I saw the third volume of Guardians of the Galaxy and now that I have let about two weeks pass, I'll go ahead and share my thoughts. I will still try to keep this as spoiler free as possible. I'm only human.
Even if you don't read anything past this sentence, I will say this. I liked this movie. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. I feel like it was a good course correction after the last movie, which I did not like at all. There were so many things that movie did wrong that this movie gets right. Maybe after doing "The Suicide Squad" (hated it!) and "Peacemaker" (loved it!), he found the right mix of his humor and humanity. This movie was a satisfying conclusion to this iteration of the Guardians that we've been with for the last ten years.
I don't think this is a huge spoiler, but if you've been on the edge of your seat to learn about Rocket's origin, this movie is for you. I won't go into details, but we delve into his past and you'll finally understand why he acts so gruff.
The biggest thing from this movie that I loved, is that FINALLY, this group of misfits feel like a family. In the first movie, they just met. In the second movie, we were told they are a family, but it never feels like it, since we see them split up immediately and then never spend time together. Here we get to watch them play off each other and it finally delivers on it's promise of the past few movies.
Now Gunn has a penchant for weird body horror stuff. It's in his DNA and literally pops up in every movie for TV show he does (or the ones I've seen). Or organic-y monsters. That shows up a little here as well and I just roll my eyes and move on with my day.
The other thing I really appreciated about this movie is that the stakes are small. They're not trying to save the universe this time, they are just trying to help a friend in need and they run up on the High Evolutionary, played with fiendish glee by Chukwudi Iwuji, which you nerds might recognize from Peacekeeper. Side note, I loved that as powerful as the High Evolutionary is, his fatal flaw is his obsession with Rocket over everything else. It forced him into many bad decisions and I love that it was his flaw, because there's no way he should be losing otherwise.
I think a lot of the jokes hit home this time because the movie isn't a house of cards built up on them, like the last movie. They weren't telling a million jokes in between the action. Or the action scenes weren't full of a million site gags, thankfully. This movie had way more heart than the last two movies combined and that may be because it's the last one. If so, good for them. It mostly got around some of the Marvel-ness of the Marvel movies. I said some because you still end with a bunch of big actiony, set pieces.
Finally, we actually spend more time adding depth to the characters that we were not getting before. Which I say, about time.
There's a lot more I could say, (Characterization of Adam Warlock, a different Gamora, a more likeable Drax and Nebula, less annoying Mantis), but I'll leave it here. I'm trying to make my reviews shorter, so that's it. This one is actually good, so go check it out.
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