Disney has been stirring things up a little lately after fans have pressured the studio to include same-sex romantic subplots in its properties. First, there was a campaign to give Elsa a girlfriend in ‘Frozen 2’, then there was the “bromance” between Finn and Poe Dameron in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, followed by a similar hashtag frenzy regarding Captain America and the Winter Soldier in ‘Captain America: Civil War’. Disney did include a brief bit of subtext in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ which led to some theaters in the South opting to screen the film at all. (Not that it hurt Disney any. It’s already made over $471M in the U.S.) They also just included same-sex kisses on their cartoon ‘Star Vs. The Forces of Evil’.
While promoting ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’, director James Gunn admitted he was open to including an LGBT character in his films:
“Absolutely. I would love to be able to.
“We might have already done that. I say watch the movie. Check it out. See what you think.”
He later clarified his statement:
“What I meant to say is this: There are a lot of gay people in the world. There are a lot of bisexual people in the world. There are a lot of characters in the MCU. We’ve barely gotten to know the sexuality of any of those characters.
“We know Gamora and Quill are interested in each other. That’s about the only sexual relationship that exists within the Guardians. We know Drax has a past with a wife so he’s got some sort of interest in women.
“But we don’t really know who’s gay and who’s not. It could be any of them.”
Yes, the romantic tension between Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is a pretty major part of the story. And Drax was married to a woman and had a child. That doesn’t leave much else to choose from. Rocket’s a raccoon. Groot’s a plant. It’s doubtful any sort of romantic storyline will be built around those two. In the comics, Mantis was married to a man. That leaves Nebula, who is a likely candidate, as well as Yondu and Sylvester Stallone’s character Stakar, who will debut in the sequel. In the comics, Stakar is also known as Starhawk, who, along with Yondu was one of the original Guardians of the Galaxy.
Then again, it could just be a tease. Romance wasn’t a huge part of the first movie’s storyline. Outside of the Quill/Gamora subplot, it probably won’t be a huge part of the sequel. That does leave the door open for just about anything, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Should we take Gunn’s words to heart? Or was he just musing?
Source: Digital Spy
