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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Their arrival would seem less convenient if it was the Ravagers, not the Sovereign, who shot down the Milano. Like I said, the movie had no pressing need for a source of mooks.
EDIT: Also, if the intent was to mask the fact that Ego's the villain, having his first appearance in the film be to godstomp the Sovereign's fleet in a single blow certainly didn't help. We meet Ultimate Destroyer Ego before we even know his name.
edited 10th Aug '17 5:22:55 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Eh, I don't think they were really trying to hide Ego's villainy from anyone except the Guardians themselves, and even there, Mantis starts hinting that something's off almost as soon as we meet them. Another pulp trope.
Both the Sovereign and the Ravagers might have worked better if they were even more divorced from the proceedings, if it were even *more* a case of random bad luck causing all these things to pile up at once. That's very true to the kind of story and characters we've got here.
edited 10th Aug '17 5:33:15 PM by Unsung
Also, in the first Guardians movie, Yondu outright calls Ego a jackass as his rationale for not delivering Peter to him. So. Like. I really don't think it's that much of a surprise in the film when Ego turns out to be a jackass.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
The average moviegoer isn't really going to piece all that together right away, though. A lot of people I know who saw the film were genuinely surprised when Ego turned out to be evil, even those who saw the first film.
People like you and I and the rest of this thread just walk a genre-savvier path.
edited 10th Aug '17 6:01:08 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Ego's the deeper, more interesting character, obviously, and if you're counting every sweeping vista of the Living Planet as an extension of Kurt Russell, then he gets some pretty great visual moments as well. But all his best scenes tend to belong to Peter more than him, which is understandable and not really a problem per se. But it does mean that Ronan owns his scenes in a way Ego doesn't, and as a pure, scenery-devouring, mustache-and-top-hat evil overlord, I do like what Lee Pace pulls off with Ronan. I wish we could see more of him, which is praise I wouldn't necessarily give for most of the MCU's other one-and-done Big Bads.
The thing about Ego is that I don't think he was being deliberately deceitful about being in love with Meredith or wanting to bond with Peter. He genuinely wanted to.
He's just too alien- too fundamentally different from all other life in the galaxy -to actually experience that kind of interpersonal connection, but he deluded himself into believing he could feel love without ever realizing that casually murdering your children in droves or putting a tumor in your girlfriend's brain are not how one goes about expressing that love. After all, it's not like he's the one dying, so it can't be that wrong, can it? As a solitary, unique specimen he presumably never evolved an instinctual urge to protect anything but his own life the way other lifeforms did.
edited 10th Aug '17 7:25:11 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!I also always got the feeling that he put the cancer in Meredith's head specifically because he was starting to care too much for her and was straying him from his path. The way he says "It really hurt me to put the tumor in her head" always struck me as genuine, like he genuinely feels somewhat bad about it, but felt hey, it had to be done.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."That's how I take it too. I try to take villains' emotions at face value, and that was a profound one. I do believe that he viewed it as a Necessary Evil.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
x4 ...Dang, I hadn't thought of that. Flashbacks! That would be *awesome*.
And yeah, while I don't think Ego's actions are understandable in the sense of being sympathetic, I can see how, from his perspective, dying of a tumour in a few years or old age in a few decades is a completely meaningless difference. He's millions of years old, it's a drop in the ocean. It still makes him a monster, but not necessarily a malicious one: he's a manifestation of an uncaring universe, incapable of understanding what it means to truly care for anyone other than himself, because he never even *met* anyone else until he was already millions of years old.
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That too.
edited 10th Aug '17 7:54:14 PM by Unsung
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That's not a feeling you're having, that's explicitly what he says in the movie. That his love for Meredith was steering him away from his life's goal so he killed her to keep himself focused, the same way you might throw out your fattening foods to stay on a diet or turn off your phone so it doesn't distract you during work.
Obviously it doesn't make him any less of an asshole, but it does add some interesting depth to the character that a lot of villains lack.
edited 10th Aug '17 7:34:11 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!I say "feeling I have" because I remember a lot of discussion when the movie came out whether he was being sincere about it or not.
To me, the idea of Ego is that he is somewhat capable of empathy, but only in a superficial level. Ego is, as it so appears, first and foremost a thrill-seeker. He is frequently bored and his existence spins around finding ways to entertain himself (thus the vast landscape he created for himself and his love for earthly music, also his quips about how he enjoyed "mixing his DNA" with other species). He's a hedonist at his core. So his connection to people is colored under that lens and that lens alone. Meredith was to Ego what chocolate is to you or me, a tasty entertainment but just that, and the point that entertainment starts to be costly in some way (so get in the way of Ego's shenanigans or in our case, health problems), we cut it out. We all love chocolate but not like we would love a person. I think.
And likewise, only a monster would put a tumor in a chocolate.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Found the Living Planet. Someone turn into a gigantic pacman and tackle him.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The Sovereign do have a purpose in the plot...partly they provide action scenes, partly they are needed for the conflict between Rocket and Peter and partly they do serve as a smoke screen concerning the true villain. Savvy movie goers are naturally onto Ego the moment he turns up, but at least beforehand they offered a possible alternative in the advertising. I would also add that they are the reason why the Ravengers are looking for Peter in the first place, but that is actually something they could have explained away with the crew wanting revenge for him stealing the stone.
When it comes to Ronan vs Ego...I see Ronan as a traditional Disney Villain, hammy and with no need for a lot of motivation. The important part about him is that he is a believable threat and comes close to killing the heroes multiple times (and that he doesn't manage is not due to incompetence, but because they are too insignificant in his eyes to ensure that they are actually dead). Ego on the other hand is more one of those modern surprise villain. It is not much a surprise - but then, neither are the Disney ones, the only time they pulled of a surprise was with King Candy and in this case the surprise was more his actual identity and not that he was evil. Ego is similar. It is not really a surprise that he is a villain, but I nevertheless bought into him loving Meredith and being excited about having found Peter - because in both cases he actually is from his own perspective.
Bottom line: Ronan is more entertaining, but there has never been a villain I hated as much as I hate Ego. He is really crossing all lines.

I do think the Sovereign are necessary as a fake main villain, though, to throw the scent off of Ego. Without them, you're left with just the dumb mutineers who are obviously not Big Bad material, making it too obvious that Ego will be the final villain from a meta-narrative perspective.
edited 10th Aug '17 5:18:01 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!