Thomas Roach on why an Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy team-up would be a mess…
With the success of Guardians of the Galaxy many fans have suggested that we will see the Guardians team up with the Avengers. As this has happened in other forms of media there is no reason to doubt that it is on the cards for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These characters all exist in the same universe and are currently linked by the villain Thanos, and so they may cross paths in a movie in the near future, with some expecting The Avengers 3 will see both these teams unite in order to take on the Mad Titan is an epic battle.
I have doubts that this will happen and if it did it would certainly be a mess. Some would argue, including myself, that if you have a team up movie as long as you have given each character plenty of development then a large team won’t be a problem on screen. However by the time Avengers 3 comes round both the Avengers and the Guardians will have new additions to their rosters, for which we would not have had enough development. Even in Guardians some characters need a lot more development, but we will get that in the sequel set for 2017. And we will likely get some additions to the Guardians – fans have suggested Nova, Adam Warlock and Vance Astro. The Guardians could grow from a team of 5 to 7 or even 8. If they all teams up alongside the Avengers roster we would have a very large team indeed.
With Avengers: Age of Ultron we are getting three new characters who are joining the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes – Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and the Vision, while Rhodey a.k.a. War Machine is also set to be in the line up but may have a smaller role. That’s in addition to the established team of Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow. Throw in the Guardians and this would be too many characters on screen at one time. I feel that the actions scenes cutting between the large line up of Avengers and Guardians would make for sloppy filmmaking.
There are rumours that some of the Avengers are going to be killed off to make room for the new characters, but I think the line up will now be the same until Avengers 3. Some of the Guardians may be killed off in their sequel, or be absent from a future team-up movie. It would make more sense for just some of the Guardians to team up with the Avengers, maybe even just Star-Lord as he is from Earth, assuming the battle takes place on Earth. However, both Gamorra and Drax the Destroyer want revenge on Thanos, so we’d expect to see them too.
Maybe talk of a team-up movie is just to get fans excited. The Guardians could take on Thanos in their sequel and believe that he is defeated. That way both the Guardians and the Avengers could fight the character on separate occasions without the screen becoming saturated with lots of characters.
This is not to say I don’t have faith in the creative teams at Marvel Studios but I personally feel a team that is too cluttered would take away from the story, and turn it into nothing but a visual spectacle with no depth. It would be fun to see some of the characters from Avengers and Guardians interact with each other, but a film that incorporates both teams could easily turn out to be a mess. However if Marvel can make it work, then that would be great…
Would you like to see The Avengers teaming up with the Guardians of the Galaxy? Let us know your thoughts…
Thomas Roach
Originally published August 10, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
