The highest compliment you can pay a comic book film is that it punches through however many decades of adult living and paying rent and taxes you’ve had, putting you back in whatever state of mind you were in when you first discovered the art form of comics. Perhaps comic books introduced you to a lot of complex themes and concepts even before you got into the works of literature that helped you define your perspective on art and existence. If you were reading the good stuff at the right age (thank you profusely, Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz), comics helped lay the foundation for your critical mentality, however that happened to shake out. Sometimes, though, you forget that. I’ve been riding with the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Day 1, and there have been a few films (as well as WandaVision and the non-MCU Ang Lee Hulk) that have done that, breaking through all those years and kicking up those big emotions when these archetypes were new, before I even had the language to analyze things. But Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 feels special.
You would not expect the third film in a Marvel subtrilogy to hit this hard. Perhaps that’s due to diminished expectations based on the past few MCU offerings (which I generally enjoyed), or maybe the sheer weight of the past nine years since Vol. 1 first came out has ground us down. But as my friend Josh said, “I was not expecting to cry like that.” So know that if you respond to works like Flowers for Algernon, or We3, or Sid’s handiwork in Toy Story, be ready. Because the focus of this installment is beloved curmudgeon Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), and how he got to the point of being everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed procyon. Fear not: This isn’t just an instance of treading water until we get a fight at the special effects factory, because writer-director (and now universe-shaper for DC, which is a whole other thing) James Gunn is the closest the superhero genre of film has come to Chris Claremont at the top of his game.
With the way other MCU films have been passing characters back and forth, we’ve been getting a cinematic equivalent of the way comic book characters grow beyond any one single writer. MCU honcho Kevin Feige (back in the day, it was Jim Shooter) is determining the paths for these characters by assigning writers as deemed appropriate (which is one of the immediately noticeable differences between Quantumania and its predecessors when looked at as a subset of the MCU rather than the current soap opera perspective). So Guardians Vol. 3 feels like a remarkable homecoming, reminding us of the joys of one of these films firing on all cylinders.
There’s a great deal of delight to be found in the way these characters interact, coming together to battle a particularly evil Big Bad. (They’ve shaken the multiverse in some capacity, so it’s already happened and isn’t pertinent to the proceedings, though I am just a little bit terrified/intrigued that we may have to have a siege of Wundagore at some point.) Our heroes also work through various and sundry emotional traumas. The big one is that Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is back, but she’s not the Gamora we knew from the first few MCU phases, and this is really wrecking our guy Star-Lord’s program, because he’s still swoony over someone who doesn’t exist anymore. Something you’ll notice: This film understands that the public’s parasocial relationship to Chris Pratt has changed, and as such there’s a different dynamic afoot — this is a different Pratt vibe. And it benefits the film, as do the continually great comic duo stylings of Dave Bautista and Pom Klementieff as Drax and Mantis, and the angry cybernetic awesomeness of Karen “Amy Pond for Life” Gillan as Nebula.
If nothing else, Guardians Vol. 3 reminds us that Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is the most moral film of the ’80s, and hopefully this will serve as a similar reminder for future generations. It’s been a while since we had something in this genre that really did this kind of narrative heavy lifting, rather than just playing in the sandbox that we know and love and are fine with just hanging out for a little while in. Who even knows what the world will look like a few years down the road, much less these diverting moviehouse fiefdoms where we can let the thematic signifiers of our youth knock each other around? But for now, at least, there’s great power in a quality story told well by someone who truly gives a shit. Â
