Guardians of the Galaxy 3

 

There are spoilers. If you've not seen it don't read it.

Please understand the following: from the moment I saw the first Guardians of the Galaxy I knew there was something special going on. There was a spark to the first movie that I could feel, all the way down in my soul, that came from Gunn's heart. The dude wanted to say something, and he had found the perfect way to say it: The Guardians of the Galaxy. There are certainly problems with the first movie, but I crave sincerity in art, and can forgive many a problem simply because the filmmaker meant whatever it is he's saying, from all the way down. Art is meant to convey person to whomever consumes it, artifice is a means to say something true. If the truth gets delivered the rest can be forgiven. I got that with Guardians 1. Guardians 2 hit me a whole hell of a lot harder, but I noticed it said volume two. They aren't separate stories, it's one story. You're meant to watch them as one thing, and to read as if they were a book, with future events impacting how you view past events and all that. So it's not that I'm looking at Guardians volume 3 as a standalone, but the end, with one thematic arc throughout. That seems to be what James Gunn wants us to do, so I'm gonna do that.

Now, if I'm going to look at this movie on its own, I'm disappointed. It's not that I wanted things to have a syrupy-sweet happy ending, it's that the ending we got doesn't make much sense to me! Peter goes the whole movie trying to save Rocket and he doesn't take him to see his grandfather? Like, why? That doesn't make any sense. I get that Peter wants to finish grieving and see his grandpa, but there's not even a moment's hesitation on him deciding to go see his grandpa alone. There's multiple alien invasions of Earth and the Snap and all this other crazy stuff going on... nobody would be surprised to see Peter with Rocket. Sorry. They wouldn't. The fact that Rocket, the heart and soul of this movie, is relegated to a dance number at the end while being the captain of a now mostly defunct group is... that doesn't feel good. Or make sense. He'd go with Peter. He just would.  I get that he's helping all these animals and other victims and whatnot, but that doesn't seem like a thing of agency for Rocket; he goes through this huge arc where he actually comes back to life for Peter and the gang and then they split up and he just stays there.

Yup. Doesn't feel right to me. Sorry.

Mantis's ending also doesn't feel very well set-up. She clearly loves Drax... and decides to go and find herself? After years? This one makes even less sense to me. You don't find yourself by leaving people you love, that's literally why Peter is going back to see his grandpa. Especially now that Drax is back to being a foster-dad, that seems to be something an empath would want to stick around to see! Again, I don't see the sense in that. There's no moment where Mantis is going "Hey, maybe I should try things truly on my own". There's no real set up to this moment, and is flat out wrong. If Gunn wanted Mantis to start having "I need to do this on my own" vibes... please set them up? Pretty please?

That being said, there's some real brilliant moments in GOTGVOL3. Anything to do with Rocket works, and it hits every time and my God the tears I cried at the death's door scene. Gunn has always had Rocket Racoon as the heart of this epic three-part movie and this is the movie where he finally comes out the door swinging with Rocket and I loved every second of it. The scenes with the High Evolutionary are the closest thing to perfection in a villain that I've seen in the MCU (no, sorry, the dude whose name I can't even care to remember from Black Panther- oh wait it's Killmonger I still don't care he's not a good villain). The characters are always well-acted and their dialogue is about the clostest thing to perfect I can expect from an MCU movie. The music is gorgeously picked, although it could have had some quiet moments at certain emotional climaxes to make it punch harder.

So that's the movie on its own: brilliant parts that aren't put together well.

As a part of a larger story what do I think of it? Endings should clarify what the overarching story is about, and provide a good capstone to everything so that way you are okay with no longer journeying with the characters, while elevating the whole experience. Endings. Are. Hard. To do. Even if you get it right others may be upset that you didn't address what they thought the story was about (see the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy!), or any other of a million objective and subjective reasons. So I'm not here to rag on Gunn. While I feel like this final part clarified very competently what the whole story is about... it doesn't elevate the whole for me. I get that you need  to see Infinity War and Endgame, yadda yadda yadda, but honestly this is the closest we've gotten to a coherent single story in the MCU... and it was hamstrung because it was a part of the MCU. Gunn has gone on record as saying that he disagreed with Peter being the reason why everything went to Hell in Infinity War, and frankly I agree with him. So Gunn had to write a character that he had made his own that was more or less hijacked and make it make sense, years later. It's an impossible task, in all fairness. I don't think he pulls it off, but I don't think that's Gunn's fault, but the fault of Feige (who is increasingly looking less and less competent) and the Russo Brothers, who should have stopped and asked for input and respected what he would have told them.

This feels like the end of an era for me. I don't know if I can tell everyone in this blog post just how loud I screamed in the theatre at the end of Iron Man. I was a total madman, an unabashed fanboi practcially on the word go. This scene?

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was, nor can I tell you how red my sister and friend’s faces were when I was shouting horrible things like “GEEKASM!!! Oh the ECSTACY!!!” when The Incredible Hulk dropped its Captain America references. This was it, people, this was the dream!!! And I was that obnoxious fan about it all, so very openly and self-aware. Avengers came out and I about cried, because everyone was seeing it, they were finally seeing what this form of storytelling could accomplish.

Oh how much has changed in fifteen years! 

My disappointment with Phase 4, with the marked exception of WandaVision, hasn’t been subtle. But on some level I couldn’t help but hope in GOTGVOL3. I wanted to believe Gunn would beat the system once again. He didn’t; with the exception of No Way Home (I always watch Spidey movies with my wife) I’m done. The MCU has failed, far as I’m concerned. What was supposed to be an interconnected universe of stories and art is now merely, only, a means of getting ticket sales and merch whores. And it didn’t have to be that way.

But it is now.

Thank you for all you did, Mr. Gunn. You swung for the fences on all these movies and I couldn’t be more grateful. 

Here’s to Rocket Raccoon. What a run.

"Sky is forever"