The opinions surrounding Marvel's latest superhero blockbuster have been extremely polarized, to say the least. Some feel that the film overpromised and under-delivered, while others were extremely happy to see their favorites return. In the cross-over between those two ideas, however, a few fan favorites didn't get the showcase they could've received.
Thor: Love and Thunder had a lot of positive selling points in its marketing campaign. It's the sequel to the hugely popular Thor: Ragnarok, it's the return of visionary director Taika Waititi, it's the adaptation of an iconic comic book storyline, and it's the culmination of several films of romantic tension. But, the trailers chose some less savory elements to focus on as well.
Though Marvel is unquestionably the king of the cinematic universe model, even it is starting to show some wear and tear over its lifespan. Savvy viewers have always been aware that the primary reason the MCU exists is to tie all of its disparate media properties together to create one eternally profitable super-property. This is theoretically fine, it allows them to throw in as many cameos as they like and ignore anything that doesn't land. The problem comes when this marketing strategy seeps past the trailers and into the films themselves. Thor: Love and Thunder seems to include an unfortunate example of this, in the form of the Guardians of the Galaxy's glorified cameo.
If one could go back and talk to a Marvel fan around 2012 and explain that the most popular characters of the MCU now include a talking raccoon and a reincarnated tree, it'd be quite a shock. That is, however, the situation fans find themselves in. James Gunn took a group of ragtag space adventurers that few fans had ever heard of and elevated them immediately above many Marvel mainstays. Their films had the benefit of taking place very far away from the rest of the MCU, both of the Guardians films are almost unrelated to the larger franchise until they join the team in Infinity War. The Guardians and their presentation are the lone anarchic force combating the notion that Disney stamps out creativity from talented directors. They absolutely do but look at what James Gunn was able to accomplish anyway. Taika Waititi is likely the only other creator swimming in that pond who can claim the same level of creative vision, but even he seems reined in somewhat.
The marketing for Thor: Love and Thunder prominently featured the Guardians. They're in almost every trailer, it's clear that Disney needed audiences to know that those characters would appear. The problem is that the couple of minutes encompassed in those trailers is almost every second of screen time the group gets. They appear in the first few minutes, mostly standing by while Thor headlines an action scene. Most of them get only one or two lines of spoken dialogue. The one meaningful contribution they make to the plot is the speech Peter Quill gives Thor before they leave him behind. Fans who haven't seen the movie don't need to, if they've seen the trailer, they've seen most of that as well. Fans hoping to see more of the Guardians' dynamic with Thor, those who were excited by the idea of them taking off together after Endgame, or even those who were just excited to see the group return will be disappointed.
The presentation given to the Guardians of the Galaxy in the film would not be a problem at all if they weren't so prominently featured in the marketing. If it wasn't all ruined by the trailers, fans would've been ecstatic to see their favorite space-faring chaotic good heroes, if only for a few minutes. This isn't a Guardians movie, James Gunn isn't involved with its production. Taika Waititi established his new take on Thor with Ragnarok and fans were thrilled to see how that take would evolve. There's a ton of stuff packed into the film's runtime, it doesn't need cameos to keep fans engaged. The last film got by with very little crossover with the rest of the franchise. The fact that the Guardians were so prominently presented in the trailers doesn't just ruin it by giving it all away, it cheapens the experience as a whole.
The central marketing placement of the Guardians who barely appear in the film makes their appearance feel like an obligation placed on the filmmakers. Endgame teased their collaboration, so the next film had to pay that off, but Waititi and his crew could've just as easily written that out with a line of dialogue. Disney needed the tiny role for the group to help sell the film. This makes it so hard to enjoy what should be a humble cameo as anything other than a blatant marketing stunt. This is another failure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to cover its shoddy salesmanship. More and more, the company shows the audience that there's almost no distance between the commercials and the movies they advertise.