The Dark Herald Recommends Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. III
When you have a niche audience, and you know you have a niche audience there will be concerns about delivering for them. My audience, for example, expects to read bad reviews about creators they don’t like. I admit that kind of review is fun to read and effortless to write.
But what happens when you are put in the position of delivering a good review on a work that was created by someone you know they detest? What do you do when you know you are going to be delivering a product they won’t like? Do you go ahead and just deliver what they expect even if it costs you something you don’t want to give up? Or do you take a stand on the principle of your own integrity, even if it will cost you?
That isn’t my problem today, it’s James Gunn’s,* because he appears to have hired Luc Besson to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy Volume III for him. Seriously, it’s Luc Besson’s best work since The Fifth Element. All of the facets of a Besson film are there; long, long establishing shots of space, hot warrior chicks (admittedly already there), blue-collar middle-aged warriors with deep painful problems, near absurdist costume and set design, plus everyone yelled at each other the whole time.
If you’re looking for a good Luc Besson film, it’s all there for you.
If you were hoping to see another Guardians of the Galaxy film, I’ve got bad news for you.
It’s not so bad that I feel the need to spoil the whole thing but I will spoil a few things. None of the Guardians die, that was all a big studio tease and I very chump-like fell for it. There was a whole bunch of drawn-out impact shots that were clearly meant to be used in trailers to get the chumps talking about the Guardians’ impending death, just like I did. Rather stupid of me because I know good and well Disney dumped several hundred million dollars into their Guardians of the Galaxy rides and I guarantee you Disney was keeping an eagle on the film to make sure that wasn’t compromised. No unhappy endings are allowed. Just teasers.
At the end of the film, the team breaks up. It was narratively unsatisfying even if Gunn had been trying to build this film around the team’s eventual break up at the end. Narratively unsatisfying describes this whole film.
As I have said before the film was facing a fundamental story problem. A trilogy is supposed to function as a three-act story. Introduction, rising tension, climax. The first two Guardians films fulfilled those definitions. An adventure/love story between Peter Quill and Gamora is established. Their love is overshadowed by Thanos and they cannot move into a genuinely committed relationship until this is resolved. The problem is that it was resolved in Infinity War when Thanos murdered Gamora.
The. Story. Is. Over.
Making Guardians 3 a stand-alone with no major overshadowing story arc like Thanos in it.** This was where Gunn went into a project that he knew to be artistically compromised by his studio. Even with the best will in the world, he was going to deliver something that was inevitably going to disappoint. Which this did.
This film is in effect, an extended denouement where Quill has to come to grips with the death of Gamora. Needlessly complicating this, is the presence of alternate-history Gamora. A potential relationship with Nebula is introduced but is left unexplored, and as near as I can tell, it shall remain unexplored because everyone’s contract is up. At the very end of the film when Peter and Gamora part it feels like a divorced couple who parted badly but have finally resolved their issues. This is not the same as the death of a spouse.
This simply does not feel like a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It’s too sad for a start. Rocket spends most of the movie in a coma reliving his childhood as a tortured animal with a whole bunch of other tortured animals. This movie really pushed the PG-13 boundaries too hard, Disney had to have made calls to have gotten an R rating lifted. GotG 3 is absolutely not for kids at all.
The jokes don’t land like they did in the other movies. True the first two Guardians movies were made before Marvel turned into a slapstick factory. Maybe the jokes were just as good as they ever were but have run out of funny. Bottom line, I didn’t laugh once, although I may have smiled a time or two. In a lot of ways, this is a James Gunn movie that is trying way too hard to be a James Gunn movie. The brakes are completely off and it is very self-indulgent. The vintage music is not a subtle underlying theme, it clubs you over the head constantly. The cast is yelling at each other for about 80% of the movie. The running time is where Marvel Studios makes its unwelcome presence felt the hardest. It is too fucking long at two hours and fifteen minutes. But that wasn’t the only place where Marvel damaged it. Because of Marvel’s forced integration, there were going to be places where you left going, ‘Wait, what happened?’ Mantis is now Quill’s sister (Holiday Special), Thor is nowhere to be seen (Thor Love and Thunder), and of course, Gamora is dead and Gamora II is now running around. You have to have seen all of it to understand what’s going on.
I’m not joking when I say that the most Guardians of the Galaxy thing in this movie is Nathan Fillion playing a comically evil security guard. Perfect nerd-casting (10/10).
The most James Gunn thing is utterly botching the character of Adam Warlock. If you are an Adam Warlock fan brace yourself for disappointment because he is nothing like the one in the comic books. I am now one hundred percent certain that the reason Henry Cavil was fired is because Gunn wants to do something weird with Superman, something he knew Cavil would fight him on every step of the way.
That said, this movie had its positives.
It’s easily the best Marvel movie since Infinity War, granted that is an ankle-high bar to get over but the movie did it. It’s competently structured, the men aren’t completely useless. There was no ‘girls get it done’ scene. There was none of the clumsiness I’ve endured from Marvel these past few years. There were no explicit instructions for the audience to ‘like’ a new character.
One thing that I can definitely give this movie is that the Villain, the High Evolutionary was simply a villain who enjoyed being evil. “There is no God, that’s why I had to step in!” Given all the tortured souls from Marvel of late, some good old-fashioned pure bad was a nice break. It did everything a competent movie is supposed to.
However, the fundamental restrictions of the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe forced this film into a framing device that is tonally out of step with the rest of the series.
I’m actually in a quandary about my final rating here because while it is indeed a good movie, it’s not a good Guardians of the Galaxy movie. If that is what you are looking for, you won’t get it.
It’s fine for what it is, but not for what it is supposed to be. Consequently…
The Dark Herald Recommends with Reservations (2.5/5)
*James Gunn was fired by Disney after the second Guardians of the Galaxy when it was revealed he had made several disgusting pedophile jokes on Twitter sometime in the late 2000s. He also hosted a pedophile-themed party and was stupid enough to get his picture taken at it. I will not say anything on his behalf but Chris Pratt, (who seems to be a genuinely good person) went way out of his way to get Gunn rehired. Whether Pratt is being blindly loyal to the man who gave him his big break or genuinely believes that Gunn is innocent of being a pedophile is not known to me.
** BTW big surprise, Kang was nowhere to be seen.
