The drama couldn't be higher for the Guardians in their third solo outing. Writer/director James Gunn is defecting to go run things over at DC, ending a run that includes some of the last memorable Marvel characters - this is in the middle of a disappointing couple of 'phases' for Marvel's corporate strategy.
Market indicators signal that this immanentize the end, or at least a diminishing of Disney's pop culture dominance, with falling revenues over...
Ugh.
I originally planned on writing three or four paragraphs in this vein, and end the post with a sentence saying something along the lines of "oh, and by the way, the movie itself is pretty good!"
But as much as the MCU is culpable for helping shift discussion from art to the corporate strategies behind it on the mainstream, I don't have it in my heart to take it out on the poor Guardians; they don't deserve it.
They've been as much victims of all this corporate shit as perpetuators. Whether you like it or not, Gunn has always tried to put as much of himself as possible in these things, and the love for the characters and their world shines through. The guy is earnest; and he did try and make this last one special. It's not perfect- it's a bit messy, overlong, sometimes manipulative, the script spirals out of control in the third act, but... it's honest, it's fun, full of great character moments and story beats, and the music is great.
I mean, it ends on a Replacements track!
Pretty much in line with the previous two volumes, then. This one delves into the backstory of Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), the team's furriest, smartass-iest member (and that's saying something, when most of the dialog consists of characters trying to out-smartass each other at every turn).
The plot kicks off when the movie's villain, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) sends Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) to retrieve Rocket. Rocket is left gravely wounded, and the rest of the team have to jump through a bunch of hoops and visit a couple of exotic locales to save him. This time around we get a space station built out of bone, flesh and sinew, and a U.S. suburban neighbourhood peopled by creepy-ass furries.
Meanwhile, Rocket has extended flashbacks of his time as a subject of animal experimentation.
Story isn't this movie's strength, even with as powerful a driving force as Rocket's backstory - both previous movies have been shaggy dog stories held together by strong themes and character work, and this isn't really an exception. But when the big climactic action scene in the third act is the team just getting from one end of a hallway to another, even when said hallway is filled with low-level enemies... something's gone wrong.
It's not even the MCUs traditional problem with weak villains; It's that the villain isn't in control of the third act, and most of the characters' actions don't really have anything to do with him. A case of poor scripting, basically, diminished by the fact that the script is clearly unconcerned by such concerns as final confrontations - it's much more interested in the characters' journeys.
Mild issues aside Volume 3 is, as usual, a very colourful, very fun space opera, full of memorable characters, jokes and explosions, anchored by likeable, flawed characters the cast could play in their sleep by now, and that have enough depth built into to them that pathos can reliably be extracted from any of their different relationships. Hell, they even get Chris Pratt to act. I know, I was mildly surprised, too.
Gunn also continues to try and come up with cool imagery (along with cinematographer Henry Braham), something they really started doing on Volume 2 of this series, and is carried out here with considerable panache. This is a very colorful, often striking movie; Add to that the hallway-crossing scene mentioned above, which is a successful attempt at doing the sort of cool, exciting, cleanly choreographed action that mostly eludes Disney's output.
It's surprisingly violent for its PG13 rating, most of it enjoyably goopy alien slashing/blasting, but some of it consists in violence against animals. While that's pretty manipulative, it's also undeniably effective.
If this all sounds like damning the movie with faint praise and too many qualifiers, know that it's not my intention. The trilogy capper is genuinely likeable and heartfelt and thrilling and very well made. It's a James Gunn movie through and through, full of the specific brand of weirdo sensibility that just has to give Howard the Duck an extended cameo, can go maudlin at the drop of a hat, or that ends on a run of pitch-perfect music jokes ending on a mention of Adrian Belew.
Like all the other worthwhile Marvel movies, this is purely a Guardians of the Galaxy movie - there's the unfortunate business with Gamora, which is incorporated into the flow of things gracefully enough even though it feels like a spanner int he works; But other than that, there's no extraneous MCU shit.
It really is great.
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