Despite a love of most things cinema, the MCU is no longer something which drags me to the local multiplex; Kevin Fiege and James Gunn seem to have a loyal family of fanboys keen to indulge their whims, but the Marvel imprint seemed to peak with the Avengers movies and has been on the slide ever since. Gunn seems to favour big eyeless monsters, retro needle drops, swearing and that traditional Marvel signature, arguments, and the final part of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy offers all these things in resistible amounts.
So Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and his diverse team are back; Groot (Vin Diesel) seems to be big now rather than a twig, and Rocket Racoon (Bradley Cooper) spends the first hour and a half of the movie expiring on a life-support machine after being flattened by Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) in the opening scenes. Quill and the Guardians are resting up after something or other, but take a trip across the galaxy to take on the sinister Orgocorp on Counter-Earth and save Rocket. The notion of the Guardians as an irreverent, fun alternative to super-heroes is firmly gone; we open with Radiohead’s Creep and the imagery of animal experimentation makes Rocket’s backstory grim if not disturbing, and despite an extended dad-dance-scene at the end, there’s not much fun here for anyone.
‘Be not as you are, but as you should be,;’ seems to be the message here, although it could be ‘The story has been yours all along, you just didn’t know it,’ or any of Gunn’s pious tv sitcom/fortune cookie homilies the characters spout. Stars of yesterday and tomorrow are dragged into this, from Nathan Fillion to Sylvester Stallone, but they just spout the same techno burble about ‘filtration systems’ as the rest. At least we get to hear Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone and The Beastie Boys No Sleep till Brooklyn and The Flaming Lips Do You Realise? but it’s not much to cheer us as we watch a revolution of blond-wigged children or some space-teddies fighting their vivisectionist masters. There’s a dog in a spacesuit too, for reasons I don’t have the energy or interest to explore.
The Guardians of the Galaxy films have been popular, but they don’t feel like they’re going anywhere interesting, much like the MCU. Some blue-faced character mumbles about ‘what Thanos did to me’, but I’ve no idea who she is or what Thanos did to her; I thought he made people vanish by snapping his fingers and I don’t have the inclination to find out what else he did. Without much in the way of tension, character or a comprehensible story, the Guardians of the Galaxy films, like the MCU, are becoming tiresome for anyone but hard-core fan-boys; while there are impressive shots and expensive action set-pieces, it all just feels like indulgence of foppish creatives who don’t have much in the way of new or relatable ideas in a stark, post-Barbenheimer world.
Felt this series should never have gone framchose. What was fresh first time round grated at second iteration and this one missed the target altogether.
All I can remember is shapes and faces and I only saw it this weekend.
Lucky you can remember anything. I have no memory of it at all.
I enjoyed this one, though going in expecting nothing. It felt like a final hurrah and was the first good thing I’ve seen from the MCU – TV or cinema – since before Endgame that hasn’t had me have to justify it. I guess I just like the tone and characters in these. Granted I’m a former fanboy, but even so I do agree it is muddled mostly by the larger MCU cannon. But I dont think a lot of fans want to admit some of that muddling is on Gunn too; like what was the point of Adam Warlock? Guy got a whole post credits tease in the previous movie and here he could be replaced by a generic grey CGI tough guy and he’d still serve the same purpose.
I hear you, and yes, this is better than Eternals and Quantumania. But it sounds like you’re not blind to the faults here. I have no idea who or what Adam Warlock was about. And because the answers are possible in other media, I don’t bother finding out. It ends up in low engagement; I don’t feel sentiment about saying goodbye to characters that I barely understood in the first two films. And Gunn seems to fall back on corny sentiment a lot.
On a completely different note, when I view your site in the reader, I see a “reblog” next to everyone’s comments. Who would want to reblog a comment? And why in the world did WP think it was a good idea to spend resources on that instead of fixing all the problems?
The comments on my site are like gold dust. I pay top dollar for the most thoughtful words from intellectuals worldwide.
It’s on everyone’s blogs I follow in the reader anyway, if you hover over it a box comes up saying Turn this comment into it’s own post, and if you click on it it gives you the option to do that on your own blog. I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.
I’ll be watching this, count on it. I really enjoyed GG and GG2, so while I have been a fan of the mcu after End Game, I still have hopes this will entertain me as a standalone movie.
Nope.
Which, given your and my track record for what is an entertaining movie, means it has a better than average chance of actually entertaining me.
double nope!
You tell him!
I did!
And I shall soundly ignore both of you!
At your peril!
When you speak, all I hear is blah demon blah car blah baby blah.
Oh wait, my hearing aide’s turned off. Could you repeat that?
Sure, happy to help.
Nope.
Ahhh, that’s much better. I heard “Sure thing Bookstooge, go right ahead. I’m sure you’ll love this”.
Thanks Eddie. I knew I could count on you to back me up…
Nope.
Nope? You mean you won’t stop me watching this movie? Excellent. I love it when friends can recommend good movies to each other…
Actually what happened to Rocky Racoon in this film was straight out of one of these European art-house mind-zonkers.
See, you’re improving my mind already. I’m branching out from straight up SF movies to euro-art house. Ahhhh, I feel like a new man already!
Great, get him to write some comments, then! Hahaha
Eddie est une grosse tête de caca.
Ha. See, Fraggles not hte only one who can do that whole “frenchy fried” thing.
Sacre blu! Boys eye Le home average Le gross tete de caca, tout Le minde connaise c’est in FAcTe!
Well, I never!
And you said that in public too. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
Non.
Sigh. 😉
Well if you can cope with the Pratt bloke, you’re a definite Gunga Din.
Yep, really enjoyed the first two. And while I thought the tomorrow war was a stupid movie, I thought he did fine in that too 🙂
Chacun à son goût Booky, chacun à son goût!
You speaking patois at me? ARE YOU SPEAKING PATOIS AT ME?
I’m insulted. And my feelings are hurt. A gold dump truck would go a long to healing this rift between us
😉
And no, it’s always my way or the highway. Even on Eddie’s blog (where the highway option gets used on me a LOT)
Ummm it was french!
Oh. My. Goodness.
Even worse then 😉
🤣
C’est vrai, Mon petit chou!
I thought the reviews had been generally positive for this one, but I hated the second so much I was still thinking I’d pass on it. Did they at least keep it short?
seemed to peaked
152 minutes of this guff I watched last night. I hated the second one too, and somehow this is worse with ugly images of animals being tortured and killed. It’s not smart, it’s not funny, it’s juvenile, but not even worth celebrating for that.
No surprise there, I haven’t seen a good review of it yet. I watched 1 which was OK, 2 was not so good in spite of adding Kurt Russel into the mix and TBH Chris Pratt is really annoying in both so I’m noping this one.
With the best will in the world, it’s just that same old middle aged white make fantasy stuff that we’ve had coming out of our ears for decades. Maybe people with Groot tattoos love it, but it’s a hard sell for anyone with their wits about them.