Cultural Crossovers #15: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

Yay, it’s these guys again!

• Quill’s parents, we presume. Along with a very large violation of ecological safety practices.
• Well, that’s a weird way of assembling planets into a megastructure. Wonder what the point is, apart from saying “we can make gravity our bitch?” Although that kind of is a point.
• Ah, Rocket. Your adventurer-fu is strong. And, hey, you never know when another dance-off might be needed.
• Well, that’s a whole pile of ugly.
• Groot: Still adorable. Still trolling Drax. We approve. The space-rat riding is new, but we agree with that too.
• Drax: still insane.
• You guys sure love gold, huh?
• Well, hello, Nebula.
• Rocket, while we agree with your assessment, you’ve got to have a —
• Okay, I’m pretty sure doing a “bit of both” wasn’t supposed to be at the same time.
• Wow, you’re not just understanding but actually constructing metaphors now?
• Well, that’s an interesting way to control your space fleet. Do they keep the high scores somewhere?
• Quantum asteroids? Unlikely, but cool concept.
• Drax: even insaner.
• You have interesting-looking jump points.
• $10 says Drax wants another go.
• …called it.
• At least it waited until you were done crashing to fall off.
• Well, that’s a remarkably nondescriptive name.
• Hey, it’s Yondu!
• Hm. Ravagers have a code, mythos, a notion of exile. Hmm. Tell us more, plz.
• Oooh. Nice nano-make-shit spray. Or nano-make-ship spray, in this case.
• Cool-lookin’ egg-ship.
• Drax, I don’t think that was a secret to anyone.
• Oh, this ambush will not go well, if I know Rocket.
• Yeah, I know Rocket. And the soundtrack makes it.
• …but then there’s Yondu and his knife missile.
• Wow, some of these guys came out of the shallow end of the gene pool.
• Oh, Kraglin. Bad call.
• Nice-looking planet, Ego. Presumably very much a product of ecopoesis, gravity being what it is.
• Well, small g, maybe, but you’ve built a hell of a temple-museum to yourself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
• Yeah, that does look like mutiny. Traditional spacings and all.
• Isn’t ‘metaphorical’ a bit too large a word for you, Taserface?
• Taserface.
• Quite the sense of revenge you’ve got there, huh, Nebula.
• Sniff. Playing catch with the light-ball is all kinds of touching. But the other shoe has to be dropping any moment.
• And that seems likely to be it.
• “Too adorable to kill”, really?
• Shit, he’s a champion asshole.
• Not very clear on this, Groot – which is odd considering your language skills elsewhere. But evidently he picked up on Rocket’s love of body parts.
• Now that’s a much better call.
• Damn, but Yondu’s good with that thing. That’s friggin’ war-poetry, right there.
• Oh, now that’s just showing off.
• Love the incendiary mode. And that’s an impressive – if an expensive – use of a modular ship.
• Y’know, it generally helps to speak of unspoken things. We find. As a rule.
• And Gamora, as expected, cuts the matter to the heart.
• Man, that ship gets crashed a lot.
• Okay, how the hell is she even holding that gun? Damn thing must be made of spinmetal and aerogel.
• Thanos has a lot to answer for.
• Hey, making weird shit sounds good. Actually, it seems like a much better use of divinity than Ego’s starting to preach.
• (Also, Mantis and Drax are adorable and bizarre.)
• …that is a lot of corpses. And seeing as Ego is the entire damn planet and is keeping them inside him, dear gods, is that creepifying.
• Now that was a heart-to-heart.
• Oh, holy crapballs, you’re a class II hegemonizing swarm.

• Beyond such things as friends? Killing the woman you loved so you wouldn’t be distracted by her? You are the worst god ever. And considering the competition for that slot…
• Well, given that you want to turn everything in the universe into you, it’s not like he’d have been spending the next thousand years as anything else anyway.
• Any chance you assembled a planet-killer bomb from that guy’s eye, Rocket? Would be handy about now.
• Yeah, it’s actually quite surprising that you don’t have a lot more issues.
• Hell, if you need that thing to get in, I’m impressed with the security of the Bank of A’askavaria. Beautifully flexible, though.
• It’s cute that the Sovereign go to the trouble of projecting their faces on the AKVs they’re piloting just so you can see who’s killing you.
• Or, y’know, you could just improvise a planet-cracker on the spot. That’s cool. Hey, can we hire you?
• Oh, god, everyone’s going to die.
• Drax: still a troll.
• Good gods, what was powering that arm? Was it designed so you could tear it off and throw it as a grenade? (I mean, knowing Thanos, yes, but still.)
• Also, that entire planet has a terrible case of resting bitch face.
• Um, a sane, decent, loving one?
• If you two are all there is, what else is he going to do for fun?
• Pretty sure he can. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s obligatory. Bugger destiny anyway.
• Just about any of the infinity of possible meanings. You’re a heggie swarm. Boring and meaningless are among the top concepts associated with heggie swarms.
• And by some miracle, Groot doesn’t kill everyone.
• (I wish the people in this hypothetical theater would get all the nuances of the Pac-Man joke.)
• Not sure Star-Lord is ever going to be just like everybody else. He’s got you out-awesomed for a start, Mister Celestial.
• The audience rises and salutes Yondu’s final sacrifice. If they could, they’d vote him into Valhalla unanimously.
• And are delighted that the Ravagers agree.
• Oops.
• Okay, are those guys getting a spin-off of their own in which they steal some shit? Please?
• More rigidity of the stick up his butt, too?
• (Probably lacking most of the context for teenage Groot too, alas.)