Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 (2023)

So, Nebula's (Karen Gillan) on the team now, while Gamora's (Zoe Saldana) alive but not on the team, because this Gamora didn't get free of Thanos until later or something related to all the time hijinks in Endgame, and Star-Lord's (Chris Pratt) being a mopey, depressed drunk about her not remembering him.

Then Adam Warlock showed up, and boy, I was not feeling great about this movie, given my noted antipathy for that character. He turns out to be kind of an idiot, and Nebula stabbed him, so that was a plus. But he's working for the High Evolutionary (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh) who created him and Rocket, among others, and wants the latter back. And since Rocket's gravely injured and they can't give him medical treatment without a passkey the Evolutionary's got, the team has to go to the bad guy.

I was actually pretty excited for the break-in at the "Orgoscope", because who doesn't love a heist movie? Except it turns into a clusterfuck because this team is a mess. One issue I have with the movie is, Gunn dragged the "comedy" bits out too long. The part in the elevator, where Star-Lord's explaining his whole deal with Gamora to their hostage? Too long. The part in the family's living room once they get to Counter-Earth? Too long. Maybe Gunn's just trying to lighten things up from the sad flashbacks to Rocket's early years in a cage on the High Evolutionary's stupid ship, but, the movie's long enough as it is, and they're supposed to be dealing with a ticking clock of Rocket dying if they can't treat him. A little less of the Guardians being dumbasses isn't going to hurt things.

Not sure how I feel about all the Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) stuff. One calling the other an idiot, or the wiping memories, or Drax constantly lying to her. It wasn't funny, so much as kind of sad. But, then there's how Mantis sticks up for him against Nebula's harsh words, although maybe she was just sick of Nebula's attitude. And Drax does actually repeat the speech she gave him to tell Star-Lord, word-for-word, was kind of nice. So, it's mutual respect, but they're both incredibly bad at expressing it?

(Also, Drax is the only member of the team that doesn't hate himself? I'd never gotten self-loathing vibes off Groot. All the others, yes, absolutely, but not Groot.)

Also not sure about the suits the security guys were wearing. Points for going a different route, and it plays into the notion of the Orgoscope as a biological station, but maybe less human airbag, more bone armor, would have helped? At least give the suits the option to sprout defensive armor or spikes or something less, Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Good things. Cosmo! Cosmo got speaking lines! Cosmo is, a girl? OK, that's fine. Boy or girl, Cosmo is definitely a good dog! Given it kept coming up, I expected at some point one of the Guardians (probably Nebula) would order Kraglin to just tell Cosmo she's a good dog, or that stupid fin was getting shoved someplace extremely unpleasant. Was it too obvious a bit for James Gunn, or not obvious enough? We'll never know.

Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. I thought he brought a mixture of intelligence, arrogance, and childishness to the role. The, 'you win the crying contest,' line was just incredibly cruel, A+ delivery there, and made it so much more satisfying when Rocket ripped his face up. Granted, for someone Gamora tells us is a thousand times more powerful than Star-Lord, H.E. doesn't seem particularly competent. But power and competence aren't necessarily linked. He's become so fixated on how this one particular experiment (Rocket) not only went beyond what he "should" have been capable of, but has in a sense thwarted the Evolutionary's will by continuing to survive, that he gets tunnel vision.

He's a bored kid who knocks over the tower of blocks as soon as he loses interest. Everything he creates is just an experiment. Whatever he says about pursuing "perfection", there's no meaning or significance beyond how proving how smart he is. Which helps to distinguish him from Ego, who was also ultimately trying to cover the universe in his creations, but thought of it as his biological imperative. And I guess he pretended to care about Peter, maybe even did care when he thought their goals would align. Whereas the Evolutionary might have been impressed at Rocket's insight and intuition, but his interest was never anything more than curiosity (resentment?)

That said, it was ridiculous Rocket refuses to kill the Evolutionary because, 'he's a freaking Guardian of the Galaxy.' That didn't stop you from killing all of the Evolutionary's goons while listening to the Beastie Boys. I mean, maybe the human-looking goons survived. Drax just pinned that one guy upside-down to the wall via knife in the leg, but Nebula and Star-Lord were shooting people, and I didn't see them going back to pick those guys up during the evacuation. There certainly was no pulling of punches on the "Hellbeasts", who are, at the end of the day, creations of the H.E. like Rocket.

Much like Batman not running over the Joker in Dark Knight, I will never understand this notion that it's OK to kill the goon squads, but you can't kill the monster who's actually responsible for everything. If you're not going to go lethal at all, fine. That's great. Preserve life. Offer second chances. But if you're not gonna do that, Cut. Off. The. Head.

I'm not generally a big believer in Chris Pratt when he plays anything other than "idiot man-child," but the part where he's refusing to let Rocket die and he's sobbing through chest compressions, he really sold that scene. It was nice to see Gillan get to return to playing Nebula as the angrily competent one surrounded by idiots, much like she did in the first movie. It's a little different in that she actually cares about this group of idiots, something that wasn't true of Ronan and his "burn planets to ASH!" shtick, so she's a bit like a kindergarten teacher running on zero sleep and too much caffeine.

It's been a while since I watched the second one the whole way through, but I think I liked Vol. 3 more than Vol. 2 (the first one remains the best.) Maybe because it's not so intensely focused on Star-Lord's crap? This is one offers a chance for the entire cast to try and get something. Maybe closure with a rough past, or the courage to admit what they feel, or enough stability and confidence to make a change in their lives. How successful the movie is at these things depends on which character we're looking at (Groot didn't get a lot of time), but on the whole, at least there was an effort.