"Guardians of the Galaxy" Heroic Analysis of Peter “Star Lord” Quill

 

“What has the galaxy ever done for you? Why would you want to save it?” ~ Gamora

“Because I’m one of the idiots who lives in it.” ~ Peter Quill

Spoilers ahead:

Nearly everything about director James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy represents the mark of a heroic quest of good versus evil, so it is only natural that I would want to analyze the films primary protagonist Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), soon to be known throughout all of the Galaxy as “Star Lord.” This is not to claim that Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (Vin Diesel), or Rocket (Bradley Cooper) are not heroes in their own rights, but for the sake of this particular dissection I will be using the most familiar, archetypal hero of the five. As the sole human (well…) among the group, he is easily the most relatable hero of the bunch. One last warning that this analysis includes major spoilers, so if you have not seen the film stop while you are ahead. It may also run fairly long, so I will try my best to keep it in the traditional journey order as much as possible. No promises.

Quill is a young boy when he is abducted from Earth in 1988 just moments after his human mother dies from cancer (I warned you, didn’t I?). At first I thought that Earth represented Quill’s ordinary world, however the film uses this merely as exposition to the character and not so much the uncomfortable home one would expect the hero to have to leave. The story then progresses 26 years into the future to the current year of 2014, and the viewer sees Quill a lot more comfortable than the child he is at the start of the film. As a kid, he is afraid because his mother is dying in the hospital. He can’t even grab her hand, which is her last wish before she dies. This sets him up for a future atonement, but because we don’t see his story for those 26 years, and we see him being a brilliant Ravager, I think that his ordinary world is one of space sexcapades and robbery. But even then, home for Quill is not marked by his immediate location, but is rather a more lucid locale. The expression that goes “home is where your heart is,” rings very true for Peter’s case because he carries it everywhere he goes in the form of his 1980s Walkman and mixtape labeled “Awesome Mix. Vol. 1.” This is the part of him that connects 1988 Peter Quill with 2014 Peter Quill. So to mark this we have some amazing scenes like the better introduction to the film where Peter is on the planet Morag doing what he does best, scavenging, all while he jams out to 1974s earth tune “Come and Get Your Love.”

Peter Quill gets his call to adventure when he finds the orb containing the Tesseract Infinity Stone. He has his first confrontation, though he does not know it, with a threshold guardian (hereafter just guardian) in the form of Korath (Djimon Hounsou), who fills the roles of shadow and guardian. Korath and gang attempt to stop Peter from leaving Morag with the orb and are willing to kill him, so Peter must fight them and escape the planet. Quill does not know what the orb contains, but for now he is content with defeating his adversary so that he can return with his faux elixir and obtain his boon, which at this point is money. His meeting with Korath on Morag acts as a herald for the events to come. Quill is targeted by Ronan (Lee Pace) who is after the stone for his boss, Thanos (Josh Brolin), and Quill’s decision to betray the group who sent him to obtain the stone also causes the rest of the Ravagers to be depicted as shadows and guardians in lieu of mentors and allies as well.

Now that Peter has double crossed him, Yondu (Michael Rooker) has to cut off his hand just to get off of the roof and escape the zombies that threaten to break the chains and eat his brains (Wait, what?). He is so mad that he puts a 40k bounty out for anyone that can successfully capture Peter and deliver him alive. Taking a deeper look at Yondu reveals that Peter may mean more to him than he lets on. Of course he still has the wrappings made from condom rubber, but he is still Peter’s father figure. Yondu leads the group of bounty hunters, if you will, called the Ravagers, and they were hired to bring Peter to his father. Instead of doing so, Yondu raises Peter from a young boy into a man. This is interesting to note because this marks a crucial change in the hero/villain relationship, and it suggests that there may be more to the story. Every time Yondu threatens Peter he never ends up killing him, perhaps because he has a fatherly fondness towards Peter no matter what trouble he causes, which seems to be a lot. Yondu’s interaction with Peter serves to mark a change in the hero’s situation. This decision to leave the Ravagers and be a free agent notes that Peter is beginning to face a more serious change in his life. He is about to cross over a threshold for which there is no return. He could easily take the orb to Yondu and be done with it, yet it is his decision not to which moves his adventure in the trajectory of a hero.

After attempting to sell the orb to his original buyer and being unsuccessful, Peter has reached an impasse and must figure out what to do. He has not yet crossed over the first threshold for he has yet to accept the call. Although he has the special item that will link him to the extraordinary world, he has not realized what it is. He is still just promiscuous galaxy thief, which is displayed by his initial interaction with Gamora. When Gamora attacks him and tries to take the orb, he begins to realize that the orb is special, though he continues to actively refuse the quest. He is currently a character with no goals for the future and selfish desires.

A lot of people have noted that Ronan, Nebula, Thanos, and to some degree Yondu are all flat villains and are the weakest points in the film because they don’t have enough motive. I argue that in relationship to Peter’s heroic journey this is not the case and each of them has just enough backstory and motive to make them reasonably villainous in their own regard. But before I continue with Quill’s hero’s journey, I need to show why Ronan is a good shadow to him. Ronan has his motives in that he has a reasonable, though prejudice, hatred towards all Xandarians. Xandarians killed his ancestors, and he directly mentions his father, and his sole purpose is revenge. He desperately seeks a way to exact that revenge, so his discover of the Infinity Stone is timely and makes his motives, though we are not on his side, just in his own opinion. What marks a great villain is that he is not one dimensional, so Ronan is not a great villain per se, at least in this iteration of the character, because he is depicted as being single-minded, but he definitely is not void of motives and beliefs so he cannot be called flat. Lastly, he serves as one of the main shadow characters in Peter’s journey because he wants the opposite of what Peter inevitably discovers that he wants; Ronan wants to destroy while Peter wants to, though for selfish reasons at first, protect.

After the altercation on Xandar Peter, Rocket Groot, and Gamora are all transported to the Kyln Prison. The entire prison scene, in my opinion, represents Peter’s refusal of the call to adventure. Everything he does is selfish because he wants to make money. He stops Drax from killing Gamora because he is interested in her buyer. He stays with Groot and Rocket because they are going to “protect” him while he is in prison. He still has not accepted the fact that he has, or had at this point, a highly important artifact that some big league names are after. Even though Peter agrees to take the orb to the Collector after escaping, he is still only in it for the money. He is still in his ordinary world of space banditry, literally in a prison because of his crimes. He even risks failing his escape to get the one piece of home he has left, and this tells the viewer that he is not ready to cross.

So the gang escapes prison and heads to Knowhere (One of the best names ever). Peter also now has his complete motley crew of allies and is ready to accept his adventure and cross the threshold into a world unknown, just as soon as he meets a mentor. We have Rocket and Groot who, though at first represent guardians along with Gamora, are depicted as allies and trickster figures for their comedic eccentricities. There is Gamora, who is an ally whom also represents a goddess figure for Peter. She later becomes his love interest and fits the meeting with the goddess archetype because she is arguably the herald to his ultimate decision to accept the call. Lastly, Drax is an ally, but at this point represents a herald more so because he calls Ronan, which sets up the guardian confrontation Peter has to face immediately after accepting the call and crossing over the first threshold. The only figure Peter needs in his life is a mentor, who comes in the form of the Collector. I have not read the comic books and I do not know who the collector is (but I’m sure I’ll have to look into his backstory sometime down the line seeing as how I analyze heroes). But in the film, the collector brings to light all the power that the Orb holds. He is wise about the orb and shares his knowledge with Quill and crew. In this way, he teaches Peter something. He gives peter the gift of knowledge, and also the literal gift of the Infinity Stone (arguably not because he did want it for himself, yolo I suppose). And lastly, the collector is a veteran of both worlds, which every mentor must be.

Halfway through the film and Peter finally accepts the call, or is rather at last forced to do so. He meets Ronan face to face and attempts to flee, though he fails and the Infinity Stone is stolen. His accepting of the call comes when he sacrifices himself to save Gamora. She is about to die, and this causes him to do the only selfless thing he has done up until this point in the film. After saving her life, they are captured by the Ravagers. The Ravagers once again present a trial for Peter, though this time they serve to represent the Belly of the Whale moment for Peter. Money is still a temptation for Peter, but he fights it in order to save the Galaxy that is about to be destroyed. While in this stage, Quill also undergoes his preparation phase. He is getting ready to face his final shadow and become the hero that he is meant to be and save the galaxy.

The last confrontation with Ronan is crucial because it contains a lot of the last few steps in the hero’s journey. The classic chase occurs when Peter, his team, and the Ravagers all race to Xandar to stop Ronan from destroying it. Peter has accepted his call and is acting heroically in the face of opposition. He goes from being selfish to selfless. He faces threshold guardians when breaking into Ronan’s ship and facing his minions, and I am calling Nebula nothing more than a supped up minion. Peter passes all these trials. He faces shadows and guardians, and then he successfully defeats Ronan by shooting him off of his ship. Nope! This marks Peter’s ordeal moment, or his (Abyss). He thinks he defeats the villain, but the villain gets away and is not defeated. Peter does not get the elixir at this point and has to face death before obtaining the reward.

When Peter grabs the Infinity Stone, he is the most selfless he can be. He is willing to risk his life in order to save all of the people of Xandar and has become a true hero. In this moment, Peter nearly reaches a physical death while simultaneously seizing the sword. He has his “atonement with the father,” which is represented, in this case, by his mother when grabs Gamora’s hand. But Peter does not die, and with the help of his allies (the hero can never succeed without them) he overcomes this death and is “born” a true hero with his defeat of Ronan. What follows represent Peter’s return with the elixir. He has now atoned and is ready to face the future and forgives himself for his shortcomings of the past. The Nova Corp releases Peter and his teams from any and all previous crimes and deems them the official “Guardians of the Galaxy.”