Film Theory: The Marvel Gods Have FALLEN! (Guardians of the Galaxy 3)

today we're answering a simple question that's been lingering in my head for a while now what is a God in the MCU yeah it shouldn't be too hard right I am a god you dull creature okay so Loki is a god they are not Gods we're born we live we die okay so as Guardians are not gods someone might want to give that memo to Loki gotta suggest so as Guardians our Gods the humans think are Immortal should we test that oh come on thank you hello Internet welcome to film Theory the show that's genetically engineered to click that subscribe button well loyal theorists after what could charitably be called a complicated series of delays Guardians the Galaxy vol 3 is finally here to help Marvel Studios kick off the beginning of phase five surprised to see me no nope you get out of here Modoc you had your chance yeah so despite a challenging few years for Marvel Studios they got a desperately needed win with guardians the Galaxy vol 3 allowing writer director James Gunn to finish out his story with these characters with a genuinely heartfelt film before he jumps over to his new job running Marvel's main rival DC Studios fun fact by the way Gunn was originally positioned to be sort of a mini Kevin feige at Marvel running the entire Cosmic side of their Universe before Disney temporarily fired him on account of some old controversial tweets thereby allowing DC to swoop in and scoop him up that drama resulted in the new Guardians movie dropping three years after it was originally intended to release which means that there's a timeline out there in the Multiverse where end game would have been followed by Spider-Man far from home and then Guardians 3. it doesn't take a theorist brain to realize that firing gun might just have been one of the biggest unforced errors in cinema history that right there that's a discussion for another day no what I want to talk about today is actually a question that I've seen floating around the internet for a while now what even is a God in the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days between the asgardians the celestials multiversal time travelers beings that seem to exist outside universes it's not really clear what a God is anymore and now in this most recent Guardians film you have the main bad guy the high evolutionary who's explicitly called out to be Godlike characters mentioned that several parts of the Galaxy consider him to be a God the golden people from Guardians 2 The Sovereign they were created by Him and they treat him as their God even the high evolutionary himself straight up screams his thoughts on the matter at us with the very subtle line there is no God that's why I had to step in but for as on the noses that line is is he wrong I mean he did create life after all so is he or is he not a god at this point I'm not really sure if Marvel themselves know the answer you know that's kind of a big deal when several of your latest films revolve around the god-tier characters heck the entire plot of Thor love and thunder was about a villain who wanted to kill all gods maybe the audience should have known what a God was before they ran with that story huh this is My Vow oh God she won't die hey if you manage to figure out who's on that list Gore more power to ya you kinda earned it at that point so if Marvel isn't gonna answer the question in their movies I thought we'd take a crack at it loyal theorists what exactly is a God in the MCU are there any actual gods in the MCU well I think I found the answer in a couple of places you might never imagine so open the freaking door and hop on in loyal theorists it's time to get rolling when you start breaking the question down you start to see some key groups forming the characters of stuff like Greek Norse and Egyptian mythology these tend to be very powerful beings who hold domains over one specific aspect of the universe it can either be tangible measurable stuff like the moon or thunder or more intangible Concepts like War Mischief the MCU has these sorts of characters in Spades as it seems like most major religions throughout the history of Earth are based on them Thor Loki Odin all the other asgardians their picture-perfect examples of this as are the Olympians that we met during love and thunder like Zeus and Hercules there's the Egyptian gods of Moon Knight as well as Namor from wakanda Forever who acts as a representative of Mesoamerican Gods even characters like the eternals seem to fit into this category because apparently several of Earth's myths were based on their lives Humanity once believed we were Gods the flying Superman Icarus evolved into the legend of the boy who flew too close to the Sun the legendary Warrior thina became Athena the goddess of wisdom and warfare Eternal the legendary protector of Athens the goddess of war and yet even at this lowest tier of godhood things get confusing in a hurry spriting the eternals claims that the Greek goddess Athena was inspired by Athena but then we see the Roman deity Minerva wandering around omnipotent City in love and thunder Minerva is the Roman version vision of Athena she's the same goddess she just has a different name how's that work and in general the rest of the omnipotent crew are inconsistent in the way that they choose to manifest sometimes these characters are real physical beings that exist in the material universe who can feel pain and die they are not Gods we're born we live we die just as humans do other times they need people in order to harness their power where Gods like konshu and Moon Knight and Boston black panther have to act through a human representative what are you I serve can't you I'm his Avatar which means you are too sort of conscious yeah Egyptian god of the Moon that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard sort of like an avatar system avatars do people love that film by Avatar you mean that I mean anime and while the human Avatar can die the God remains and the only way to get rid of them is to imprison them in little Idols for thousands of years in every single one of these cases they all seem to just be highly Advanced creatures that are lowly human meat brains confuse for Gods Jane Foster really sums this up best in Thor one well Magic's just science that we don't understand stand yet in general these groups are classified as Gods by the humans in the MCU but they're not actual Gods well sure sometimes they'll call themselves Gods like Loki and Avengers or hella in Ragnarok that's just them flexing their might relative to Their audience when push truly comes to shove and when they're honest with themselves they know deep down that they're not actual Gods you're not a god you know that right as Guardians and Olympians are basically just long-lived very human-looking aliens Namor is just a mutant the eternals are weird flesh robots the closest thing I think we have to actual gods in this category are the Egyptian Pantheon because they do seem to have some outright control over souls and afterlives but even then I'm not convinced that they don't have themselves a physical form hidden out there somewhere in the MCU that can eventually be killed for instance we know Bost from Black Panther has control over the afterlife and acts through a human Avatar just like kanchu in Moon Knight and yet we also see her physical form manifested in omnipotent City during Thor 11 Thunder she's there hanging out with a bunch of other powerful But ultimately killable beings because of that I think we can confidently conclude that none of these characters are actually Gods they're just super powerful mortal beings so what's next then well the second archetype that I can think here is your classic creators characters who are said to have crafted entire worlds simply because they wanted to interestingly the high evolutionary thinks that he fits into this category having created creatures like rocket and The Sovereign but when you actually stop and look at who else is here seems like Herbert might be a bit out of his League it's here that you find characters like the celestials those giant alien robot gods that use Infinity Stones like they're nothing into planets Across the Universe ego The Living Planet from Guardians 2 a Celestial literally wanted to transform every planet he visited into another version of himself the other celestials they've just been seeding worlds with life in an effort to get themselves to reproduce there's also dormammu the big bad evil guy from the first Doctor Strange he's ruler of the dark dimension he eats realities to combine them with himself seems awfully Godlike and when Galactus is eventually added to the universe in the Fantastic Four movie I'd expect him to fall into this category as well but here's the thing these guys aren't really Gods either and again we know this based on their own admission and what's called a Celestial sweetheart a Celestial like a god small Jesus well to lesser beings these creatures would be considered gods again they recognize that there are higher Powers than even themselves they live they have a need to reproduce and they can die if you kill me you'll be just like everybody else the Guardians team spends a lot of time in nowhere which is the head of yet another dead Celestial as for dormammu we see that he's able to be be affected by the Infinity Stones which suggests that he's Bound by the physical limitations of the world as ego says if I don't return regularly to my planet and The Light Within it this form will wither and perish the celestials and or Mamu are powerful and are certainly more powerful than the base level of gods that we talked about before but they're only one rung up on this overall power totem pole what about something more metaphysical characters that exist more like ideas who are said to have created literally everything in existence in the context of the MCU we've only really met one of these so far the cosmic being eternity in Thor love and thunder who had the ability to literally alter Reality by granting any wish put before it eternity what does he mean root eternity eternity is a very powerful being at the center of the universe it will grant the desire of the first person who reaches it based on the statues that we see at eternity's altar there are at least seven of these sorts of entities in the universe altering entire universes on a whim seems like something a true God could do right well yeah in reality but in the MCU it's not quite Godlike enough look at Kang and his variants they've spent eons going throughout the Multiverse erasing entire realities and presumably those realities versions of Eternity and the other gods sure in love and thunder Gore's problem is ultimately solved by making a wish to Eternity but it seems like it could also have been solved by just finding another reality where his daughter didn't die implying to me that eternity is limited to a single Universe listen again to where they have to find eternity in love and thunder the center of the universe not the center of the Multiverse so is Kang then the one in control of the Multiverse a god nope I don't think you can really call any of the Kang variants Gods either he who remains gets killed in his first appearance Kang the Conqueror gets defeated by large ants not very impressive for a God so even though they have the most multiversal power of any of the Creations we've seen yet even they aren't at the top of this Heap honestly when you look up and down the whole hierarchy of power here in the MCU none of the characters we meet really seem to match up with the true idea of what a God should be in one way or another something always cancels them out something can destroy them something can make them mortal and if we'd gone into this Theory a year ago I'd leave it there there are no true gods in the MCU because ultimately there is no higher power but I'm not convinced that that's the case anymore one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in Guardians volume 3 sees rocket raccoon's Consciousness wake up in a misty white room it's here that he speaks with the spirits of his lost friends they tell him that they're flying through the Forever Sky and that he's welcome to join them but just not yet rocket still has a purpose in the world rockathan asks a purpose for what they made us for nothing and his friend disagrees saying there are the hands that make us and then there are the hands that guide the hands now this could all just be happening in Rocket's head this could just be the brain of a dying animal trying to make sense of their life a dramatic moment to add weight to a climactic scene but to me I think this confirms that the MCU has an afterlife one beyond the astral Plains of black panther one beyond the field of reeds and Moon Knight this feels like absolute confirmation that there is some sort of all-powerful force the hands behind the hands a god figure running everything behind the scenes and you won't believe where we really get that answer from Kevin it stands for knowledge one who's making all the decisions here yeah I gotta be honest with you I didn't really expect to get a whole lot of universe altering Knowledge from She-Hulk attorney at law but I think Kevin here this robot insert from Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin feige is literally one of if not the only true God one of the canonical creators of this universe firstly this is how Marvel has tended to do it in the past several times throughout Marvel's 60 plus year comic run many of their characters have encountered a being simply known as the one above all he most famously met the Fantastic Four using the form of a man who looked an awful lot like Jack Kirby man who channeled his immense power through something that looked an awful lot like a pencil now If You Don't Know Jack Kirby was the comic book writer and artist who had just as much of a hand in the creation of the Marvel universe as Stan Lee did if not more he co-created dozens of the most popular characters Captain America Fantastic Four the X-Men black panther Thor the eternals the celestials just to name a few the choice to depict the one above all is Jack Kirby and his power as a pencil was not only a sign of respect towards him but also it was just accurate he was the one calling the shot he was the one deciding who lived and who died he was the one creating the rules of this universe but now we're in the MCU and the hands that guide the hands it's not the creators anymore it's the Kevins of the world in James Gunn's original vision of the Guardians Trilogy the original Gamora was never set to die she had to die because the hands that guide the hands dictated that it had to happen in Infinity War now think about what they have to say to rocket in the new movie you have more purpose here I suspect if this was just James Gunn's story if he were truly the God of this world Rocket's narrative would have ended here but the true Gods the Kevins or whoever is above him they're the ones deciding that rocket has more franchise potential he has more to do his narrative isn't over and so he must live on now you might love that this is a really meta answer or you might absolutely hate it I'm just here to tell you what the films themselves are saying or at least what I suspect James Gunn here seems to be saying in Guardians the Galaxy 3. I feel like a lot of this is actually just commentary for him having to deal with a killed off Gamora but maybe I'm just reading too much into it that said there is one force that even more powerful than Kevin and that's us you the audience in a lot of ways we are the real gods of the MCU here as long as we keep watching the movies the characters will continue to live on and once we stop watching well that's when the Kevins of the world start to panic it was our indifference and disappointment towards phase four that got Kevin to slow down releases at the end of the day the Kevins of the world are ultimately serving us and we are in the position of power deciding whether or not we approve of the offerings they give they toil so we can consume and if that's not a Godlike relationship I don't know what is so while they might be the hands that are guiding the hands we are the eyes watching it all happen deciding whether or not we approve of their work here's the moral of the story friends and you best listen up Marvel if you can't answer important questions about your own Universe if you keep putting out stories that no one wants if you can't get your act together and actually put out films that have heart and soul the audience is going to lose interest they're gonna leave these characters behind for something better and the likes of Star-Lord and Captain America and Iron Man all of them will join the ranks of the Pantheon's long past stories we remember but ones we just don't tell anymore but hey that's just a theory a film Theory and cut foreign

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 2,000,465

Keywords: Guardians of the galaxy, guardians of the galaxy trailer, guardians of the galaxy 3, disney, guardians of the galaxy 3 trailer, gotg, gotg 3, guardians of the galaxy 3 scene, guardians of the galaxy soundtrack, marvel, marvel snap, marvel studios, mcu, marvel entertainment, marvel trailer, trailer, marvel movies, rocket raccoon, rocket raccoon death, marvel gods, gods, thor, thor love and thunder, thanos, gorr the god butcher, star lord, groot, loki, film theory, film theorists, matpat

Id: U7smj1dzYjo

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Logic_Meister]

I've always been of the opinion that the Gods were being whose existence was tied to an aspect of the Universe

For example, if there was a God of the Internet, then he got killed and there was no other Internet Deity, then the Internet ceases to be