Live Watch: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Opening in Knowhere. I know they’re introducing Adam Warlock in this one. And while I don’t know too much about him I know he’s tied to the Silver Surfer often. And I thought when they introduce the Silver Surfer it shouldn’t be in a Fantastic Four movie. It should be in a stand alone movie about the Silver Surfer’s origin featuring Adam Warlock. And end bittersweet with the Silver Surfer agreeing to be Galactus’ herald to save his planet. And introduce the Fantastic Four in their own movies. With Galactus reaching Earth as the major climax of that phase.

I rarely say this about people. But Adam Warlock has kinda a punchable face. Like the kinda guy who’s both overly nice. But also kinda a jerk if you’re not in his circle.

Karen Gillan’s sort of angel wings cannon arm thing is kinda hot for some reason.

Drax is kinda dead weight on the team. Like I haven’t seen him be stronger than a single supervillain. Never really a decisive part of a single fight in any of the movies.

Little interesting that both the big new MCU villains are Black. Like on the one hand I’m glad to see they’re not denying Black actors work by being afraid to cast them as flawed characters (which needless to say are the most interesting characters, good villains drive stories). But just interesting.

This stuff about the Grandpa is being introduced in a pretty ham fisted manner. Like the fight about it and Quill’s resistance seems so artificial. Like drama for drama’s sake. Like they can’t just have a slow moment. That was one thing Joss Whedon did very well. He knew how to change pacing to make moments land.

Making scenes too busy when stillness would have been better is something I think Gunn could work on in general

Portal wizards are now officially overused. If you can just portal people from and to anywhere it kills the stakes. You have to have very strict limits on your deus ex machina devices or they’ll build up and destroy any possibility for a narrative.

Since Stallone just made the same get the animal wrong joke it made me realize how did Warlock know what a squirrel was to mistake Rocket for one?

Soundtrack really fits the visuals well

Gotta say I know they’re the comic relief pair. But Mantis and Drax are the biggest screwups. Not sure I’d send them off on their own to complete a mission.

So far liking the movie. I know there was a split over loving and hating it. It’s definitely way darker that the first two. But nothing that should be too much for a kid over 10.

So far they’re really making the cute animal friends overly sweet. The torture porn is coming.

Why make it a competition with “this is worse than what Thanos did to me”? I mean I guess I can see it. Presumably Nebula’s additions were surgical and designed to avoid torturing her.

The High Evolutionary stumbling in drunk is a return to a theme consistent through most of Gunn’s work. Abusive dads. Sometimes they’re sympathetic like Yandu. Sometimes totally evil like the Nazi dad in the John Cena show. But it’s a well he keeps coming back to. I don’t know how he’ll play this out here. But I was afraid the thing that made some people hate the movie was just going to be edgelord bullshit. But I think there’s potential now for him to actually have something to say with the character. And the people who don’t get it probably live lives very far away from actually difficult home lives.

So far I like it. But it’s hard to imagine what they’re going to do with a whole other hour of movie left.

Finally Drax made himself not totally useless. But after making things so much worse by abandoning his post. Still in the negative column.

“What kind of monster slaughters a civilization?” Your dad, bitch. Like you should be used to this. This is what you were raised on. Maybe “Even my father left planets half alive.”

Hey, Nebula just called out Drax’s uselessness. Good for James Gunn.

Otter girl is coming through the light. We still haven’t seen her. I’m going to guess Gunn is an atheist and she’s going to have robot arms because this is just a dream.

Ya know, since they brought up how dumb the jumping out of the ship plan was a better art design could have made a better wooden glider.

Also, I guess it’s better for the comic relief (although Drax is a bit one note, and I’m kinda over it) but I’m not sure I like that Mantis made him forget that she thinks he’s stupid.

I will say given how the character is written douchy Adam Warlock was in fact cast very well.

Well written Mantis “redemption”. But I don’t like the idea of empaths being portrayed as anything but annoying hypocrites. But it works in the movie.

I wasn’t really that thrilled with Vol 2. This movie is very much a redemption of it.

I would have respected Gunn so much if he let the High Evolutionary get killed by mutiny. Then the Guardians don’t really know what to do with the space eugenicists. So they just let them go. Live to be villains in another movie. But the good guy has to kill the big bad. Still, he could have had them take the shot but the energy beams are like calibrated not to affect his suit or something. Doesn’t make sense for them to not shoot when he has that energy suit.

Second “Reservoir Dogs” walk? This one is way more earned. I would have cut the first one.

Every time Adam Warlock wakes up he tries to kill everyone. Like besides needing him alive for future movies why would they save him and not one of the other minions? Like if nothing else but for the sake of the children who he will most likely kill if we didn’t know that he’s going to be a good guy in later movies.

If intentional nice touch making him look like the Red Skull.

Nice touch making the monkey claw the lady’s face. The hippy version is saving the animals is easy. But this is going to be soooooo difficult.

Maybe the medic bay before the group hug?

Uh, calling Rocket captain doesn’t actually mean you’re not abandoning him. Quill could just be like “I’ll be back. But I want to spend whatever years my grandfather has getting to know him.” So it’s not goodbye, just “Hasta luego”.

Glad to see the post-credits scene undercut the possibility of promoting a dangerous message of vegetarianism.

Good movie. Best of the three. Best Marvel movie since Endgame by a long shot. I wasn’t expecting much after the kinda blah 2nd movie. But really did a good job with the themes Gunn has been playing with throughout his career in a very silly comic book movie set in space.