Favorite Characters: Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy)

While I’ve always liked Gamora, it took a while for me to warm up to her to the same extent that I did the other Guardians.  She’s the most serious and most reserved of the team, so a) it takes a little more time to get to know her and b) she’s not as instantly crowd-pleasing as a character like Rocket or Groot.  She fits well into the “stoic female badass” category with the likes of Aeryn Sun, Zoë Washburne, and, to borrow from elsewhere in the MCU, Black Widow, but to me, she at felt first a little more distant as a character, and I'm not quite sure why (a few Gamora-related spoilers.)

Kidnapped/“raised” by Thanos, the guy who killed her entire race, Gamora, like her adopted sister and fellow captive Nebula, was brought up to be a living weapon.  Though not as technologically enhanced as her sister, Gamora is no less deadly, and she fights with ruthless efficiency.  However, she enters the first Guardians movie prepared to blow up that part of her life, betraying Thanos by intercepting the Orb.  Knowing the Orb’s capabilities, as well as the atrocities Thanos has promised to Ronan in exchange for it, Gamora can’t be a part of that machine anymore, and she claws her way out.

Initially, the plan is merely to sell the Orb to a third party and then use the money to disappear, but when Gamora gets tangled up with the other Guardians and things get dicey with Ronan and the Orb, she ultimately decides to step up and take a stand against Ronan and Thanos’s brands of destruction.  She risks her life more than once in order to thwart the Kree terrorist and her warlord “adopted father,” but she does it – I don’t want to say “willingly,” because it’s not that exactly.  It’s not that she’s energetically rolling her sleeves up about being the hero and doing the right thing.  It’s more that these are horrors too great, and, when faced with them, Gamora doesn’t see any choice other than the right one.

All the Guardians make up an unlikely team, but of all of them, Gamora is probably the most on the periphery.  Although they all have trust issues and clash when working together, she doesn’t make a lot of the same overtures to get to know the others; even in the second film, when they’ve been together for a while, she still only puts herself out there a tiny bit.  This is an understandable facet of her personality, though.  She’s very guarded in general, always on the ready for an attack, which lends itself to being more serious, and on a much bigger note, she was raised by the genocidal maniac who kidnapped her after killing her entire race.  Growing up in a time bomb like that, she learned not to give away her vulnerabilities, to present herself as hardened, to bury her feelings.  I like seeing her uncomfortable dynamic with Peter in the second movie because you see how Gamora is basically, slowly, attempting to learn emotional openness as a second language.  She knows what Peter wants from her, but she doesn’t yet know how to provide that, and it’s frustrating for both of them.

Interestingly, Gamora is at her most open, I think, with Nebula.  Even though Nebula is even more guarded than Gamora is and spends a lot of her screentime in both movies trying to kill Gamora, she’s the only one who knows what it was like – the only one who experienced childhood under Thanos’s corrupting control and constant threats.  With Nebula, Gamora is better able to drop the aloofness and show what she’s really feeling.  But over time, as she grows more able to trust Peter and the others, I hope she’ll learn to let her guard down more.

I, Tonya (2017, R)

This is the last Oscar film that I saw prior to the nominations coming out, and honestly, it’s one of my favorites so far.  Just a really well-put-together story about a bit of history that I only knew the bare bones about, with great acting and a really engaging style.  I would’ve like to have seen it recognized for more than its two acting nominations.

Tonya Harding, propelled by her ambitious grit and further spurred by her abusive mother, devotes her life to figure skating greatness.  Although she achieves historic firsts for women in the sport, Tonya feels she’s continually ranked below her worth at competitions – she has the talent, but not the looks or wholesome background that the judges are looking for.  The media fosters a “white trash” vs. “America’s sweetheart” dynamic between her and Nancy Kerrigan, and as Tonya works toward her Olympic dreams, her ex-husband begins to concoct a plan to give her a leg up on the competition.

First off, I love the way the film is set up.  It’s not done full mockumentary style, but the action is interspersed with numerous characters speaking directly to the camera in response to interview questions that we mostly don’t see.  At times, they contradict one another, as well as what we see onscreen, and there are even a couple instances of a character breaking the fourth wall in the middle of a scene to say, “That never happened.”  This signals to the audience throughout that our narrators are unreliable and we can’t necessarily trust what we’re seeing/hearing, which allows the film to sell its take on the “incident” with Nancy Kerrigan (basically, who know what and when) without claiming that its version is gospel.  It’s almost a bit Tom Stoppard-esque in the way it undermines its veracity to keep you cognizant of the fact that we don’t know for sure exactly how it went down.

There’s a lot to like in this movie.  The narrative is snappy and darkly funny, and the film has a talent for knowing when to let its heavy subject matter get serious and when to treat it with an ironic wink.  I really like the themes the movie explores, especially the class and image issues that thwart Tonya in competitions and during the media frenzy after the “incident” that, in her mind, cast her as the villain people need.  As far as the story and structure go, my only quibble is that the film starts to drag a little post-incident.  It just takes a while to get things wrapped up and doesn’t feel as tight as the movie had up till that point.

The acting is uniformly excellent.  As Tonya and her mother LaVona, Margot Robbie and Allison Janney earn their Oscar nominations and then some.  Robbie is an electric lead, by turns brash and combative and vulnerable, and Janney is compelling to watch, especially when LaVona and Tonya are alone onscreen together.  I also want to single out Sebastian Stan, who does terrific work as Tonya’s ex-husband Jeff.  It’s the first time I’ve seen Stan play a character with such a distinct voice and mannerisms, and he sells it for me, along with helping me understand the complex nature of Jeff and Tonya’s fraught relationship.

Warnings

Swearing, violence, sexual content, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements (including abuse.)

Countdown to Thirteen: Broadchurch: Series 2, Episode 5 (2015)

Pretty decent episode.  Interesting development coming along in the Sandbrook mystery, and there are some good bits in the trial plot, although they mostly take place outside the courtroom.  There are definitely things going on here whose results I care about, and that hasn’t always been true this season.

Ellie goes over Hardy’s old Sandbrook files, and the two discuss new theories in the case.  Meanwhile, Sharon digs for other witnesses for the defense, attempting to strongarm one and getting surprised by another.  In the Latimer household, Mark seems ready to put the past behind them and focus on the good, but Beth can’t move forward without looking back.  She’s anxious to do something positive in Danny’s name, and while she’s been offered an outlet to do so, she’s not sure if it’s the right path for her.

The Sandbrook plot give us some nice examples of Ellie in smart-detective mode, which is always welcome to me.  The actual piece of uncovered evidence that starts leading her and Hardy down a new path seems convenient to me (if she found it in his case files, why wasn’t it something he investigated at the time?), but I like her dedication, and she puts forth a bold theory that impresses me a little.

As I said, the trial stuff is okay this time around, mostly because we spend so little of it on Sharon making outrageous claims against the witnesses she’s questioning on the stand.  Instead, we’re behind the curtain a little more, looking into people who might be willing or could be coerced into testifying on the killer’s behalf.  It offers a bit of good interpersonal stuff with characters we haven’t seen as much of this season.

While this is yet another fairly Beth-light episode (she is getting less to do this season – I don’t think my recollections of series 1 can be that skewed, since I rewatched it so recently,) it whets my appetite for what I hope is better to come.  Beth’s ongoing dilemma with how to honor Danny’s memory is interesting to me, and the plot the show seems to be setting up for her has a lot of potential (however, done wrong, it could also blow up spectacularly, so I’m admittedly a bit wary,) but they’ve been spinning their wheels with it a little.  I’m ready for some real forward movement on this front.