Writer/director James Gunn has stamped his portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a sense of playful chaos that sets it apart from its numerous superhero colleagues.
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| Star Lord (Chris Pratt, center) and his companions — from left, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Groot (Vin Diesel), Drax (Dave Bautista) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) — prepare to face yet another megalomaniac who wants to re-shape the universe. |
That latter subplot is necessitated by this third entry’s primary focus on Rocket, and the back-story that explains his bio-mechanical enhancements. (I hope nobody thought the MCU includes a planet populated by hyper-intelligent warrior raccoons.)
It’s a solid topic, and two or three brief flashbacks would have been sufficient. But spending great chunks of time as young Rocket befriends three similarly imprisoned but atrociously mutilated critters feels like audience abuse, and leaches the “fun” right outta this film.
(If Gunn and co-writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning intended to make a point, they didn’t need a sledge hammer.)
The individual responsible for this horror is a longtime Marvel Comics villain dubbed the High Evolutionary, whose deplorable efforts in genetic manipulation date all the way back to a 1966 issue of The Mighty Thor. He’s played with malevolent fury here by Chukwudi Iwuji, and is genuinely scary.
But that’s getting ahead a bit. Events actually kick off with the explosive arrival of another familiar Marvel Comics character: golden-hued Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a Superman-gone-bad who flies into Knowhere spaceport, current base of operations for the Guardians, and damn near takes out the entire team.
They are, by way of reminder, gung-ho Starlord, aka Peter Quill (Chris Pratt); the genetically enhanced Nebula (Karen Gillan), adopted daughter of the slain Thanos; the powerful but somewhat dim-bulb Drax (Dave Bautista); Mantis (Pom Klementieff), an empath able to sense and alter another’s emotions; and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), the hyper-intelligent, tree-like organism.
Along with Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who is critically injured during this initial, landscape-leveling battle with Warlock.
Worse yet, the team can’t revive their friend with standard med-tech, because that would activate a “kill switch” buried within Rocket’s cybernetic implants. Our heroes are able to partially identify the programming — the firmware has a signature — which prompts a mission to the Orgoscope: a gloppy, pulsating, organic space station where full data on all of the High Evolutionary’s thousands of experiments have been stored (the ultimate in copyright facilities, somewhat gross but also cleverly conceived by this film’s sfx wizards).
Rocket, left behind, endures near-death flashbacks to his childhood, which prompt the darkly claustrophobic animal torture sequences that subsequently are intercut with the explosive action elsewhere.
Turns out that Warlock is one of the High Evolutionary’s recent and much more successful “projects,” and was sent to snatch Rocket. The reason? Rocket proved much more successful than expected, emerging with an intellect superior to that of his maker … and a vengeful god can’t tolerate the thought of being outclassed by one of his creations.
Ergo, the High Evolutionary wants to study Rocket’s brain. By removing it.
Peter is introduced at low ebb: still unable to process the love of his life — Gamora (Zoe Saldana) — having been killed, and then to witness her return as an alternate version of herself that never had said relationship. (This hiccup courtesy of the five-year “blip” and multiverse complexities that took place in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.)
Worse yet, the mission to the Orgoscope requires assistance from the Ravagers — cue Sylvester Stallone’s brief return as Stakar Ogord — whose ranks include the I-don’t-know-any-of-you Gamora. That’s a tough pill for any guy to swallow, but it fuels this film’s most captivating character dynamic, as Pratt and Saldana angrily spar with each other.
Gunn mimics the Star Wars divide-and-conquer storytelling approach, with different sets of our heroes sent on various sidebar quests, often in defiance of Peter’s orders.
Drax and Mantis have become something of a cranky couple; she softens his vicious edges, and constantly puts him down, but ferociously objects if anybody else does the same. He’s bemused by her behavior, but finds it comforting. Bautista and Klementieff have fun with their sniping.
Poulter plays Warlock as an intriguing mystery: simple-minded and emotionally under-developed, with the curiosity of a child. Longtime Marvel Comics readers will know where this character is heading; watching him evolve here is intriguing.
Unfortunately, Gunn and his co-writers don’t do much with Nebula; Gillan is little more than a sullen weapon who seems annoyed by having to help in any given situation. Back in Knowhere, Sean Gunn’s Kraglin is given even shorter shrift, as he attempts to master the lethal, sound-sensitive yaka arrow left to him by deceased mentor Yondu Udonta.
Kraglin barely interacts with the others, and is reduced to a few scenes of squabbling with Cosmo the Space dog (voiced by Maria Bakalova), who has impressive telekinetic powers.
It’s also impossible to get a bead on the similarly golden-hued Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), who will be remembered as a secondary villain in Guardians Vol. 2, and returns here as Warlock’s “mother.” The haughty, xenophobic attitude she displayed in that film is wholly absent here; she’s little more than a petulant toady.
Finally, making Groot a “guy in a suit” at times — rather than a wholly CGI creation — is a major mistake.
Everything ultimately leads to an all-stops-out confrontation with the High Evolutionary, who has established his current laboratory on Counter-Earth, a planet wholly populated by the villain’s next-gen “humanimals,” evolutionarily accelerated to be free of the human failings that create so much trouble on our Earth. (Uh-huh. He wishes…)
As has become de rigueur in all MCU films, the third-act climax is an explosive, overly long melee that once again relies on character powers that are as randomly strong — or weak — as a given scene demands. Credit where due, though: Gunn and his co-writers maintain momentum, suspense and humor during this all-outs skirmish.
Sharp-eyed viewers will spot numerous Easter Eggs; I chuckled at the fleeting appearance of Howard the Duck. And, as always, music plays a crucial role: this time 1980s and ’90s classics from Radiohead, Heart, Spacehog and Bruce Springsteen, among many, many others.
Fans have known, long in advance, that this is the final entry in the Guardians series (or so the MCU movers and shakers have claimed); the closing scenes therefore are satisfying but bittersweet.
It’s also the most grotesquely violent and longest of the trilogy, at 150 minutes: another reason it’s inferior to its predecessors. Like too many recent superhero films, this one suffers from self-indulgent bloat. All concerned really need to stop that.
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