Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: A Dance Between the Head and the Heart

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: A Dance Between The Head and the Heart Podcast Transcript: This week we’re going to be looking at Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, written and directed by James Gunn.   If you listened to my podcast on Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, you know that I’m a huge fan of James Gunn’s writing. Not just for the brilliant execution of pretty much every moment of his scripts, but also for his overarching use of Theme to give real emotional resonance to these goofy action sci-fi comedies.   So, it’s interesting to watch Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 to see James Gunn both succeeding and struggling in the places he’s most strong.   Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 starts off with a scene that’s classic James Gunn -- a scene that takes a very typical action sequence, and turns it on its head in order to breathe new life and new fun into it. The Guardians have been charged with protecting some very precious batteries from the giant creature that keeps on draining them. This setup, of course, is a very typical action-movie-big knock-out action sequence beginning. We’ve seen this a million times in everything from The Avengers to Batman.   Except this time, rather than focusing on the epic battle sequence-- you know, the thing that’s supposed to get the adrenaline of the audience pumping, the thing that action movies like Guardians of the Galaxy are supposed to be delivering-- rather than focusing on that sequence, and those supposedly life-or-death stakes, James Gunn instead points the camera at Groot.   Which is to say, James Gunn points the camera at what actually matters to him, the thing that the scene is actually about: not the battle sequences which we’ve seen a million times before-- but a scene about a bunch of Guardians who’ve come together as a family, to protect and raise this little baby Groot, the reincarnated version of their old friend.   And by not allowing himself to get distracted by the baloney of what the scene is supposed to be, he not only creates a hilarious sequence for the audience-- where we get to watch little baby Groot jamming it out to some good old 70s rock music while the epic battle plays out barely visibly behind him-- but also sets up a potentially powerful theme for the movie: a theme about family, a theme about connection, a theme about caring for others.   He takes a scene that we’ve seen a million times, and says, That’s not what’s interesting about this scene to me, what’s interesting about this scene to me is right here.   And this is the first tool that you should take from James Gunn.   Writing a movie is not about serving them it’s about serving you.   It’s about focusing in on the things that really matter to you. When you learn to do this, you not only discover the key to specificity, you also find the cure for cliché.   The truth is, these scenes are archetypal. Big action movies do start with big action movie sequences, at least most of them do. But your big action movie sequence does not have to play by the rules as other big action movie sequences.   In Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, James Gunn proved this point with the death of Peter Quill’s mom, by playing an emotionally-dramatic scene at the very beginning of a goofy ol’ action movie.   And here in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, James Gunn again controls that tone by keeping the camera strictly focused -- not where it’s supposed to be -- but where he wants it to be. By asking himself some important questions all writers need to ask when dealing with this kind of scene:   How is my opening action sequence different from all these other opening action sequences?   How does it grow directly from who these characters are and where we last left them?   As I let that action movie sequence play out, how am I going to make myself laugh? How am I going to entertain myself?   It’s moments like this that make Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 succeed.   And yet, at the same time, if you watched Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, you probably felt that there was something missing. You probably felt that there was something from the previous version that just didn’t translate into this one. Something about the emotional content. Something about the structure.   As many critics have noted, in many ways Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 has a lot more plot than Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, and yet Volume 1 seemed to play out with a little more drive to it, a little bit more of a feeling of action.   Other critics have wondered if the problem with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 was too many characters speaking their emotions to each other.   But if you go back and look at Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, you’ll see that characters are speaking their emotions all over that movie. And, in fact, in both of those movies it’s the places where the characters are speaking from the heart, juxtaposed up against this total comic silliness, that is actually the engine of the piece, that’s actually what makes the movie succeed.   Now just a warning, there will be some spoilers ahead… But if we want to understand why this script, for all its wonderful specificity, humor and pathos is not delivering in the way the earlier script does, we need to look at the way it was actually built.   So why is it that we’re not crying at Yondu’s funeral in the way we cried at the end of the first Guardians of the Galaxy?   Why is it that Yondu’s funeral seems to drag, doesn’t seem emotionally-relevant at all?   Why is it that Peter Quill’s sojourn on his father’s planet, and that complicated emotional relationship between him and his father, Ego, seems like it’s dragging, doesn’t feel like it’s driving the story forward, even though for Peter Quill, the question of his father is probably the highest-stakes issue in his universe?   Why is that even with the introduction of another fabulous character, Mantis, the low self-esteem empath, and hilarious relationship with Drax, and Gamora’s complicated sisterly relationship with Nebula, and Rocket’s emotionally powerful relationship with Yondu, and all this fabulous character work that’s happening -- why are we not feeling the emotional stakes of this movie in the way that we’ve felt the emotional stakes in the first one? Why are we laughing, but not crying? Why are we smiling, but not feeling the drive of the action? Why is it that even though we are enjoying the hell out of this movie, apart of us knows there’s just something missing? The answer goes back to theme.   There’s a great line towards the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 -- Yondu says about his magical Yaka Arrow: I don’t control it with my mind... I control it with my heart.   And while the second part of that line probably doesn’t actually need to be stated-- the audience is probably smart enough to pick that up-- the concept of that line is probably one of the most important things you can think about as a screenwriter, and one of the most important things you can learn by watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 and comparing it to the structure of Guardians Volume 1.   In fact there’s a great story about Joss Whedon talking to James Gunn after an early of draft of Guardians, Volume 1, which was met with a lot of love from studio executives. But Joss Whedon was tough on James Gunn, telling him “I want more of you in this script.”   So James Gunn goes back and rewrites this totally satisfying script to put more of himself into it. And that was the script that was so successful in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 you can almost feel the war between the mind and the heart of James Gunn.   The mind of James Gunn wants this to be a movie about ego.   Having written a movie about loss in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, he now wants to turn the powerful might of his theme towards ego, and particularly towards the question of How does the ego destroy family?   And here we are, starting off just right, with this wonderful first scene that establishes the world of this family, where even during this epic battle, everyone’s main concern is nurturing this adorable little baby plant.  Trying to raise it in the right way.   And down from the sky descends Kurt Russell in the form of a character named Ego -- Peter Quill’s long lost father. Ego whisks Peter Quill off to his special Ego planet, where, of course, Ego turns out not to be exactly who Peter Quill expects him to be.   So from the very beginning, James Gunn is consciously trying to build something very, very specific -- he’s trying to build a story about the the pressure between family and ego.   He’s trying to build up to a moment, when Peter Quill has to make a choice between ego and family -- when he has to make a choice between his father and the promise of immortality, and the terrifying other side of the coin: that he might just be just like everybody else.   In the movie, that choice is boiled down to one line, when Peter Quill retorts to Ego, “What’s so wrong about that?”   But, structurally, despite the plot of the film, that question barely exists in the movie. Because Peter Quill doesn’t actually go on a journey in relation to ego; Peter Quill goes on a journey in relation to loss.   Because there’s that theme again, that’s in James Gunn’s heart,