Guardians of the Galaxy | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | Avengers: Infinity War | Avengers: Endgame | Thor: Love and Thunder | The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Guardians of the Galaxy, 26 April 2023, streamed via Disney+
I reviewed Volume 1 in August 2020, which is more reactiony than anything else. I haven't done a full accounting of how many times I'd watched the film previous to that point, but I'm willing to bet it was in the five-or-so range. (I need to do a spreadsheet to keep track of movies I watch, similar to my books-I've-read spreadsheet, but that feels like a summer project.)
Y'all, remember when this image of the cast in a prison line-up was the most that many of us knew about this property? What innocents we were in 2014.
We're introduced to Peter as a kid who's anticipating his mother's death, and she calls his father a being of "pure light" and she thinks that her family will care for Peter until his father comes to get him and, MY GOD, let's contemplate how absolutely awful that poor woman must have had it when she got pregnant. Like, we're in X-Files territory with this narrative. (And then Peter disappears right as his mom died? His poor family, geez. I wonder if we'll get anything about them in Guardians 3.)
OH MAN, remember this opening sequence? And most of us knew Chris Pratt as Andy from Parks and Recreation! DELIGHTFUL.
I like that we establish right away that Peter Quill is actually a fairly competent dude in his arena who only comes across as a total schlub because he thinks/aspires to be about 35% cooler than he actually is. I bet he'd get along with Scott Lang pretty well. (Why haven't we been treated to any Ant-Man interaction with the Guardians? C'mon.)
I also enjoy how totally random the meeting of everybody first is. Peter fails to fence his MacGuffin, Gamora tries to steal the MacGuffin, then Rocket and Groot try to bounty hunt Peter. Look at the meet cute of this weirdo found family! What dirtbags they all are. Also, MAN OH MAN, listen to them casually name-drop "the Mad Titan Thanos" like it ain't no thing.
I'm fascinated that, even though Guardians arrived well into Phase Two of the MCU, it was only at this point that some really, truly, comic-booky establishing shots started to happen. I mean, look at this establishing shot of the Kyln! That's a two-page splash, that is.
Has Pratt's role as the Worst Chris influenced the way we feel about Peter Quill or vice versa? In any case, I found myself kind of touched by how intensely ragey he is when his Sony Walkman gets confiscated. Like, THAT MUSIC IS HIS MOM, YOU DICKWAD, hands off!
Now that I think about it, why doesn't Peter ever go back to Earth (or, as they call it in Guardians, Terra)? By the time he hits adulthood--and the Infinity War, certainly, it seems pretty clear he has the option AND YET.
Meanwhile, Gamora's clearly working through some shit and WOW that makes the affection between her and Thanos, future-wise, really interesting. And then there's Karen Gillan, KILLING IT as Nebula--who is way looser-hipped in this first iteration, so let's think about how brilliant it was to make her an angry awkward nerd in future films, why don't we? And it's also worth noting that Nebula turns on Thanos just as quickly as Gamora does--she's just a little less proactive about it, instead waiting until she thinks someone else could kill Thanos first.
Other things to consider: Bradley Cooper is voicing Rocket, like, an octave less wry than he does in later films. Everything in Guardians signals how absolutely gleefully violent Gunn's The Suicide Squad is. (Also, that Jackson Pollock painting joke? YIKES.) It's significant that Rocket is the one who comes up with the prison breakout plan; Peter Quill was never actually the leader of this team.
I love that these fools are mercenary assholes right up until they realize they've got an Infinity Stone and then MOST of them are still mercenary assholes. (Side note: Later, Drax calls Gamora a whore and I HATE IT SO MUCH because his WHOLE THING is his inability to understand non-literal language, so there's no way he could have been meaning "whore" in a metaphorical sense, BUT ANYWAY.)
The Nova Corps design is pretty cool, so, uh. RIP, Nova Corps. And then Lee Pace, who's in an entirely different movie until the exact moment of his character's defeat. Also, and this is no shade on Zoe Saldana, but Gamora's little headshake when Peter tries to get her to dance is the best acting she does in this movie. (I could also talk about Rocket just weeping brokenheartedly over Groot who, yes, did actually die, but I can't deal with it right now, y'all, my heart.)
Should we point out these kids successfully wielded an actual Infinity Stone and survived? Tony Stark, maybe you should have done some assemblin' instead of pushing for the whole martyrdom thing. (But also, should PETER have wielded the Infinity Gauntlet? OH MY GOD.)
Man. this movie. What a ROMP.
I know I could have rewatched all the I Am Groot shorts at this point, timeline-wise, but they're pretty insubstantial. Baby Groot: Adorable and amoral! The end!
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, 28 April 2023, streamed via Disney+
Digging into my past reviews, I wrote about Volume 2 a couple of times: Twice in May/June 2017 and then again in August 2020. And it'd be easier to go on and on (again) about the adorableness of Baby Groot, SON OF GROOT, but let's instead consider how horrifying this opening scene is in hindsight. I mean, we can talk about the whole de-aging thing that we just can't escape anymore, but also, Meredith Quill, "in love with a spaceman," like already she's being set up for being abandoned and treated like she's delusional for the rest of her life.
But then, yeah, cut to an action-packed scene that none of us care about because BABY GROOT TIME IS HERE.
Peter's "Family reunion, yay" bit when Nebula is revealed is a great bit of understated nonsense foreshadowing, honestly, and I approve.
I know the whole "escape from the Sovereign" fleet thing is supposed to be exciting, but on (what I guess is my) fourth watch, it's kind of tedious? Like, haha, the Sovereign fleet is just a fancy video arcade, and oh no, Peter and Rocket are competitive about who is the better pilot, and yeehaw here's a crash landing where Gamora can be appropriately badass and then scold dudes for being dudes. But instead it just seems like we're killing time? But we get Ben Browder in gold paint, so there's that.
And then there's the whole "Yondu is sad" thing, which is sort of difficult to care about, first of all because Yondu is first revealed to be sad after he, I don't know, visited a robot sex worker, and then it turns out he was exiled for child trafficking. Plus, are Stakar's formal words of exile appropriately fitting 1) after twenty years--if we assume Peter's abduction was the actual catalyst of all this--and 2) an afterthought tacked on once Stakar has put a random bar on a random planet on the Ravager blacklist?
"I wear these flames same as you!"
"You may dress like us, but you'll never hear the Horns of Freedom when you die, Yondu. And the Colors of Ogord will never flash over your grave."
Like, before this very moment, did we even know "Ravager" meant anything other than a loose affiliation of cannibal bounty hunters? And I mean, Yondu's arc in this movie is supposed to be touching and it kind of is, and yet.
Ego arrives in a pretty cool egg ship thing, and if we weren't already put off by the opening sequence, we should know everything we need to know from looking at Mantis, like WHAT THE HELL, did nobody notice this woman who is clearly being held against her consent? And then we're supposed to think Drax's weird awful treatment of her is also endearing?
This one forest conversation, where it turns out Peter told Gamora about his sad childhood, sells me more on their relationship than pretty much anything else that happens in these first two movies. (So, like: If Ego supposedly searched for Peter for so long, how did Yondu et al manage to find him without any trouble, it seems? I mean, we can assume that Ego, being an unreliable narrator, was actually spending that time, like, murdering some other children of his.)
Rocket defending the broken Milano from all the Ravagers is pretty fun, but also just horrifically violent in a way that I just find kind of off-putting? All the DNA for Gunn's The Suicide Squad was always evident. (I mentioned in a previous review how chilling I found the image of all the spaced Ravagers floating about, post-mutiny. It's awful and it's supposed to be awful.) Thankfully they only make
This movie, by bringing us Mantis and Nebula, highlights some really specific ways that women are victimized. And then we've got to deal with all these duuuuuuuudes and their saaaaaadness. And I have so many mixed feelings about the Mantis and Drax dynamic, but their bonding scene was so goddamn effective, I can't even. When she just starts WEEPING when Drax seems totally stoic?
And then we're back with the Ravagers for some more comedic violence! The severed toe thing? Can't help giggling. But also, James Gunn, what's with all the action slow-mos? Why all the jokes about robbing people of their prosthetics?
When the narrative makes the whole "found family" theme explicit, though, it works really well. It's the Guardians, yeah, but it's also Gamora and Nebula. It's Yondu and Kraglin and Peter. It's, a little bit, Yondu and Stakar. It's poor lonely Mantis. And it's why the engineered Sovereign society and Ego's drive to create are both doomed: Because they won't allow or accept imperfections in those that might love them.
Thinking of Ego as a Celestial, it occurs to me that I never connected his whole deal with whatever was going on in the Eternals movie. But how does his story jive with the Eternals actually being around at that time? I should probably rewatch that at some point.
As much as I'm critiquing this movie, Pratt and the rest did actually sell the hell out of the end of it and I wept from the whole "I use my heart" bit to the funeral.
And then my previous watches of the two Avengers endcaps:
- Infinity War in July 2018
- Infinity War and Endgame in April 2019
- Infinity War and Endgame in August 2020
To stay true to the nature of this exercise, I'mma focus on the Guardians aspects in these next coupla things and not get all OH MY HEART about everything. As much as possible, anyway.
Avengers: Infinity War, 29 April 2023, streamed via Disney+
OKAY FIRST OF ALL: I cannot believe they did Thor: Ragnarok so dirty as to kill most of the Asgardian refugees. (It looked like there was a fleet of them, not just the one ship from Ragnarok, which explains New Asgard later.) Then Heimdall, in his last gasp, decided to save, uh, Bruce Banner? Like, I respect it, and yet I am confused? And then Loki, MY GOD, LOKI ODINSON, RIGHTFUL KING OF JOTUNHEIM, I remember thinking the first time I saw this movie that, NO WAY are they robbing we the fandom of Idris Elba and Tom Hiddleston, and they didn't on the Hiddlefront, but STILL. Watch the last gasp of the Loki we have been so blessed to gaze upon for so many years.
The whole sequence from Tony and Pepper to Strange and Wong to Peter, like, holy crap, I felt the thrill once again. And when we get back to SPACE, and the Guardians, and Gamora is lip-syncing and it's adorable.
Then Thor slams into their windshield and we get a whole lot of Peter being insecure in his masculinity. I mean, given how immediately Drax and Gamora start feeling up Thor's unconscious body (uhhhhhh), I guess I get it? And insecure masculinity is Peter's whole thing.
But how about we focus on two things: How did Thor know the Collector has the Reality Stone, and how did Thor know Xandar was attacked? (OH NO GLENN CLOSE AND JOHN C REILLY--but they might be okay because Thor said it was "decimated" not destroyed.) I guess Asgard-on-the-run was, indeed, a bigger fleet, because Thor also says only HALF of his people were slaughtered. Maybe they stopped by Xandar and that's when Thanos attacked both the planet and the fleet?
Amen, Thor.
I was a comics reader, so I was very, very prepared for Vision/Wanda, but I do wonder how out-of-the-blue other people might have found them. And they were lovely in WandaVision, of course, but I am quite sad that we missed the full blossoming of their relationship.
There is something kind of hilarious about Wanda and Vision, of all these heroes, needing to be rescued by Steve and Natasha and Sam, who have no mystical powers whatsoever, but I guess we can argue that the trained soldiers have the composure and wherewithal that relative youngsters Wanda and Vision don't.
Gamora's flashback to meeting Thanos is…weird. Like, why was Thanos in search of kids to adopt? Because if we didn't know he was in charge of the culling of Gamora's planet, we could almost argue that his demeanor toward her was kind. Caring. And it's interesting that she still has the knife he gave her at their first meeting, y'know?
So it's obvious that, by this point, the "unspoken thing" between Peter and Gamora is an understanding--they kiss! They are in a relationship! Which is why it's hilarious that Gamora asks Peter to kill her in their worst case scenario, because GIRL, you've met this dude. Peter will never kill anybody he loves, there was an 85% possibility he did not have the actual capability in his bones. (Gamora, if you want to make sure Thanos wouldn't get the secret from you, maybe you shouldn't go after him, yeah?)
I hate/love that we go back to Knowhere for the Collector, mostly because this means I'm going to have "The Collector" by Nine Inch Nails stuck in my head for yet another day. In any case, while it's annoying that Drax ONCE AGAIN cannot keep his shit together to execute a plan, we now know his daughter's name! (We learned his wife's name, Ovette, in the second movie. His daughter's name is Camaria, which is pretty.) And, actually, same for Gamora! Once again, my girl, maybe you could have just not gone after him?
"Earth just lost her best defender," Steve declares, like, are we talking about Tony Stark? Is that who you're meaning, my dude? Because, uh. Okay? Meanwhile, they really just dropped the whole Natasha/Bruce thing like it was as uninteresting as it actually was, so huzzah? But whatever, because we're on our way to WAKANDA and dude, T'Challa and Bucky totally could have been hanging out, omfg, I never even thought about thisl.
Yes, I see the typo, but it's not like I'm making my own GIFs.
I love Tom Holland's Peter Parker so much. In case y'all didn't know.
The back-to-back scenes of Gamora sacrificing the universe for Nebula and then Thor having a heart-to-heart with Rocket is an emotional wallop. Siblings! Who love each other! Even when they frequently maim and attempt to murder each other! Oooooof.
Side note: The Groot language was an elective on Asgard! Which means...Thor voluntarily took extra classes? Also, Thor says his best friend was stabbed through the heart. Does he mean Heimdall? Or any of his buddies that Hela murdered in Ragnarok? Because they ALL got stabbed through the heart? Also also, Thor is 1500 years old and let's just dwell on that for a second.
Then we have the Guardians meeting up with Peter and Tony and Strange and it's actually a lot of fun! Power-wise, they are totally unevenly matched, but the Guardians are fairly nimble and freak the fuck out of Peter because his whole, "Please don't lay your eggs in me" is wonderful.
Hey, here's a question: Why is Eitri keeping the design for Stormbreaker in his pocket? Why do you have a plan for a king's weapon greater than all those made before, with the possibility of summoning the bifrost, and you just, like, didn't mention it before now? And then it was up to Groot to bind the thing together? Poor planning, smith.
If I showed Loki's death scene, I've got to show Gamora's death scene. Fare thee well, the Gamora whom we actually knew. And are we supposed to feel bad for Thanos? Because they play it like that, AND YET. (And then we do this all again with Nat in the next movie? I have a lot of questions about the physical vs. metaphysical properties of the Soul Stone.)
Imagine if Thanos, instead of opting for genocide, just made access to birth control and a universal basic income available to everybody in the universe? Meanwhile, let's continue to focus on the fact that Mantis is 100% essential to tempering godlike powers once again. (I know we want to blame Quill for fucking up the plan, but Strange did say there was only ONE scenario where they won, so.)
Instead of talking about the awfulness of the final result (like, interesting how the Children of Thanos knew Wanda was up guarding Vision, which meant they waited until she was spotted before doing a surgical strike), let me offer you a list of those wot got blipped:
Bucky, T'Challa, Groot, Wanda, Sam, Mantis, Drax, Quill, Strange, Peter Parker, Maria Hill, Nick Fury.
In hindsight, the neatest thing about the end credits tag is how much it warps up how long the battle in Wakanda took. Because the space between Maria Hill noting multiple bogies over the country and an SUV slamming into them after the driver gets blipped is four seconds. FOUR. SECONDS. I counted. Did...SHIELD somehow NOT get the note about the battle until an hour after it started? I find that hard to believe. Anyway, here's a neat video someone did of putting all the blippings in sync.
Avengers: Endgame, 01 May 2023, streamed via Disney+
I know I said I'm focusing on Guardians, so we'll just skip entirely over the utter horror of that Hawkeye opening scene and go directly to Tony and Nebula, stranded space buddies! Like, imagine the arc these two go through, in the space of almost a month. What sorrow! What rage! And the care that Nebula shows to Stark as he's slowly wasting away, ughhhhhhh. (My god, Karen Gillan, you are brill.) Think on it: Nebula gets hungry, we know, but she's cybernetic. She'll last ages longer than him. She moves Tony's body to the front of the ship, why?
Nebula and Rocket reuniting is so tough. How alone they are, and how they both have they impulse to clasp hands--they were together with Yondu in Vol. 2 and they have such similar wounds. And think of how they brainstormed on where to find Thanos before they did that
Nebula hesitantly reaching out to close the eyes on Thanos's eyes, owwwwww.
That rat that hopped onto the quantum tunnel controls in San Francisco is the hero of the MCU. Meanwhile, I kind of love that Rocket and Nebula have been liaising with Captain Marvel on random missions. (Later, Nat says, "I get emails from a raccoon," and Y'ALL, I WANT TO KNOW.)
I can't talk about Nat dealing with Clint going full Ronin, but she and Cap had a full FWB thing happening over the five years, right? They don't read as romantic ever, but seriously, this SCENE.
So, once Tony constructs time/space GPS (oooookay), they call "the whole team" back, and that includes Nebula and Rocket! Apparently! And Rocket calls Bruce "Big Green" and Nebula is on a comm channel to "Rhodey," like, WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN FIVE YEARS. I have GOT to see those emails, y'all.
Hey, guess what, I still hate the fat suit! As I said previously: Just let Hemsworth eat regular human food for a couple of months and then he'd just be, like, a regular human. That'd be enough to prove the point! (And it's not so much the fact that he's gained weight--it's that they play it for laughs.) Sigh. It's especially annoying because Thor's arc is actually extremely compelling! Guilt and depression and PTSD as they manifest in a superhero with godlike powers! That's THE STUFF, and they decided to add on some fatphobia. UGH.
Rocket and Nebula briefing the Avengers on the Power and Soul Stone is an excellent juxtaposition of the Guardians tonal balancing act.
So, like, when they put together their
Also, I somehow never caught this little bit in my previous rewatches, but THOSE MONSTERS.
I appreciate Rocket's consistent application of, "You are not the only sad person, GET IT TOGETHER." Everybody hurts, my dudes.
Meanwhile, for folks who were so insistent on not crossing the time streams or whatever, it's pretty rough about Nebula being on the same AM band or whatever. And it's so rough to know at the time this all happens, Nebula AND Gamora were thisclose to turning on Thanos anyway.
Hey, look, 2014 Loki! Who ends up becoming much more quickly his 2019 (or whatever) self than 2014 Gamora will have done, if I'm guessing correctly about Volume 3. Anyway, sure, this sort of messes up the TIME HEIST, but this does at least give Tony a chance to bond with his father about fatherhood? (Side note: The wig they put on Michael Douglas for this era, LOL.)
I have a lot of questions about how Steve might have lived all those decades of his lost life with Peggy without, like, fucking up the timestream. But then again, I guess Thanos jumping into the future for the last Endgame battle is…WAIT A SECOND WTF.
Thor, once he's back in purposeful mode, reaches epic hotness once again. (And seriously, again, not so much that he's shown as heavier in this narrative--it's that they take so many cheap shots about it, ugh.) LOOK AT THAT GLORIOUS HAIR.
Anyway, here's the portal scene, ENJOY YOUR TEARS AS I DID MINE.
How thrilled was I to see Rocket and Groot reunited? Almost as joyful as Peter was at seeing Gamora...before she knees him twice in the groin, anyway.
Seeing the Guardians at Tony's funeral was really kind of nice. That whole scene wasn't a tearjerker so much as a little thrilling to see so many of Our Heroes in one place. (Though it also reminds me that Tom Holland was told it was going to be a wedding scene because the lad cannot be trusted with information around the media.)
I liked that Thor official handed New Asgard over to Valkyrie before faffing off with the Asgardians.
Other things I did not catch until now: Steve brought the old Mjolnir back to Asgard That Was! (Which I kind of knew, but hadn't actually seen.) Also, Bucky TOTALLY knew Steve was gonna pull a runner while he was time traveling. "I'm going to miss you," and then he was totally unsurprised and let Sam greet Old!Steve upon the return? What drunken confessions did you two old men have before Steve embarked upon his Return to Peggy tour?
Anyway, here is where we leave off with the Guardians before heading over to the next film. How did Gamora get off Earth? WHO CAN SAY.
It is unlikely that we're going to ever get any interaction between Wanda Maximoff, world-breaker, and Mantis, god-queller, but y'all, I WANT IT SO MUCH.
Thor: Love and Thunder, 03 May 2023, streamed via Disney+
If you're curious, I first reviewed this film in July 2022. Handily, I talked about the Guardians almost not at all in that reaction post, so that works out nicely for this collection!
The opening Korg storytelling montage is fun! It's a nice little bit of like, "here's Thor hanging out in space with the Guardians," though I have questions. Like, what are Peter and Thor talking about at the table here? Can they bro without getting extremely BRO about it?
I took this picture of my TV with my phone because I couldn't find a still online, I AM SORRY.
Or, what is the mission here, that all the Guardians EXCEPT THOR are just hip-deep in swamp? Why did this necessitate am amphibious incursion?
Why is teenage Groot biting this pair of binoculars? Isn't he past the oral fixation stage of his growth at this point?
If the battle is such a rough one, why do both Peter AND Mantis have to go fetch Meditation!Thor? Why don't they have a way down? (Also, enjoy this deleted scene where they all hop onto Stormbreaker.)
How often does Thor make this speech about saving the people of this world OR WHATEVER that Peter can be both enthused and eyerolly about it in advance?
Seriously, though, look at the Guardians reacting to Thor's showboating. They are both quite glad he's there and also, like, ughhhhh, THIS GUY. It's fun.
Side note: I would desperately like to have heard Thor recount his tale to whichever refugee Asgardian bard was hanging out on the ship before Thanos attacked them. Because it certainly was not Loki that told this story to the archivists!
It makes total sense that Drax LOVES the screaming goats! He's huggin' 'em! Mantis thinks Drax and the goats is hilarious until one of the goats kicks a table in her direction. Then she is IMMEDIATELY all in with Nebula on shooting them. Wow, Mantis! (There's this thing where Mantis presents as a submissive empathic female--and don't get me started about how that's racialized--where it's supposed to be amusing how she's just as amoral and violent as the rest of the Guardians. And, guys: It works. It cracks me up every time.)
Kraglin was on the ship the entire time! Except he somehow also got married to a local named Glenda and GET THIS, Peter tells him, "You can't get married on every single planet we land on," like, how many times has Kraglin gotten married recently? Also, I desperately want to know what the relationship between Korg and the other Guardians was.
I appreciate Peter trying to give Thor advice based on having loved and lost Gamora. It's actually sweet?
"Buddy, if I may?
"You may."
"After thousands of years of living you don't seem to know who the hell you are. I've been lost before, but then I found meaning, I found love. And yeah, it got taken from me, and god, that hurts. But that shitty feeling is better than feeling empty. My hope for you is that one day, you will find something to make you feel this shitty."
AND THEIR HANDSHAKE. Seriously, I want to know everything about the time these dudes spent together. (Also, that "snake you cannot trust" is CLEARLY a Loki reference, oh, Thor, buddy, you miss your brother so much.)
Peter is disturbingly mature, in fact! Like, he just...lets Thor do his whole spiel about giving the ship over? I think the Peter of Endgame would have insisted Thor recognize whose ship it is. (Side note: In the background, Kraglin is saying goodbye to Glenda. Are they...divorced now?)
Meanwhile, on the Asgardian side, WHAT HAPPENS TO SIF. (We see her later, missing an arm, teaching Axl how to fight. I'mma just live in faith that she and Val fell in love at the infirmary, like Faramir and Eowyn in the Houses of Healing.)
I love the friendship between Jane and Valkyrie. Like, I don't know if they met before this film, but certainly when Mjolnir up and busted out of its display case, King Val would have had QUESTIONS. And then Jane told her about the cancer and started testing out catchphrases, Y'ALL.
And then Val and Thor, falling back on their BROS BROS BROS dynamic. Val is the best. More Val with everybody! Bring Val onto Loki so she can bro out there, too!
Anyway, let's all hail how badass everybody in this movie is. Even the kids! (Has Thor always been able to temporarily imbue people with godlike powers? Or is that largely because those were all Asgardian/adjacent kids, and thus could plausibly be counted as his believers/followers?)
Also, can we stop and savor Thor's memorial tattoo? It does not just have "RIP Loki" at the top, "Brothers," a rose, a broken heart, a headstone WITH a broken heart on it, Loki's helmet, a crescent moon, and a ribbon that says, "Rest in Mischief." It also has a scroll with the names of people he's lost: Mother, Father, Heimdall, Loki, Tony, Natasha. THOR, BABY. YOU NEED SO MANY HUGS. (I did not notice it the first time, but while Val and Jane are ogling, Korg remarks, "Looks like a shy courgette," guys, a courgette is a zucchini, I leave you to draw your own conclusions.)
I appreciate that Love, girl born of Eternity, is mostly a bratty kid. I want to see Thor and Rocket commiserate about having to raise Love and Groot. I want to see Thor calling Pepper Potts to ask her how she deals with Morgan's hijinks. I want those scenes immediately.
Anyway, I don't know what the future of the Thor franchise is, but certainly this movie is a fun one!
Keep your heart open.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, 04 May 2023, streamed via Disney+
I haven't reviewed this before, mostly because as an hour-long thing, I count it as TV rather than a movie. So there's that! But it's narratively important to the next film (I ASSUME), so here we are!
Nebula expositioning, "Ever since [their] buying Knowhere from the Collector," has real, "Somehow Palpatine returned" energy. (Same with Kraglin noting he saw it was almost Christmas on "the multi-calendar.") Like, how did they afford it? Why did they do it? WHO BUYS A WHOLE ASTEROID/CELESTIAL SKULL? Do they charge rent? Does the skull still have mining going on? WHAT IS HAPPENING.
The framing device of the (animated) "Yondu ruins Christmas" story is a nice way to bring back Yondu without bringing back Yondu, y'know? And it both establishes how awful Yondu is AND how he tried to parent without having any good examples of parenting available to him. (That said, uh, don't give your kids weapons as gifts, as a general rule.)
There's a weird holiday song, which cool. (I've seen the Old 97s before--they're do a fun show!) I do not object and I guess it's in the spirit of a holiday special? I mean, sure! Also, Peter's completely OTT reaction to this community of non-Earthlings not getting the Santa mythos right is silly. Everybody is doing this for you, Peter! ACCEPT THEIR WEIRD LOVE.
Nebula bellowing, "You can't outrun me, Bacon!" is this episode's best ADR.
So, question: When did Mantis have any interaction with Steve that would warrant a full-body hug? (We'll just put aside the whole "Go-Bots killed his cousin" thing.) I do appreciate Mantis's hustle, though. She gets a handle on paper currency gig work pretty fast!
I approve of Mantis and Drax getting absolutely wasted in West Hollywood (or whatever). Is it necessary? WHO CARES. Are we supposed to mind that Mantis robs that woman selling Hollywood maps? I GUESS NOT. Guardians exists in a universe untethered to morality, remember?
So, like, good on Kevin Bacon for being a sport about this entire thing, which I dig. But also, DUDES, what is UP with the cops that IMMEDIATELY FIRE MULTIPLE BULLETS at two trespassers? Because until Mantis comes at 'em, they weren't actually making any major aggressive moves! Drax was just walking at first! The outsized violence of the films do not transfer very well to situations that could be read as anywhere close to "real life."
(I do really like the way they filmed/edited Mantis leaping all across Bacon's mansion--it really emphasizes how very different they move in comparison to superhero leaping.)
The whole sequence of the lights and fake snow and everything is really sweet. Everybody loves Peter so much! (WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE I HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ECONOMY OF KNOWHERE.) Anyway, good on Peter for taking a strong stance against kidnapping and human trafficking.
I know we're supposed to treat Mantis being a sister to Peter as a revelation, but honestly, it makes a lot of sense, given what we know of Ego! It's not even weird that she told Drax about it--it's just unbelievable that Drax hadn't told anyone about it. And Peter is so, so, so lonely a lot of the time--the loss of his mother and also Yondu is just, ugh, poor my dude.
I don't wanna talk about Swole!Groot.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, 05 May 2023, Century Olympia
Well, that was fully and wholly delightful! It is unclear if it is the end of the Guardians saga, but as most folks have been presuming, it's certainly the close of a chapter. (I will attempt to do this without doing major plot spoilers.) I actually am having the hardest time talking about this film--I'm writing this particular reaction weeks after the initial watch. I have so many feelings! I'm not sure what belongs here! Agh!
So as we saw in the holiday special, the Guardians seem to be kind of legit now? Like, they manage Knowhere--own it?--and they're actually considered Ravagers. Like, they have Ravager uniforms and everything!
In terms of antagonists, we've got two. Carrying over from Volume 2, we've got Adam Warlock, who unlike the comics version (apparently--I'm not really up on him there), is a murderous himbo. As my favorite male character archetype is Golden Retriever, you can see how I would enjoy this to some capacity! (But they couldn't have given us Ben Browder again? UGH.) That said, Adam's not really much of a foe: He shows up, destroys everything in his path, but then gets put off-track because he's not all that bright. Because here's the thing: the High Evolutionary decanted him before it was time.
So yeah, our villain is the High Evolutionary, a dude who is positively OBSESSED with genetically tinkering with species until they're, I don't know, perfect? Or something? He's pretty awful. (Hey, if you are sensitive to cruelty to animals, this film is gonna be ROUGH on you, fair warning.) He is the absolute worst and honestly, a pretty cool villain, particularly if you're not totally wedded to every villain having a good point (AKA Thanos Was Right). I HATE HIM.
As for Our Heroes, Swole Groot has matured from cranky teenager to Golden Retriever, But a Tree. Kraglin is still learning how to whistle up Yondu's arrow. Mantis and Drax are squabbling nonstop--YMMV on whether or not this is endearing.
Gamora, as you may recall, is actually not Our Gamora, but rather a pricklier Gamora who never joined the Guardians. She's got strong ties to Nebula still, but she's off on her own now, and doesn't quite get why the Guardians are so weird around her. (She's still a total badass, of course--she just doesn't have the knee-jerk inherent kindness Our Gamora did.)
Peter, OH MAN, Peter is going through some shit. And first off, let's be clear: Peter in Infinity War got the short end of the characterization stick--he made some incredibly bad choices that were rooted in his immaturity, which were also sort of at odds with the growth he went through in Volume 2. So there's that. But also: Peter starts out this movie still totally slammed by grief. Grief for his mother, for the idea of his father, for Yondu, and for Gamora. And holy heck, but it does not help that there's a walking, talking version of Gamora who is allllllmost the one he fell in love with, but not quite. I feel pretty bad for him, honestly.
On the other hand, Nebula is the GOAT, y'all. She's take-charge, take-no-bullshit practical, she has the most knowledge about everything and everybody, and she and Rocket are BEST FRIENDS because they spent the entire FIVE YEARS of the blip together, BEING HEROES. Seriously, give me more Nebula in all the things, she's amazing.
But let's be clear: This is Rocket's movie. This is his origin story. This is about his first found family and it is heartbreaking. Be prepared to cry a lot.
James Gunn fully stuck the landing on the Guardians series and in an intensely James Gunn way. This movie is funny (but often in a mean way), spectacularly action-filled (but often in a gross and surprisingly graphic way--if they had blood instead of yellow ooze, this whole thing would be way past the rated R line), and heart-warming (but often in a heart-breakingly and/or self-conscious way).
And the "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" hallway scene is 1000% as frickin' awesome as you might have heard.
I don't know what happens with the Guardians after this point--I know at least a couple of actors (Saldana and Bautista) have indicated they're done with the MCU--but I'd be thrilled to see them pop up in the future.
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