Meanwhile ... Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 opened this past weekend. I haven't seen it yet (a situation I will remedy asap, I hope) but that is beside the point. As part of the overall Marvel/Disney promotional blitz, there are a ton of tie-in products flooding various media markets, including some books aimed at elementary school kids starring Rocket and Groot. The little guy (who is now at the tail end of third grade) borrowed one of these books from his classroom library and really liked it.
This, of course, got me thinking that the little guy might enjoy watching the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. As a sign of how much things have changed since our in-home viewing of The Muppets, making plans to watch GotG together is not all that outre. Yes, it's a PG-13 movie, and yes, he's only eight and a half, but then again, it wouldn't even be the first PG-13 movie he'd ever seen. He's gotten four installments into the Harry Potter films, and the other day he watched the original Jurassic Park, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple others. Not to say that his mother and I have simply surrendered the point and now let him watch anything he expresses interest in without a second thought; rather, we've entered the phase of giving consideration to individual movies. Is it PG-13 because of sci-fi violence and a couple of fleeting expletives? That's probably fine. Is it PG-13 because of ... "adult" situations, or blunt suggestions thereof? Less shrug-worthy, more careful consideration required. And so it goes. At least he still listens to us, and likely will for another couple of years (if memory serves I was at least in fifth grade before I was ignoring my parents completely and smart enough to keep things secret if I sussed out they'd rather not know about it anyway). We might as well actively parent while the friction level is low.
So, the thought of sitting down on the couch to watch Guardians of the Galaxy on Blu-ray with my little guy occurs. And it is an attractive idea! I really do love that movie. (Re-reading my original assessment of the flick from the summer it came out, I'm a bit taken aback by how I sound, as if I merely liked it, as if it were good but not great. My affection has only increased over time, I suppose.) And as I was mulling over the possibility, considering it from all angles, not least the non-zero chance that maybe the little guy wouldn't especially take a shine to it, I started thinking about how the anachronistic soundtrack is one of the best things about the movie. From the moment "Come and Get Your Love" kicked on during the opening credits, the movie more or less had me in the palm of its hand.
To say nothing of the use of Blue Swede and the Runaways, and maybe most especially Baby Groot grooving to "I Want You Back" ... I mean, COME ON. So good, at least to me and my cohort, right? But I confess I've been pretty slack about indoctrinating my children to the classics, so the Awesome Mix might not be particularly emotionally resonant.
Y'all, I swear to you, it was just this past week that I finally put it together that Guardians of the Galaxy had used the exact same demographic manipulative trickery as The Muppets.
Because ... because ... see, the anachronistic soundtrack in GotG, the Awesome Mix qua mixtape, that's an actual, integral part of the storyline of the movie. It matters, maybe not in resolving the plot of who controls The Orb, but certainly in terms of Star-Lord's emotional arc. It's all he has left of his mom, and as we see at the outset it's been a long time since he and his mom (and Earth) were separated so of course it's a throwback, and not just to his childhood but to hers, passed down through the generations ... I thought that was pretty clever storytelling, using the well-established practice of scoring action movies with pop music and making it both diegetic and intrinsically character-revealing. I still do find that satisfyingly clever, and one of the best things about the movie.
But yeah, boil it all down and it's also a blatant attempt to get the audience on Star-Lord's side with ruthless efficiency, because he reminds us of ourselves when we were little kids. Which is not a bad thing. With The Muppets, I was vaguely aware of it and vaguely skeptical at the same time. With GotG, it just slipped right past my defenses and did its job very well, thank you.
In any case, if the little guy and I do end up bonding over the cinematic sci-fi comic book stuff, maybe that will give me an opening to start priming him and his siblings on Marvin Gaye and Norman Greenbaum.
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