BEFORE: I don't think I mentioned before in this space that last December I watched the "Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special", which had a great appearance by Kevin Bacon, playing Kevin Bacon, and that was really the set-up for this film, it showed our heroes settling in on Knowhere space station, taking some time to learn about this Earth holiday called Christmas, and how to celebrate it by finding a present for Peter Quill after Yondu ruined all his teenage holidays. It's more important because it introduces the telekinetic Soviet space dog, Cosmo, and re-introduces Mantis, but as (whoops, spoiler alert) Ego's daughter and therefore Quill's half-sister. I wouldn't watch it now, it's the middle of summer but feel free to give it a go when December rolls around again.
The voice of Bradley Cooper carries over from "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (Movie #2,625), "Thor: Love and Thunder" (Movie #4,228)
THE PLOT: Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Peter Quill rallies his team to defend the universe and save one of their own members - a mission that could mean the end of the Guardians if not successful.
AFTER: This is a recently-released feature, just started streaming on Disney Plus this month, so I have to issue a SPOILER ALERT. I can't talk about this one without giving away the plot, so turn back now if you haven't seen this one yet.
OK, to properly describe how I feel about certain parts of this film - namely, the origin flashbacks for Rocket, I have to talk about a magic routine performed by my favorite performing duo, Penn & Teller, during which they appear to drop a live rabbit into a wood chipper. Now, I learned many years ago how this pair operates, the big loud guy distracts you with banter while the smart silent guy performs some sleight of hand (and it is "sleight", not "slight", please) so I know in my heart that if they appear to drop a rabbit in a wood chipper, for sure they did NOT just drop a rabbit in a wood chipper. Most likely the rabbit falls into a safe compartment while the machine spits out a fair amount of fake blood. This also makes logical sense because A) they're magicians, not monsters, B) the cost of keeping one rabbit alive for several months is probably a lot less than buying and training a new rabbit for each night's performance, and C) if they really did what they appeared to do, PETA would be protesting their show each night until they got shut down. But the effect is achieved, it appears that a cute bunny just met his maker, right there on stage - and while it's obviously NOT for real, there still might be some people who would find fault with the appearance of doing something so outrageous as killing a rabbit live for the entertainment or shock value.
Similarly (I hope) in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", we finally learn the backstory of our favorite space raccoon who claims he's not a raccoon. He came from a litter of lab animals, ones experimented on by the High Evolutionary, he had work done on his brain to make him intelligent, and other devices implanted to keep him controlled and disposable at any time. There were other animals that could talk and think, too, an otter and a walrus and a little bunny, some had artificial limbs and other "improvements" in the name of science, and Rocket was the smartest of them all somehow, he could posit the answers to scientific problems even when he didn't fully understand the parameters. The lab animals dreamed of a life on their master's new planet, Counter-Earth, in which they'd see the sky and breathe fresh air and live out their days, only they didn't know, this was never going to be part of their future, they would live and die as lab test subjects. It's depressing beyond belief, heartbreaking, and I have no idea what this all is doing in a fun Marvel series about space pirates. Jeezus, I just endured James Cameron's three-hour lecture about Tulkans and how bad whaling is, and now I have to hear from James Gunn about how bad it is to experiment on animals, which I already know?
Look, I know it's not real, those are CGI lab animals, I'm sure no actual real-life creatures were harmed in the making of this film, because Disney (the same company that got flak for killing Bambi's mother) doesn't want to get shut down, either. But just like with Penn and Teller's rabbit, I'm upset with whoever thought this was a good idea for this story, to treat these (not real) animals so badly for some kind of entertainment or shock value. I didn't come to this movie for a lecture or to cry over the plight of tortured lab animals, I came here to be entertained, damn it, and I simply did not find this entertaining. What's my motivation to ever watch this film a second time, knowing this is waiting for me and it's just going to depress me? Rocket escapes the lab, we eventually learn, and finds his new home with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but his little fluffy animal friends weren't so lucky, you horrible screenwriting bastards. You know, there are a lot of young children who like to watch the "Guardians" movies - sure, they maybe could learn a valuable lesson about respecting all forms of life from this, but you're also really bringing down the vibe in the room, you know that, right? Also, is animal testing still a thing, or did we fix this problem years ago, which would mean that it only exists still in the M.C.U.? For God's sake, why?
I know, I know, the High Evolutionary is a mean S.O.B. I've read the Avengers comics for years and never really picked up on this, he was always portrayed as some kind of "Dr. Moreau" evil scientist in a weird armored suit, and he made creatures called Ani-Men, or maybe Manimals (?) who were once animals but altered with chemicals or radiation or something to walk upright and talk and think. Really, when you think about it, tying Rocket's origin to this guy is maybe a stroke of genius, and I'm not really sure if his comic book origin reflects this, or if it's just for the movie. Anyway, it gives the Guardians some powerful motivation to take this guy down, while they're trying to get the information necessary to save Rocket's life. The High Evolutionary in the comic books made a planet called Counter-Earth, it was exactly on the other side of the sun from Earth at all times, in the same orbit, so you couldn't see it, and it was super-hard to get to, unless you could take a shortcut through the sun. And on this planet he conducted his sick, twisted genetic experiments to turn animals into men for some reason, until the Avengers or someone else took him down.
The rest of this film is pure nonsense - like I know we saw the teaser for the creation of Adam Warlock in Vol. 2, but here that character just appears in the first few minutes of the film and attacks Rocket in Knowhere space station, just out of the blue. If you hadn't seen the last film or read the comics you'd probably think, "Who the hell is THIS guy, where did he come from, and what's his deal?" I did see the last film, and I was STILL thinking this, because he doesn't resemble the Adam Warlock from the comics, like AT ALL. And still I don't know what his powers are here, what's his motivation, who he is or why he is because it feels like the film just couldn't be bothered. Well, to be fair, they did waste a lot of time on those lab animals.
The Adam Warlock I know from the comics was an artificially-created cosmic being, first known as a messiah figure named "Him" and then in the early 1990's Jim Starlin took the character and really turned him into something, he wore the Soul Stone and was a key figure in the "Infinity Gauntlet" saga where everyone fought Thanos (this story morphed into "Avengers: Infinity War" in the MCU). Then he led his own team, the Infinity Watch, fighting cosmic villains - on his team were Gamora and Drax the Destroyer, oddly enough, and also Pip the Troll. The Infinity Watch was maybe kind of an early version of the MCU Guardians - but at the same time, there was a different group of Guardians of the Galaxy, more on that later. Adam Warlock also frequently battled the Magus of the Church of Universal Truth, who might have been a future incarnation of himself, so let's just say his storyline got a little complicated. But at least I knew who he was and what he was capable of, unlike this weird version of him in G.O.T.G. 3, that I couldn't get a handle on.
The rest of the film is the Guardians trying to work together to defeat the High Evolutionary and save Rocket, only these team members can't really seem to work as a team. They keep getting on each other's nerves and telling each other what to do, then complaining about being told what to do. Then once the screaming starts, it always continues too long. Nebula screams, then Mantis screams louder, then Drax gets frustrated, which makes Nebula angry again, and so it keeps on going around. Peter Quill tries his best to corral them but nobody seems to want to take his orders seriously, so they just do what they want to do, or act randomly, then they're all very surprised when things don't work out right, and then even more surprised when they somehow do. Can somebody please tell the screenwriters how a TEAM is supposed to work? Why. Can't. This. Team. Function. Properly?
It's no wonder at the end of this film that some of the team members decide that they need to take some personal time. If I had to work in an environment that hostile and dysfunctional I'd want to quit, too. Peter Quill decides to go back to Earth to meet his grandfather, Mantis heads off to discover who she is without people telling her what to do, and Gamora heads back to the Ravagers. (Oh, yeah, Gamora is back, she's not dead, but she's also not the same Gamora who died, this is the earlier version who came forward in time during "Avengers: Endgame", so she doesn't remember her relationship with Quill because it hasn't happened for her yet.). So that's it, the Guardians are disbanded, essentially, only they're not, they'll get together again when the galaxy needs them, or Marvel needs to make a fourth film. Until then, Rocket will lead a team of, basically, scrubs. Great, because that's what I want to see.
Let me just remind you about the "other" Guardians of the Galaxy, the ones that were in the comics when I was a teen - this was a comic-book series set far in the future, like 1,000 years, when Earth had colonized the other planets in the solar system. Their adventures mostly took place in the future, except for the times when they'd travel back in time and help out the Avengers with space stuff. Vance Astro was the leader, he was actually from the present but got frozen on a space mission and woke up in the future, Buck Rogers-style. But he had Captain America's old shield and used the name Major Victory. The other members of the team came from the different planets in our solar system, like Martinex (the crystal guy seen in this film, played by Michael Rosenbaum) from Pluto, Charlie-27 from Jupiter (Ving Rhames played him in one of the movies), Yondu from Centauri-IV (played by Michael Rooker in the MCU) and sometimes Star-Hawk (Stakar Ogord, the character Stallone plays in the GOTG films). That's right, the OLD Guardians, or maybe the "future" Guardians, kind of appear in the MCU, only they're called Ravagers. Whether these ravagers someday become Guardians themselves, who can say? Hell, Kraglin apparently is one of the Guardians now, I'm not sure how or why THAT happened.
And then there's the ending, which is so darn hokey. The Guardians save a bunch of children from the High Evolutionary's floating fortress, then Rocket stays behind to also rescue the lab animals, because he was once one himself. Umm, OK, but now the whole Knowhere space station is going to be overrun with stray lab animals, who probably carry a lot of diseases with them. It's a happy (?) ending, but just so darn unrealistic - also it reminded me of the ending of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", when he has to save all of the animals from the pet store that is on fire, even the snakes. Look, I'm sorry but you can't save ALL of the animals ALL of the time. Some animals are sick, some are always dying and some are just plain unlucky that we use them for their meat. Google what happens to most of the male baby chickens and then get back to me, OK? I wish we could save all of the animals, but I can't even save all the stray cats on my block - it doesn't mean you shouldn't TRY, but be prepared to deal with the fact that you may not succeed.
Well, I'm on break for the next few days, driving up to Massachusetts tomorrow - I'll be back here on Monday, when the chain continues, even if the sci-fi/fantasy theme is over for now.
Also starring Chris Pratt (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Pom Klementieff (ditto), Sean Gunn (ditto), Zoe Saldana (last heard in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "The Bubble"), Chukwudi Iwuji (last seen in "News of the World"), Will Poulter (last seen in "Midsommar"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "The Burnt Orange Heresy"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Air"), Michael Rosenbaum (last seen in "Sweet November"), Stephen Blackehart (last seen in "Brightburn"), Terence Rosemore (ditto), Miriam Shor (last seen in "The Midnight Sky"), Daniela Melchior (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Gerardo Davila (ditto), Jennifer Holland (last seen in "Black Adam"), Nico Santos (last seen in "The Clapper"), Kai Zen, Nathan Fillion (last seen in "Adrienne"), Randy Havens (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Dane DiLiegro, Gregg Henry (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Karen Abercrombie, Sarah Alami, Jasmine Munoz, Jared Gore, Molly C. Quinn (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Kyle Mclean, Benjamin Byron Davis (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Tiffany Smith, Jonathan Mercedes (last seen in "Willy's Wonderland"), Jonathan Fritschi, Max Bickelhaup, Brandon Morales, Renae Moneymaker, Sarah Anne, Christopher Fairbank (last seen in "Hercules"), Rhett Miller, Natalia Safran (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Murphy Weed, Michael Koske, Sebastian Soler.
and the voices of Vin Diesel (last heard in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Maria Bakalova (last seen in "The Bubble"), Linda Cardellini (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Asim Chaudhry (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Mikaela Hoover (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Reinaldo Faberlie, Tara Strong (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Dee Bradley Baker (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Seth Green (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Noa Raskin, James Gunn,
with cameos from Pete Davidson (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Lloyd Kaufman (last seen in "Gamer"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Love and Monsters").
RATING: 6 out of 10 zarg nuts
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