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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I really like Mantis's look but I'm still kind of salty that she will be an alien rather than an Asian human like in the comics.
Looking at the year's "Best Film" list, I (almost) kind of feel bad for Marvel who has to take the brunt of the alleged "Comic Book fatigue" from the other studios's bad movies and crazy conspiracies about bribing critics even when they're the only ones that trying to produce decent products rather than half-baked cynical cash grab (Bv S, Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse). (Almost being the relative term, not making up for the lack of racial and gender diversity in their movie leads)
edited 4th Dec '16 8:10:49 PM by shatterstar
Basically, Mantis's history is one that involves a massive amount of continuity and two shifts through other publishers (the writer who created her, Steven Englehart, basically took her along with him to other books he was writing). Mantis started off as a half-Vietnamese, half-German woman who was raised by the Priests of Pama (a sect of Kree) in order to become the Celestial Madonna and mate with a tree alien called the Cotati to give birth to the "Celestial Messiah," the most important being in the universe. Eventually, she did get married to a Cotati who had possessed the dead body of the Swordsman (long story) and then went off to have his baby, which she named Sequoia, but the pregnancy caused her to manifest new powers and green skin and then she was forced to give up her baby and then she split into different versions and then she became the bride of Kang, but that turned out to be a Space Phantom.
Also, she never referred to herself as "I," only as "this one," e.g. "This one is known as Mantis!"
I don't think it would've been a good idea for Mantis to be Asian in the movies anyway, given she was a stereotypical Vietnamese prostitute born of an Asian Babymama. And I totally get Gunn's "no humans aside from Quill" rule even if it means no Richard Rider Nova or anything like that.
Xandarians are plenty human enough without any more Earthlings.
I wouldn't mind if they did treat this Groot as a completely new being— that'd be the less predictable tack to take— but the Doylist in me has to believe that the filmmakers are going to want to have their cake and eat it, too (which I don't really have a problem with). So they can have Cute!Groot and Rocket in the same movie, but they still have an option to draw upon and hark back to their long-term friendship. If anyone has an excuse for Genetic Memory, it's a propagated sapling who grew from a piece of a plant-based being already known for rapid regeneration and customized growth for a wide variety of different situations.
I won't mind Peter/Gamora as long as it is the result of them working together and he cleaning up his act. I wouldn't have liked it in the first movie, because they barely knew each other and Gamora is too smart to fall for someone like him.
Thus said, I am actually not sure if that's what the movie is going for...after all, Mantis emphasises that Peter's feelings are of sexual nature. That doesn't necessarily translate into him wanting to spend the rest of his life with her.
I'm getting really tired of the obligatory romance plotlines popping up in the MCU. If Marvel thinks they're clever putting the tiniest spins on it like in Doctor Strange where Palmer is an ex-lover, and GOTG where it's purely sexual, it's like tossing a beanbag in front of a flood hoping it'll be a bulwark against audience fatigue. A big part of why I like the first Avengers and TWS so much is because they avoided it.
It's not like the romances really help MCU films. Actually I'd say almost as many films suffer from having romance elements in them than the other way around. Both Thor movies, AOU, Ant-Man, Civil War. And of the ones that aren't hurt by it (the IM series), two of them benefit from following up on a successful one anyway. Enough is enough.
edited 4th Dec '16 11:51:44 PM by AlleyOop

I got the latter impression. Him going off the the rails with the doom button is a nice call back to him going off the rails with on Rocket's extremely technical plan in the first movie.