Of the
five guardians, Drax is probably the one with the least dimension (even with
only saying three words, there really is a lot
to Groot,) but that doesn’t really lessen his value for me as a character. He still has a few interesting angles to him and
is hugely entertaining (a few spoilers.)
The rest
of the motley not-yet-a-team meet Drax when they’re thrown into prison, and
they don’t get off to the best start.
Like many of their fellow prisoners, Drax has it in for Gamora due to
her ties to Ronan. Drax’s wife and
daughter were killed by Ronan, and ever since, Drax has made it his life’s
mission to avenge their deaths. He’s
taken out a number of Ronan’s lackeys, earning himself the title Drax the
Destroyer, and plans very decidedly to add Gamora to his list. What he doesn’t know, though, is that Gamora
hates Ronan as much as he does and was in the process of double-crossing him
when she was picked up by the police. Whether
he doesn’t believe her or doesn’t feel that makes a difference, Drax doesn’t
care what Gamora says about her true allegiance, and it’s only when Peter
points that Ronan will come after Gamora for betraying him (leading him
straight to Drax) that Drax reluctantly agrees not to kill her.
Cheery
first impression, right? In light of
these circumstances, Drax comes at the alliance from a very different place
than the other guardians. While the
other four are motivated by the money they can get from selling the Orb (Gamora
wants it so she can disappear, while the others mainly just want to be rich,)
Drax is focused on one thing:
revenge. For him, it’s all about
that showdown with Ronan. He’s spent
years of his life working towards that single goal, like an alien Inigo
Montoya, and he joins the guardians for the sole purpose of chasing it. As such, he doesn’t care about the Orb or the
money, and having such different priorities at times puts him at odds with the
rest of the team; he chafes when it’s taking too long for Ronan to come to
them, and his actions in response to that jeopardizes more than just their
fencing of the Orb.
But any
discussion of Drax has to include my favorite thing about him: his people don’t understand figurative
language. I love this quirk of his. The
fact that he takes everything literally gives him some awesome lines and great
reactions to other characters. His
confusion over the whole “finger on the throat means death” thing with Peter is
a hoot, and I think my biggest laugh of the first movie might be his solemn
declaration, “Nothing goes over my head.
My reflexes are too fast; I would catch it.” I like cultural differences like this between
alien races, and I’m always up for
fun language jokes. Love. Unfortunately, while he still provides a lot
of comic relief in Vol. 2, it doesn’t
work nearly as well for me. As I’ve said
before, the second film exchanges much of that specific comedy (being
completely literal) for a more generic portrayal of a dumb brute. In my Vol.2 review, I called it Strax Syndrome.
Before I
go, I also have to mention the one Drax moment in the first film that really pisses
me off. I hate when he calls Gamora a
“green whore.” Now, I’ve heard the
explanation that it’s because other prisoners call her that when she first
arrives, but 1) that feels way too thin to justify a fairly gross jokes, and 2)
by this point, he’s spent enough time with Gamora to know that she’s no more a
“whore” than he is a “thesaurus” (for which he roundly scorned Peter.) So why is he still going with the inaccurate
words he heard people use instead of the literal evidence of his eyes? Stupid, and so not worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment