I only heard him say 'unrecognizable.'

Nailed that, for sure!

The credits say monsterous prisoner and I suspect he was the prisoner whose nose Groot...um...picked . Still, I'm a savant when it comes to voices and I did not recognize his.

So I was feeling obsessive and nerdy, and I decided to pull out my best atlases and maps, and used all the visual cues presented to plot the events of the movie along on a globe. I present the results below, for your enjoyment.

1. The camera opens hovering somewhere over Mexico, looking southwest across the pacific, with a typhoon visible over the ocean. 2. The camera pans slightly as Explorer enters the shot, flying west to east, and the first landmass we see is the Acapulco coast and Mexico City, Alfonso Cuaron's birthplace. 3. The peaceful opening events occur while the Explorer is gliding over the Gulf of Mexico. 4. Explorer and Hubble are hit and Stone is detached as Explorer is passing over the tip of Florida as night is falling. 5. Stone flies out into the darkness over the Atlantic. 6. Kowalski catches up with stone as they are over the Atlantic, and the two of the catch up with Sharif's body, and then Explorer, over the Iberian peninsula, and presumably the Mediterranean. 7. Their flight to ISS, and Stone's confession about her daughter happen as they are flying somewhere over Northern Africa, with Egypt, the Suez, Israel and the Arabian Peninsula visible in the background. 8. They catch up with the ISS, and Kowalski defies the laws of momentum, somewhere over the tip of India. Kowalski's sacrificial trajectory appears to take him north-ish to get a better view of the Ganges river. 9. Stone enters the ISS as it flies over southeast Asia and skirts the Pacific Ocean again, apparently along the Chinese coast. The Tiengong station is somewhere to the west of her. 10. Once Stone is inside the ISS, we lose visual reference for a bit, but as she's looking out the window, calling for Kowalski, we can see the typhoon from the first shot. And, of course, the storm is coming again.... 11. We again lose visual reference for a bit during the fire, the escape into the Soyuz, the grapple with the parachute, her emergency EVA, and the breakup of the ISS. There are occasional brief, semi-obscured glimpses of land reference, but I haven't been able to identify those. However, they all happen as she's skirting the coast of China, the Sea of Japan, and the Russian coastline, because... 12. She discovers the Soyuz' fuel tanks are empty as she's flying over Alaska. You can see the Seward peninsula and the Bearing Strait below her where she tries to fire the engines. She has her freakout as she's flying over Northern Canada and ice pack. 13. She's flying over Greenland for her conversation with Aningaaq. Aningaaq is on the ice in Greenland somewhere, and their radios are communicating by line of sight. 14. Stone's dream happens presumably as the Soyuz flies out over Iceland and the Northern Atlantic. 15. Stone fires the soft landing jets on the Soyuz capsule as she's approaching Scandinavia. As she flies toward the Tiengong, you can see Denmark and Germany to your right, the southern tips of Norway and Sweden to your left, the Baltic Sea ahead, and Tiengong appears to now be flying somewhere over Minsk. 16. Stone catches up to Tiengong over the Black Sea, and Tiengong's trajectory appears to be taking it over the Caspian and the Stans, toward Mainland China. 17. After that, the visual references seem to stop making sense. A couple of shots prominently feature what appears to be the Indian Ocean, but it's closer than it seemed, and off trajectory. Then the Tiengong appears to be over continental mass again. Then as the Shenzhou separates and begins its reentry it crosses a coastline for some reason, and I haven't been able to identify that. But ultimately, she does appear to come down somewhere in eastern mainland China.

If anybody with better mapping skills wants to take a shot at the reentry sequence, I'd be eager to hear you thoughts.

Rock on, Sean, that's impressive.

Shortly after I moved to LA, I pulled out my Thomas Guide and used it to follow along as I watched Speed, tracing the route of the bus. That movie is actually very faithful to LA geography. Although where the Red Line train bursts out of the ground at the end doesn't make a ton of sense, but the bus route is good.

Over on FB, one of P-C's friends called GotG "Marvel Farscape," which makes me need to see it RIGHT NOW. (I mean, I was planning to see it anyway, but we don't really have time until next weekend. We could maybe possibly we see a late movie tonight. Hmmm.)

"Farscape meets Avengers" is an apt description of the movie.

"Farscape meets Avengers" is an apt description of the movie

Awesome! I'm going tonight with my niece.

That movie is actually very faithful to LA geography.

Yes it is, I've always considered it an LA movie. So many movies set in LA get it completely wrong.

Marvel Farscape

This is genius in how perfectly apt it is.

I found GotG fun, but not up to the hype. Or even the previews. They were funnier.