Thing is not the novel-length movie prequel about Gamora and Nebula growing up together in Thanos’s court that’s at the top of my Christmas list, it’s still totally awesome in its own right.

Not So Hooked on Guardians of the Galaxy

When I got my work schedule for last week, the first and most important thing I had to figure out was this: when was I going to be able to see Guardians of the Galaxy? I’ve been stoked for this movie for months, despite my serious initial concerns, and I was even more excited this week after I discovered that this was the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first film with a female screenwriter.

Happily, I was able to get to the midnight showing on Thursday after my shift ended. Sadly, I didn’t think the movie delivered on its, well, galactic potential. Spoilers below the jump.

Trailer Tuesdays: Guardians of the Galaxy

I’m gonna be honest with you: I forgot this movie was even coming out this year. I feel like they only finished casting a few months ago, and there hasn’t been much hype about it in the meantime.

Then, about ten days ago, this trailer fell into my lap out of nowhere. “Shit!” I yelled at the internet. “This already?!” And to make matters worse, it looks really really good.

Look at these a-holes.