The Giving Tree

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In a recent interview with Darren Franich in Entertainment Weekly, director James Gunn claimed that his massively successful Marvel studios production Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) is not primarily a comic book movie:

I think Guardians, at the end, is not the structure of a comic book movie, it's not the structure of an action-adventure, it's not the structure of a comedy. It's the structure of a family drama. So how does that play itself out?1

How indeed. In terms of plot, Gunn's point makes obvious sense: the movie tells the story of a man who has lost his mother and doesn't yet know his father, and who assembles a family of choice from the unlikeliest of candidates. But the family drama structure of Guardians runs deeper than plot alone. With its protagonist Peter Quill's readily identifiable set of eighties references and nostalgia gear — elements that, in a less nuanced movie, might be played only for tongue-in-cheek irony — Guardians acknowledges the commodification and convention of the comic blockbuster while reinvesting the movie's (actually) alienated landscape and character tropes with renewed emotional significance through its family narrative. The movie's particular brand of heroism lies not in avenging irreparable losses or in saving mankind, but in making old things that have ceased to circulate feel new, to recycle worn-out components into novel (and wildly profitable) configurations. This is as true of the main characters as it is of the mix tapes, troll dolls, and pop culture references Quill endlessly recycles. These outcasts, cast-offs, or as Quill calls them, "losers," become newly compelling (and salable) once dusted off and repackaged as family: the titular "Guardians." Gunn's new vision of family enables a new commodity model for the comic book movie, in which clichéd and worn out cultural objects (the superhero movie itself, as much as Quill's outdated cultural references) and paradigms are re-packaged and re-vitalized into a new salability.

At first glance, the hastily drawn-together family at the heart of Guardians doesn't look so different from the families of other superhero franchises, despite Gunn's protestations about comic book movies versus family dramas. After all, family conflict remains an integral part of conventional comic books and the movies they inspire. Batman's heroic raison d'être is witnessing the murder of his parents, and he adopts a series of sidekicks whose dysfunctional familial relationships with Batman have spawned numerous comic book spin-offs and side adventures in the larger Batman franchise. In small- and large-screen outings over the past decade and a half, Superman has repeatedly clashed with his adoptive human father regarding whether he should go public with his crazy alien super-powers. And Spider-Man's current onscreen persona as a wisecracking teenager has developed in part through routine run-ins with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben over his unexplained late nights out. It is precisely through the medium of family drama that these iconic superheroes develop relatable character traits: frustration, love, protectiveness, shame, rage, guilt, and grief.

The comic book recipe for humanizing the superhero by inserting him into a recognizable set of familial relationships has been a standby for comic book adaptations by Warner Brothers,2 Fox,3 and Sony Studios.4 The notable exception is Gunn's own Marvel Studios. Marvel cinematic heroes have thus far been of a different kind: they may have love interests and friends, but they don't need to be home from world-saving in time for curfew, nor are they driven to vigilantism by the untimely deaths of parents, uncles, or other family figures. By the time Marvel's billion-dollar blockbuster The Avengers debuted in 2012, the studio had already meticulously established Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk as free agents whose defining character conflicts are internal (greed, mortality, temporal displacement, Hulk-inducing rage) and structural (international terrorism, government corruption) rather than familial.5 is unquestionably a family drama: a conflict between Thor and his father, Odin, drives Thor to Earth, where he must learn the importance of love and self-sacrifice. The enmity that arises between Thor and his adopted brother Loki in this movie sets the stage for The Avengers, since Loki is the primary antagonist in that later movie. However, while Thor's family relations on Asgard feature heavily in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World (2013), his role in the Avengers takes place exclusively on Earth and leaves his family drama largely abstract. When Thor works as an Avenger, his other familial ties become secondary. For example, his explanation to his fellow Avengers of Loki's unhinged quest for power references family bonds but in such a perfunctory way that family becomes a joke: "He's adopted.")) Whereas for Batman and Superman, family generates franchise, Marvel Studios characters reproduce movies in a different way: they can be easily slotted together in the same universe for a team movie and then disassembled into their separate parts for their subsequent individual tent-poles. The modular quality of Marvel's cinematic heroes makes them superb commodities: they can be added, traded, and swapped at will.6 Their friendships enrich one another — who doesn't want to see earnest Captain America debate ethics with glib, self-involved Iron Man? — but they do not define one another the way that the Kents define Superman in Man of Steel or the Wayne family (and its absence) does Batman in Batman Begins.7

Departing from both the Warner Brothers and the Marvel Studios models for the comic book movie, Guardians finds a third way: while it is committed to family like the more traditional Batman and Superman franchises, each member — Peter Quill, Drax, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot — has a Marvel-Studios-style independent origin story. By packaging these individual marketable elements (goofy Han Solo clone, vengeful tough guy, soft-hearted assassin, wisecracking animal, laconic botanical bodyguard) as a unit, Guardians manages to turn family itself, that oldest site of production and reproduction, into a novel-seeming commodity. If Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man define themselves onscreen through a series of implicitly irreparable parental, filial, and romantic losses, Guardians operates on the assumption that new families can be made from the shattered pieces of the old; while the Guardians family unit is as emotionally unique as the families of Batman or Superman, the components are character clichés re-purposed from the ruins of previous family configurations.

Guardians exemplifies this logic of taking old parts and refurbishing them into something meaningful through the mix tapes Quill's long-deceased mother made for him, which provide the movie's seventies golden oldies soundtrack. The individual parts of Awesome Mix Vols. 1 and 2 are familiar to any listener of American FM radio classic hits stations. Yet, this collection of chart-toppers from the 1960s and 1970s rocketed to number one on the Billboard 200 bestseller list following the movie's release in 2014.8 The soundtrack provides a surrogate voice not only to Quill's mother but also to the mishmash of pop-cultural references that give sentimental substance to the alien cinematic world of Guardians, emphasizing the fact that this movie is not trying to make something new out of scratch, but to revalue (and re-sell) old, tried-and-true cultural classics. By substituting an accessible set of R&B and rock tracks for the voice of Quill's mother, Guardians makes the familial tragedy of Quill's early loss both tangible to the audience and fantastically marketable; the album and its association with the plot of Guardians gives its disparate set of played-out components novelty, making us hear the old, familiar songs again as if for the first time. Re-investment in family enables the illusion of novelty that gives these old songs a new marketability; re-imagined as the mother's voice and assembled under the banner of maternal love, the Guardians soundtrack becomes a must-buy item, and consumers buy the old songs again.

Just as the tracks of the Awesome Mixes have been abstracted from their original albums and packaged as an independent unit, the characters of Guardians have lost their original families and contexts and must grow together in order to gain meaning and purpose over the course of the movie. We are told, early and often, that our main characters are all orphans of sorts: our protagonist Peter never knew his father and loses his mother in the first scene of the movie to what seems like cancer; bad-ass alien assassin Gamora is stolen from her family by the villainous Thanos and considers herself to be made rather than born; Rocket is also a product, in this case, of brutal genetic experimentation; and Drax has had the role of father ripped from him when Ronan — the primary antagonist in Guardians — murders his family. These losers ("you know, people who have lost something," Quill deadpans) find family in each other.

The family theme overtakes every narrative and inflects every relationship in the movie. For example, Quill and Gamora are attracted to each other from the start, but their budding romance is neutralized into a sort of diffuse familial affection as the movie goes on. After Quill's hilariously ineffective seduction-through-music on the Collector's balcony, there is no more smooching between our two most attractive Guardians. Eventually, Gamora becomes a maternal figure, a transition made abundantly clear at the end of the movie when she, echoing the lines spoken by Quill's mother in the ur-scene that opens the movie, urges Quill to take her hand. Gamora and Quill, no longer romantic leads, are reframed as members of a family unit. Earlier, before the climactic battle begins, the pair stride down the main passage of Quill's ship in matching maroon leather outfits to the strains of the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb": "Hello Daddy, hello Mom ..." Yet the transition to familial relationships is not exclusive to Gamora and Quill: the rest of the Guardians also veer parental and begin acting like "guardians" in the familial sense of the word, not biological parents but adopted protectors. Quill may be "daddy," and Gamora "mom," but Rocket and Drax also start to act like parents in the final scenes of the movie, with Rocket carrying around the baby Groot everywhere he goes, and Drax draping his arm protectively around the mourning Rocket.

The narrative emphasis on family is reinforced in the movie's favorite laugh line about Quill's chosen moniker, "Starlord." Quill's trajectory over the course of the movie could be mapped with instances of naming, that is, the way in which "Starlord" becomes not a joke or a parody but a name, fully and wholly suited to its bearer. The first big laugh of the movie comes when Quill, having recovered the infinity stone, is faced with Korath, Ronan's henchman. Asked who he is, Quill gives his name. Faced with a blank stare, he tries another tack: "There's another name you might know me by...Starlord, legendary outlaw?" This just gets an embarrassing "Who?" By the end of the movie, Quill finally earns the name he has always claimed, but in an unexpected way. Instead of a heroic epithet, a name for deeds done (like Drax the Destroyer, so-called for destroying things), Starlord is revealed to be a family name, something Quill always had but never embodied. It turns out that Quill's father was some sort of ancient alien, and by the end of the movie we realize that the nickname given Quill by his mother (the letter enclosing Quill's deathbed gift of Awesome Mix Vol. 2 reads, "Light of my life, my precious son, my little Starlord"), is probably Quill's father's actual name. Becoming Starlord reconnects Quill with his biological family, lost though they are, and in the process he finds himself. During the big battle scene on Ronan's ship, Quill is confronted once again with Korath. In grim tones, his opponent hisses: "Starlord." Quill flashes a blindingly brilliant smile - which, even more than his hulking physique or blond forelock, could just be Chris Pratt's ticket to super-stardom - and responds, "Finally!" And yet, Quill could only claim the name of his biological family when his chosen family also gets their name, the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The evolution of the name Starlord tells us something about the way identity works in the Guardians: all of the characters grow into themselves - and into each other - by, paradoxically, becoming what they already were. Insofar as it tracks the trajectory towards our heroes fully inhabiting who and what they are, the extended play on literal and metaphorical language that leavens the movie with humor  (Drax - and, to a certain extent, Gamora and Yondu - are hilariously unable to grasp metaphorical language) is tied to the theme of family development. The most touching example of this coming-into-selfhood takes place when Drax comforts Rocket after they have crash-landed onto Xandar. In a moment of tenderness, Drax doesn't just put his arm around Rocky's shoulders, but pets Rocket. Rocket tenses instantly, the same way we have seen him tense when he has been called an animal, a raccoon, a "creepy little beast" (the latter by Drax himself), but just as quickly he relaxes into the touch, his small body going soft, more trusting, more vulnerable, than it has been the entire movie. The shot's perspective is from the back, and as Rocket's shoulders loosen and fall, as he leans into Drax's touch, the audience also relaxes and perhaps lets out a tear or two of its own relief. What is so interesting about this moment is that Rocky relaxes because Drax, true to form, is being literal. Drax famously can't understand metaphors, responding to every statement with a deadpan literalism. (The best example is the instantly-famous scene when Rocket explains to Quill why Drax can't understand metaphors: "His people are completely literal - metaphors are gonna go totally over his head." Drax, offended, retorts: "Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.") In this scene, Drax is being literal by touching Rocket like an animal, petting his soft fur. And the magical thing is that Rocket responds just like an animal, melting into the reassuring touch. In this scene, Rocket - to a certain extent - becomes what he is, or part of what he is: a raccoon. That he is at least part animal is no longer an insult; instead, he comes into touch with the animal part of himself he always denied, or couldn't find.

Guardians' obsessive investment in family comes to a symbolic head in the most striking scene of the movie, when Groot sacrifices himself to save his friends. In an unexpectedly beautiful gesture, Groot encircles his friends in a protective nest of rapidly growing branches to soften the impact they will feel crashing onto the planet Xandar in arch-villain Ronan's damaged starship. Inside the woody shelter, Quill cradles Rocket's limp body and branches coil supportively around the wounded Drax, while tender leaves sprout and - most poignantly - delicate fireflies of light float gently in the air. Groot's protective embrace slows the pulse of the movie to a peaceful rhythm, even more extraordinary in the midst of the stricken, falling ship. All this beauty speaks to the redemptive power of the scene: Groot's sacrifice is more a birth than a death, because it marks the moment that the ragtag bunch of intergalactic outlaws becomes the Guardians of the Galaxy. Although it is Ronan who will give them this name (in the very next scene), it is Groot who - really, with his branches - weaves the disparate elements of a half Terran lothario, a warrior femme fatale, a vengeful strongman, a talking raccoon, and a barely verbal - but very lethal - tree, into a unity, fulfilling the promise they made to each other when they pledged their willingness to die, together, to defeat Ronan. Groot, who up to this point has only ever said one thing - "I am Groot " - marks this momentous occasion by declaring: "We are Groot." And even though he shatters into an infinity of pieces on contact with Xandar's surface, Groot is not dead: he will grow again from a twig Rocket re-plants in a standard houseplant pot. In the final scenes of the movie, this tiny Groot sprig - devastatingly adorable with big eyes, a mischievous smile, and bumptious dance moves - becomes the baby of the family he himself created in those final moments on the plummeting ship. The symbolism is overt and not a little tongue in cheek: woven into a single family tree, one (G)root system, the Guardians emerge as a family.

Like Marvel's The Avengers before it, Guardians encourages a logic of substitution, but unlike The Avengers — whose component pieces can come and go, Doctor Strange and Black Panther swapping in for Iron Man or Captain America — this logic is personal and familial. Quill loses his mother, a primary loss that in a traditional Warner Brothers superhero universe would mark and shape him irrevocably. Here, with Marvel's customary lighter and less traumatized approach to origin stories, Quill can substitute Gamora and Drax and, above all, Groot for this loss. None of these characters replace Quill's mother (because they come with their own baggage and their own losses), but together, they make it possible for him to recover from his primal loss. Yet the Guardians, unlike the Avengers, do depend on one another for their current identities. They take on shape as a result of the family unit they've built. Without the Avengers, Iron Man is still Tony Stark, billionaire. Without the Guardians, Peter Quill could never fully have become Starlord. Once fashioned into its own commodity, the family unit of Guardians cannot be sold separately; while we can't know who will participate on the side of the Avengers in the inevitable Avengers-Guardians crossovers to come, we do know who the Guardians will be.

Guardians allows Marvel Studios to add something new to its already diverse product line of superhero movies: sentiment, without the same unrelenting familial death toll of Superman (his Kryptonian birth parents and adoptive father, Jonathan Kent), Spider-Man (his parents and Uncle Ben), or Batman (his parents). The logic of substitution that the movie offers, where new families can be built successfully from refashioned and refurbished component parts, makes it possible for Guardians to present the emotional impact of a family drama without the melancholia that attaches to these traumas in traditional superhero comic book contexts. The blacks and dark greys of Christopher Nolan's Gotham is instructive: the initial loss of Martha and Thomas Wayne has not only damaged Bruce Wayne so severely that he must become the vigilante Batman, but it has also scarred the cinematic world in which he lives. Starlord's ship racing into the final credit sequence, on the other hand, exhibits a wide palette of colors, music (Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"), and dancing baby Groot. The world of Guardians permits Quill, Gamora, Drax, and Rocket to repair themselves and their relations with the larger world in the wake of origins that, in another comic book movie, might be impossible to exorcise or to leave behind. The movie offers a consumerist utopia without guilt, where pop cultural immersion is one way to survive and thrive in the wake of personal trauma and loss and no character trope or plot point is too exhausted to revive and repackage for sentimental effect. And honestly, whatever we may think of the movie's wholesale embrace of commodity culture, this exuberant recycling is what makes it so much fun: the heroes of Guardians of the Galaxy are allowed to have both family tragedies and families of choice without being so depressed all the time.

Jessica Crewe is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, titled Untenable Positions: The Literary Character of Empire, explores the British and Japanese colonial literary circulation, appropriation, and contestation of emerging eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical theories of empire.

Jessie Hock is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, where she has recently completed a dissertation on Lucretius and Renaissance poetry. Her recent and forthcoming publications include an essay on Pléiade poet Remy Belleau in the Romanic Review and a translation from French of contemporary philosopher François Laruelle's General Theory of Victims, forthcoming this Spring from Polity Press.