I sawGuardians of the Galaxy Volume 3last night, and it was an oddly bittersweet feeling. The last hurrah for James Gunn atMarvel, for several of the actors involved, but also for the idea itself - these characters were plucked from obscurity because a filmmaker had a vision. Not because of demographics or focus groups, not because of potential toy popularity or to set up future events, but because someone behind the camera cared. It felt like a goodbye to that feeling too.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 is what happens when aMCUmovie cares. It doesn’t want tocram in a bunch of characters (Spider-Man: No Way Home), it doesn’t want to set up the future story that happens insix movies time (Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania), it doesn’t want tokick back and have a good time (Thor: Love & Thunder), it just cares. It just gives a shit about its characters, its story, and its audience.
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It cares about what it’s communicating to you in the moment, not about what IP it gets to use from the toy box. There’s no need to know about the whole universe and no major tease of what happens in the rest of the franchise. It’s a threequel, so it builds on previous events and shows the characters have developed, but this feels like the third movie in the series, not the 23rd.
I had forgotten how much I cared about Marvel movies. I’ve been watching out of obligation, enjoying some of the recent movies and TV shows, tolerating most, disliking a few. I cried in the cinema at Endgame, and I felt my eyes well last night too. Some Marvel movies post-Endgame have made me laugh, made me excited, but moved to tears? I forgot these movies were capable of that.
Guardians of the Galaxy sees its characters as people (or raccoons or trees), not as props. Star-Lord is hurting as the movie begins, and gradually grows through that pain. Nebula still has her tough exterior, but her softness is shown in subtle and meaningful ways. Drax and Mantis struggling to understand their place in the world feels grounded. Rocket, the heart of the film, has an endearingly tragic backstory explored slowly and with empathy. It makes moments for joy. Not jokes, not explosions, but joy.
It’s not perfect - we don’t get much in the way of development for Groot, some secondary characters feel thinner than you’d like in a movie that breaks two and half hours, and while we avoid a classic superpower versus superpower villain showdown, there’s a little bit of convenience in the ending. But none of that came as a result of the movie rushing, or having an eye on what happens in the next movies, or because a celebrity cameo or returning hero from an old superhero movie needed to be wedged in. Every step of the way, the movie wants to take you along with it.
There are even a couple of classic Marvel moments it swerves. Guardians has always been a comedy, with Pratt and Gillan especially having first established themselves as comedy performers. There are jokes, some of which come in that often-annoying way of undercutting an emotional moment. But they work here because they’re actually funny, they’re true to the characters, and when the movie gets really dark, it doesn’t blink. There may be jokes when Quill tries to privately talk to Gamora, but when the movie dives deep into tragedy, there’s not a chuckle in sight.
It earns these moments of humour because it trusts us to cry as well. It lets us sit with a difficult scene and watch the heartbreak unfold on the screen, and never coddles us with a laugh track. It puts Rocket through so much but brings him out the other side stronger, and we have felt every ache in his heart. Caring about a character sometimes means being cruel to them - putting them through hell so that they can grow, and so the audience can connect with them.
Too many Marvel heroes never suffer in a notable way, never carry anything with them, never fall. Guardians makes us care because it’s not about being so strong you never fall, it’s about being mighty enough to stand back up.
I’m not sure when the next Marvel movie to care about will be. Looking at the slate of upcoming movies, I’m not sure I see it in the future. I have some hope for The Marvels, but its responsibility to tie together two TV shows and a movie while setting up the SWORD arcfeel like impossible conditions. Gunn moving to DC gives me more hope that it can turn itself around - Marvel is high on its own success and I’m not sure it knows how to go back to movies with as much heart as thin.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 is an excellent sci-fi movie, and that’s all I would describe it as. It’s not really a Marvel movie - even the opening logo is all Guardians characters instead of the usual spread - and it’s definitely not a superhero movie. It’s about some friends in outer space trying to save their other friend, who just happens to be a genetically modified raccoon. It doesn’t need you to know all the lore, it doesn’t care about what Phase this is, it’s not interested in an Avengers-level threat. It just cares, and all it asks is that you do too.
