Still Guarding It

If the rigours of space travel don't change you, maybe a mad scientist will. Such perils beset the protagonists of 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 3, director James Gunn's supposedly final film in his MCU series that began nine years ago. This new one's by far my favourite of the three and I think it's the best MCU film since Thor: Ragnarok.

I liked the previous Guardians films but not as much as other people I know. I've found the films, particularly the second, emotionally overwrought. I've vastly preferred Gunn's work for DC so far, The Suicide Squad being one of my favourite films of the past few years and Peacemaker one of my favourite series. It seems to me, the more fundamentally deranged or morally questionable Gunn's characters are, the more he earns the emotional high notes he aims for.

But Guardians 3 works in large part for how successfully it establishes a sense of threat. That was the main flaw in Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder--both films undermined any sense of the danger the protagonists might face by having the characters seem uninvested in their own reality, the rules regarding their powers being flagrantly inconsistent, or the villains being absurdly weak and/or stupid. Guardians 3 dismisses that right from the beginning when Rocket's hit by a strange glowing man and a well choreographed action sequence ensues. Everyone's caught off guard, Peter has to rouse himself out of a drunken stupor, and altogether you can sense everything hanging the edge of a precipice.

From the beginning, I wondered if Gunn would in some way encode his personal drama with Disney into the film, and I think he did. The villain, the High Evolutionary, is a scientist in the mould of Dr. Moreau, seeking to create a morally and intellectually perfect species via body and genetic modification of animals. He creates Rocket by surgically modifying a raccoon and embraces him like an adopted son, regaling him with tales of a perfect world to come. But when the High Evolutionary brews a better batch of creatures, not only does he not feel Rocket and his fellow experiments are necessary, he considers them monstrosities who must be killed. If you change out genetic engineering for social engineering, Rocket for James Gunn, and the High Evolutionary for Disney, it makes sense. The fact that Rocket's friends are unable to escape could refer to friends of Gunn's, like Joss Whedon, who weren't able to return from cancellation as Gunn did.

The artistic subculture of edgy humour and horror Gunn comes from would have once been embraced by the left as a sign of general progress or of "punching up" against oppressive philosophy. Now that those things are seen as problematic, like Gunn's offending Tweets, the perpetrators have been marked for erasure. It should be remembered that Gunn's tweets were public for a decade before he was fired for them.

It's especially ironic Gunn would be cancelled on these grounds since the Guardians movies have always been about showing the humanity of morally problematic characters. Guardians 3 strikingly makes no apologies for the violence perpetrated by Drax in a few scenes, like when he clotheslines an innocent motorcyclist to steal his vehicle.

The cast is great, the returning cast as well as new castmembers, particularly Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. Nathan Fillion has a small role, perhaps as a nod to Firefly, but this Guardians as much as its predecessors strongly shows the influence of Farscape. I was especially reminded of the first season Farscape episode called "DNA Mad Scientist". Gunn has been quite honest about how much Farscape has influenced him. It's too bad that hasn't translated into widespread interest in the twenty year old Science Fiction series. If you like Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll very likely love Farscape.

The music in the new Guardians is great, of course. I particularly liked Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands" in the end credits.

Twitter Sonnet #1694

Another figure burns to make the fruit.
The ruined wicker parts before the sun.
A savage mob effects communal brute.
A grinning hare pronounced the morning done.
The puppy basket bought a bony mind.
A pair of lenses fill the frames for eyes.
'Twere few the sprites were not considered kind.
Their feathers clogged the salt of friendship pies.
The running rodent wore a little mask.
Discovered friends could barely stand a god.
The body place contained a secret task.
In space, a tape was something fairly odd.
A golden witch's son could change a star.
Adventure friends convene and hit the bar.