Although you can probably tell from the title, we'll be talking about a few recent reveals surrounding the parentage of Peter Quill in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, so if you'd really like to avoid any details about said parentage, consider what follows to be a spoiler, even though James Gunn is about to explain to everyone preciously why it's not. The GUARDIANS director took to Facebook to address the surprising reveal of the identity of Quill's father at Marvel's recent Comic-Con panel.
WHY THE IDENTITY OF STAR-LORD'S FATHER ISN'T A SPOILER.
Don't read any further if you don't want to know who he is.
Also you might want to stay off the internet until May and definitely unfollow me and don't watch our trailers or other ads…
Anyway, people have been particularly excited, confused, and supportive of keeping Marvel Cosmic truly cosmic with the reveal of Peter Quill's father's identity. However, there have been a minority of folks who have questioned, and even been angry, that I and Marvel would reveal something so major months before the film comes out.
I get it. If we lived in a perfect world, I wouldn't tell you ANYTHING before you walked in to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I wouldn't tell you Groot was now Baby Groot, I wouldn't tell you Mantis was in the movie, I wouldn't say that Ayesha and Taserface are our antagonists, that Yondu and Nebula have incredibly important roles in the film, nor would I tell you that Quill's father is Ego the Living Planet.
However, the world is imperfect.
Firstly, we have to advertise our film. And it will be impossible to show you very much of Vol. 2 since Ego is very much a part of all of it. We just don't have a way around it.
Secondly, there are journalists online who love giving you scoops about characters and plot twists in upcoming films. Ego is such a big part of the movie, this was going to come out soon, as much as we've tried to hide it (when our online press day happened on set, Kurt Russell sat in a chair that read "J'son," and all of our script pages and artwork featuring him used the same name). Frankly, I would rather be in control of the announcement myself than have it come out on SpoilersRUs.com in a few weeks.
That said, knowing who Quill's father is will not diminish your enjoyment of the film in any way. The story is not built to be a shocking twist in the same way Luke's father was Darth, Soylent Green was people, Rosebud was a sled, or that that pretty woman from Crying Game had a penis (I guess I should have said spoilers before all that). Ego the emotional center of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 from the beginning to the end, and is not a twist.
And believe me – there are many, many more surprises we still have in store for you from Vol. 2 – hopefully the biggest of which is how much you'll love the movie itself. Because, to me, that's the only twist that matters.
Spoilers are a funny thing, some people crave them, others avoid them like the plague, and exactly what people consider to be a spoiler is incredibly vague a lot of the time. Most of us absorb quite a lot of movie marketing, so we've become used to seeing studios seemingly spoiling their own films for whatever reason; typically, what we first thought of as a premature reveal winds up being fairly harmless in the grand scheme of the film, but other times, such as in some of the recent STAR TREK BEYOND TV spots, they throw something out there that gives the audience a piece of information that they'd be better off not knowing. Whatever gets butts in seats I suppose, and it's not like we're going to swear off the internet and television for an extended period of time. Damn them!
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 is set for a May 5, 2017 release.