Following on from GUARDIANS’s focus on the human, the overarching theme of the Guardians films is represented in the moment when Ego (Kurt Russell) tells Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) that while he’s alive Peter is a god and if Peter kills him he’ll be just like everybody else. Peter replies, “What’s so wrong with that?”. It reveals the Guardians films’ existentialist theme of killing your gods—be they Ego, Thanos, the High Evolutionary or anyone else who claims that their act of creation bestows power over you—and embracing your imperfect, broken self. Simon Zek on Kermode & Mayo’s Take this week puts it beautifully by saying that we’re not Avengers, “[i]n fact, we’re all Guardians: a ragtag rabble of misfits and freaks: a broken family with failings and foibles but we all have our place in the family[.]”