Rules Star-Lord Has To Follow In Every MCU Movie

When you think of Chris Pratt's Star-Lord, "predictable" may not be the first word that comes to mind. The leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy can at times feel more like an interstellar pirate than a galactic superhero. After all, he doesn't have a bottomless cache of wealth to fall back on like Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), so as much as he and his crew of heroes care about saving lives, the universe, and everything, they also have a bottom line to worry about.

But the truth is that Peter Quill has some distinct behavior that tends to repeat in pretty much every movie he's in, including his relatively brief appearances in the Avengers movies. Plus, in addition to what Star-Lord actually does himself, the same kind of things seem to happen to the Guardians leader every time he gets in front of the camera. For a better idea of what we mean, keep reading to learn the rules Star-Lord needs to stick to in every MCU movie.

No one's perfect. We all make mistakes. But Peter Quill has made some pretty big ones — including at least one error that changed the course of galactic history. 

In the first Guardians, Quill flirts with Gamora on the planet Xandar — playing with the hotly sought-after Orb likes it's a baseball — and opens himself up to her assault. In the sequel, he trusts Ego, who turns out to not only be a mass murderer of his own children but the guy who gave Quill's mother the cancer that killed her. In the same film, he fails to keep an eye on Rocket (Bradley Cooper), whose pointless theft makes an enemy of Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki). And in Endgame he makes the mistake of rushing up to embrace a Gamora he hasn't met yet, who makes him pay for that mistake pretty decisively. 

Of course, there's Star-Lord's most famous mistake — going all bad cop on Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. While his emotional outburst is understandable considering the circumstances, the heroes are seconds away from removing the Infinity Gauntlet from the villain's hand. Tragically, Quill's attack gives Thanos the wake-up he needs to escape from the psychic grasp of Mantis (Pom Klementieff).

In all of his MCU appearances, Star-Lord experiences a powerful revelation about a loved one or family member — either from his biological family or his found one. Sometimes that revelation is little more than shocking news, and other times, it comes as life-changing epiphany.

Close to the end of the first Guardians film, Star-Lord learns from Nova Prime (Glenn Close) that his father isn't human. This was something Quill's mother told him on her deathbed, but before speaking to the Nova Corps, Quill had good reason to believe his mother wasn't in her right mind. More importantly, during his vision of his mother in the film's climax, he realizes that he's refused to face his mom's death since his abduction, and it's something he needs to do before he can move on.

In the sequel, Star-Lord learns even more about his family, and a lot of it isn't good news. He discovers the identity of his father, Ego (Kurt Russell), along with the dark truth that his father killed his mother and countless siblings. And shortly before the death of Yondu (Michael Rooker), Quill is blessed with the truth that while he wasn't his biological father, the blue-skinned Ravager was his dad all along, as imperfect as he was.

However, the revelations he receives in his Avengers appearances are sadly more traumatic than anything else. First, he learns of Gamora's murder, and later, he discovers the existence of a living, time-lost Gamora.

While Star-Lord tries to come off as cool and unflappable, he can get pretty emotional in his MCU appearances, and these moments almost always involve his family. 

In the first Guardians film, he openly weeps during the vision of his dying mother (Laura Haddock). He's less weepy and more enraged in Vol. 2 when Ego reveals that he put a tumor in Quill's mother's brain, and Quill doesn't hesitate to unleash a volley of gunfire on the Celestial. Understandably, we see him cry once more when he witnesses the death of Yondu, though considering their exchanges in the previous movie, it's a little surprising. 

And Chris Pratt is never more believable while channeling his Marvel character's pain than when he's reacting to the death of Gamora in Infinity War ... and not just once but twice. There's his brutal attack on Thanos after he learns of his lover's actual murder, and there's also the powerful moment on Knowhere, when Quill believes he's about to kill Gamora himself because of the promise he made to her earlier. Thanos uses the Reality Stone to transform Star-Lord's gunfire into harmless bubbles, but it doesn't make the pain on the hero's face any less real.

You can accuse Star-Lord of being petty, and you can accuse of him of being too impulsive, but you cannot say the man doesn't sing or dance enough. In accordance with their oft-stated prejudices in the 1982 single "The Safety Dance," the members of Men Without Hats would clearly find a friend in Peter Quill.

The very first scene in which we meet the hero — at least, the adult version of the hero — features him dancing and lip-synching on the inhospitable planet of Morag to Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love." Of course, later he tries and fails to woo Gamora with his dancing, and he also uses a dance-off as a distraction against Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) in the film's climax. He has a little bit better luck coaxing Gamora into a dance in Vol. 2 while they're on Ego's planet, and they cut a rug to Sam Cooke's "Bring it on Home to Me."

Just about everyone else aboard the Benatar joins Quill in grooving to the Spinners' 1976 hit "The Rubberband Man" in Infinity War. And while we don't really get any new dances from the galactic hero, we get a repeat performance of his Morag get-down in Endgame just before War Machine clocks him.

The Guardians of the Galaxy may seem pretty cool, and you might think you'd enjoy hanging out with them. But when considering how "easy" Star-Lord's job is as their leader, remember exactly who the Guardians are. Before they're superheroes, Gamora and Nebula (Karen Gillan) are assassins, Groot and Rocket are bounty hunters, and Drax is a dude who actually needs it explained to him by John C. Reilly's Corpsman Dey that there are no legal versions of ripping out someone's spine. In other words, it's Peter Quill's job to wrangle people who do not like to be wrangled, and we see him wrestling — not always successfully — with this challenge in every movie. 

In the first Guardians film, it's all Quill can do to get everyone to act like a team and eventually help save Xandar. In Vol. 2, it's a struggle for Star-Lord to just get Rocket to stop purposely trying to sabotage the team, not to mention the difficulties we see in the mid-credits scenes of dealing with Teen Groot. In Infinity War, we witness Quill actually having to settle an argument about something as simple as answering a distress call. Finally, in Endgame, Quill is so annoyed by the reappearance of Thor on his ship that he has to remind everyone he's in charge — prompting his crew to come up with an idea of forcing Quill and Thor to have a knife fight over who gets to lead. Thankfully, they both pass on the idea.