Is there another comic that's in the same zone as Guardians? The Sly quip about 'maybe we should put the team back together' made wonder if they were thinking spinoff..
As was mentioned right after you posted that, there have been several Guardians teams, but time travel is involved and it gets headache-inducing. For instance, Stakar was the son of Ayesha (aka Her aka Kismet aka...) and Quasar in the future and abducted as an infant and taken back in time. When he got back to the future, he organized that era's Guardians out of inspiration from the Guardians he ran with in the past. It gets... messy. I'm very grateful the MCU has largely not touched time travel.
I'm enough of a comics nerd to remember Stakar's comic-book appearance and 1) I really hope his ship is named
Starhawk, and 2) I love that they incorporated what were stupid head-covering dealy-boppers on his comic costume as much-cooler-looking glowy dealy-boppers on his movie jacket:
As for Ayesha, BTW... *sigh* She and Adam Warlock are two characters I'm looking forward to a better origin in the MCU than they had in the comics -- but I also like that they keep underlying elements intact. Adam Warlock was originally created on Earth by some smarty-pants scientists trying to create an artificial superbeing they could control (cuz that always works out great...). He was called Him, kicked their asses, and left. Stuff happened, he got the Soul Gem, he died... *deep breath* ...by traveling several month into the future and stealing his own soul. Those same scientists tried again. She
also kicked their asses and left. She set out to find Him to be her mate, was quite put out when she found out he was dead, and started evaluating the heroes she ran across for their potential as mates (how she ended up with Quasar). So I was chuckling with the extra meaning that lent to her asking Peter about his genetic heritage.
The first time I saw it the first half seemed a little ponderous only because there was no development where I expected to find it - Quill and Gamora's relationship doesn't evolve, Groot is just a baby, etc. Since everyone was physically split apart we didn't get more of the same interactions we saw in the first. It felt static because I didn't understand the value of the new relationships that were introduced.
The thing to remember is that this takes place a couple months maybe after the first film. They're flying high on their rep for saving Xandar from Ronan, Groot's out of the pot but not all grown up yet, Peter and Gamora are still cautiously dancing around their feelings... It's not static, but the changes from the first film are incremental. And they move forward over the course of this film from where they all are at the start of it, differently and to different degrees depending on the character and their arc, but they're all dynamic, and it all felt appropriate to me.
--Jonah
