Another Look At Guardians Of The Galaxy

On second thought the film proves more efficient than our original assessment.

The only thing that matters more to us more than a great story is publishing an accurate analysis of a great story. Here at Narrative First we would rather be told we were wrong than continue to provide a false and potentially misguided account of the narrative structure behind a work.

Our analysis of Guardians of the Galaxy always remained troublesome.

Gamora's Throughline peters out and dies leaving little explanation why Quill actually changed his point-of-view...To further weaken the film's structure, the Relationship Throughline between Quill and Gamora occupies but one scene over the span of 122 minutes--hardly the stuff of a well-developed thoroughly realized narrative.

The film was a huge and massive success and to suggest that perhaps there was something broken or deficient about the structure proved difficult to back up. We took umbrage with the apparent lack of a consistent and impactful Obstacle Character Throughline and felt the lack of a true Relationship Story Throughline--but that didn't seem to bother the rest of the world. Our dual ratings of Structure and Entertainment furthered the confusion for those who felt the film functioned appropriately on all levels.

Enter novelist Sebastien de Castell, writer of the popular Traitor's Blade series and his counter-argument for why Guardians of the Galaxy proved so successful:

The main structural criticism you cite with the film is the weak IC and RS throughlines because the only relationship that seems to be going on between Peter and another character is with Gamora—a sort of unfulfilled romance that is, at best, weak sauce. I agree completely. However when I ask myself what relationship in at the heart of the story, it’s the relationship of the team - not something between two individuals. Each of three characters—Gamora, Drax, and Rocket—represent the IC and are trying to force Peter to stop trying to make them into a team.

Despite how Peter starts the story—pretending to be a lone wolf out for himself, he’s actually desperate to have a family again because he’s never gotten over the death of his mother. That’s why the moment he connects with the other characters (in the prison complex), he immediately tries to get them to work as a team—first to save Gamora, then to escape the prison itself.

Throughout the movie, Gamora (“You’re too self-centered to care about others, Peter”), Rocket (“Everyone’s out for themselves”), and Drax (“I don’t care about anything except avenging my dead family”) handoff the role of IC as they push back against Peter’s steadfast desire to believe they can be a team together and do something good for the galaxy. Sometimes they do it with statements, sometimes with actions (Rocket and Drax getting into a drunken fight.)

The one person who starts to have faith in Peter’s position is Groot. When Groot sacrifices himself to save the others as the ship is crashing, he’s presaging the climactic moment during which all four throughlines converge: Peter grabs the gem out of the air, knowing it means death for him, but Gamora, Drax and Rocket complete the IC throughline when they change to Peter’s way of thinking. All three take Peter’s hand—that’s the act that signals both their acceptance of his approach and the coming together of the team.

By doing so, they complete the RS, because there’s no question anymore that this is a team. Finally, in that same instant, the OS is completed (stone is destroyed, preventing Ronan from destroying Xandar) and Peter’s MC story completes because he’s finally got his new family (we even see him thinking back to his mom before she died.)

So my argument is that if we accept the ‘team’ itself as the IC, the whole structure actually does fit perfectly into the Dramatica storyform model and explains why the film isn’t just fun fluff but actually feels genuinely satisfying to the audience.

Besides finding an opportunity to use "presaging" in a sentence, Sebastien nails the thematic undertones of the film.

It will take another viewing of the film to nail down the exact storyform, but right off the bat it would seem that Peter's Avoidance is really a function of his Main Character Focus rather than an actual Problem. This would signify an Objective Story Problem and Obstacle Character Problem(or collective Obstacle Character Problems) of Oppose and a corresponding Solution of Support--both story points that support Sebastien's wonderful explanation above.

Attitude would take over as the Objective Story Issue which sounds five-thousand times better, especially in a comedy action/adventure like Guardians.

As always, if you read something here you don't quite agree with or see differently please feel free to contact us. The right storyform is infinitely more important than our storyform...