One of the best things about Marvel is that they can take characters you think you don’t like at all and turn them into characters you absolutely love. While I felt Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (2017) had a lot of weaknesses, the film directed by James Gunn gets one big thing right: Yondu (played to perfection by Michael Rooker).
In the original comics, Yondu had a super bright costume and what looked like a rooster-plume on his head. In fact, the whole team looked kind of silly when they first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #18.
Having read a number of those early stories, I have to say I was pretty shocked when I heard they were making the Guardians part of the MCU. I certainly didn’t expect they could translate Yondu into a great character on screen. Luckily, they gave Yondu a respectable Mohawk which lets him control an incredibly deadly flying arrow. and even more respectable personality.
While Yondu comes across as menacing, we slowly learn that he has become an outcast from the Ravagers. This is one of the cores of the MCU. Many of its characters are lost souls. Captain America is a man out of time. The Winter Solider has been brainwashed. Black Panther watches his father get killed before his eyes. Gamora’s people are slaughtered by Thanos. For all their power, the heroes of the MCU struggle with incredible loss, loss that might overwhelm anyone.
Yondu has become an outcast because he refused to deliver Peter Quill (again played to comedic perfection by Chris Pratt) to the god-like Ego (played larger than life by Kurt Russell). Yondu had had actually delivered a number of Ego's other offspring to Ego, but when he learned that Ego subsequently killed those children, Yondu refused to give over Peter. Instead he hid Peter away and, for failing to honor his contract with Ego, the Ravagers exiled Yondu from their group. Yondu does what the best fathers always do if they must, sacrifice they own good for their children.
But Yondu lies to Peter about why he kept Peter. He tells Peter he kept him because he was small and skinny and could sneak into places to steal things. Yondu poses as loner and an outlaw. He acts like he only loves himself, and we can't be sure what Yondu thinks beyond what he has told Peter. And Peter accepts this coldness from Yondu as real. Perhaps Yondu never planned to be a father, so he didn't want to take credit for that fatherly act of saving Peter. There's a long, sad tradition of fathers and sons not being able to communicated and express their love for each other, and Yondu and Peter certainly fall into this trap.
In Peter's case, this leaves him searching for a father figure. As we know from the original Guardians of the Galaxy film, Peter lost his mother as a child. He never learned who his real father was, so he has spent much of his life searching for that father. In Guardians 2, Peter learns that Ego is his biological father and the source of Peter's own powers. Peter is quickly seduced by Ego's power, despite Gamora (played superbly as always by Zoe Saldana) try to warn him that Ego is not who he seems to be. Of course, Gamora is right and Ego actually plans to destroy the universe and remake it in Ego's own image.
But as the movie rolls along, we also learn that there is more to Yondu than meets the eye. In a particularly important exchange between Yondu and Rocket (voiced by wonderfully by Bradley Cooper):
Yondu : You can fool yourself and everyone else, but you can't fool me. I know who you are.
Rocket : You don't know anything about me, loser.
Yondu : I know everything about you. I know you play like you're the meanest and the hardest but actually you're the most scared of all.
Yondu : I know you steal batteries you don't need and you push away anyone who's willing to put up with you 'cause just a little bit of love reminds you of how big and empty that hole inside you actually is.
Yondu : I know them scientists what made you, never gave a rat's ass about you!
Yondu : Just like my own damn parents who sold me, their own little baby, into slavery. I know who you are, boy. Because you're me!
Rocket : ...What kind of a pair are we?
Yondu : The kind that's about to go fight a planet, I reckon.
Rocket : All right, okay! Good, that's... Wait. Fight a what?
In the final climactic battle of the film, Peter plans to stay behind to blow up the world which is Ego, an action which would result in Peter's death too. Rather than let Peter die, Yondu saves Peter and sacrifices himself to destroy Ego. It's an old storyline that we all know: Two characters are faced with self-sacrifice in order to save the universe and only one of the two characters can survive. So they nobly fight over the right to sacrifice themselves to save their friend.
We certainly can't miss that message about fatherhood. Yondu is Peter's real father, not Ego, and heart matters more than blood. Gunn makes sure we get the point of the film. But I think he actually delivers a more interesting message about fatherhood in that earlier exchange between Yondu and Rocket. Fathers need to be devoted to their children, not only blood relations but those raise as our own. But, beyond that, fathers also have a role to help other "children" if you will. In a way, Rocket is a lost child too. Perhaps the most orphaned child in all the MCU. Yondu, in the role of a father, offers Rocket a moment of understanding. He hears not what Rocket says but what the message underneath the surly statements Rocket makes. That's what the best fathers do: They listen, hear, understand, and offer a little advice. As a father myself, that's the message I'll try to remember.
