GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 - 5/5/2023

[Dolfan in NYC]

Alright lots of clips and leaks are out there... So, here's your spoiler thread. 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 3

Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillian, and Will Poulter

Directed by James Gunn

In theaters May 5th. 

==

As always, use Spoiler tags until 5/5.   Thanks! 

[Dolfan in NYC]

For example....   We look into Rocket's past:

Spoiler

 

 

[J.T.]

My daughter won't be home until Mother's Day weekend so I have been officially forbidden to go see this until she is home from college.

Hope you guys enjoy the movie.  I will avoid this thread like the plague until after we get back from the theater.

[Matt D]

I'm getting big "Don't Take the 10 year old" vibe from the early discussion.

[odessasteps]

This feels like I can wait for Disney+

[odessasteps]

 

[Contentious C]

Just got back.  Even though this is a spoiler thread, I'm going to Big Brother my remarks, because they'll be pretty in-depth.  If you have every intention of seeing it no matter what, I'd say skip this post and come back later.

I think this is both a "don't take the 10-year-old" and "take the 10-year-old because it's an authentic movie with real emotions" kind of movie.  You have to sort of figure it out for yourself.

Spoiler

If you didn't like Vol. 2 because it spent time on stuff like the Taserface scene and other frivolities, there's a decent chance you will find this to be flabby and overwrought.  But if you liked Vol. 2 because of its thematic elements - namely, the value of the family you're born to versus the value of the family you choose - hoo boy, let me tell you, James Gunn BRINGS IT even more in this movie.  It's that same theme on steroids.  Or on Miracle-Gro, if you see what Groot's looking like.

I have a very sick cat who, fittingly enough, is named after Rocket.  Rocket was named for "Rocky Raccoon" so I changed it back with both song & comic book character in mind in 2012 when I pulled this feral off the street and tamed him with belly rubs.  I've had to think about putting him down a couple of times lately, but he's hanging in there and I just want more time with my boy.  And watching most of the backstory for this was like getting hit with many tons of bricks.  If you have a lot more empathy for animals than you do for people, stretches of this might leave you a blubbering mess.  You are officially forewarned.  Because man, this movie is GRAPHIC, even in the things it doesn't directly show you.  It lets the emotions of others hammer-blow you over and over in one of the more gut-wrenching moments where we kinda see but mostly hear a playback of Rocket's past.  It's quite possibly the most cruel and gruesome MCU film there has been, to the point of certain sections of it being like Neon Cronenberg in their strangeness.  But mostly, it doesn't shy away for a second from making you understand the utter depravity it would take to do the things that made Rocket who he is.  We love him, we cheer for him, we would like to be his friend and maybe sneakily give him some pets like Drax got to, but he shouldn't exist, because no one should be so fucking awful as to do that to a defenseless creature just for funsies.

But, as is frequently a motif with these movies, even though it gets glossed over with Mary Poppins jokes, the past can't be changed and all you can do is figure out how you move forward, which is pretty much the arc everyone else finds themselves on.  Maybe it'll work for you, maybe it won't.  But since this really is Rocket's story, and he's my second-favorite comic book character after Carol Danvers, it worked for me.  It's easily the most thought-provoking movie of the 3 and in a lot of ways, it feels more like a Phase 4 movie in terms of its tone.  It's heavy, and it's difficult, but it's more importantly heartfelt, and there's still enough good humor to leaven the whole thing. 

You could ding it for being too long, or trying to tie off too many ends, or not giving a shit about how, y'know, space works, but those are kind of missing the point.

I guess that's why kids *could* watch it but maybe shouldn't; if they're mature enough to not be simply traumatized by the implications of what they're seeing, it's a fair lesson of sorts in why animal cruelty is such a decidedly evil thing.

So, yeah.

[keith_h]

Saw it tonight, best movie from the MCU since at least NWH, maybe Endgame. As an animal lover this one hit hard. 

[NikoBaltimore]

I'm hesitant on seeing this in theaters, particularly due to thinking how my wife will take it.  Looking at trailers it appeared Rocket was going to get killed which would have been gut-wrenching enough.  Toss in Conentious's spoiler box about cruelty and I think I might be best waiting for it to come on Disney+.

[Technico Support]

So fucking good.  God damn.

[Fighting a man with a perm]

Yeah, group me with the animal lovers turning to blubbering messes. Had to go straight to the "lair" (the spare bed above our home office) of my cat, Bowie Bang Bang (named for Ziggy Stardust himself and for Rinko Kikuchi's character in the Brothers Bloom) and give him a big old fussing behind the ears after seeing this.

Really, really loved this movie. The laughs are real, the sobs are real, the running beats you know will pay off (bad dog) get paid off in a satisfying way, and of course the soundtrack is just great.

[AxB]

The mid-credits scene establishes the new Guardians team, much like the end of Avengers Age of Ultron. The end of the credits scene is just Star-Lord being domestic, but with a "Star-Lord Will Return" stinger at the end.

[AxB]

I saw Linda Cardellini's name in the opening credits and wondered why Hawkeye's Wife would go to space. But apparently she was voice acting Lyla, not playing her usual MCU role.

I liked how Guardians 1 was all 70s music, Guardians 2 was mostly 80s, and now Guardians 3 starts with Radiohead and gives great prominence to Spacehog. So it's 90s music, but not in a Captain Marvel way. Watching Captain Marvel for the first time, after about 20 minutes I was thinking "At some point in this movie, Just a Girl by No Doubt is going to play, so I hope they make the most of that". They did.

Even though James Gunn didn't know (when he was making this) that he'd be off to run DC movies after, he did know that this was his farewell to his GotG team, so the film had a finality to it. The constant teases that this time, the gloves were off and someone might die (well, perma-die), I almost bit on a couple of them. Going out of the way to say that the team was breaking up and everyone was either going off to find themselves, or HAD found themselves and would be settling into a routine from now on, it was good. Drax the Dad really worked.

[Contentious C]

I must have been the only one who found the over-reliance on music to Tell You How to Feel, in much the way Westworld often did that (sometimes it worked, frequently it didn't) to be one of the low points of the movie.  That said, I don't know if I'll ever hear that Florence & the Machine song again and think about anything other than the ending of this movie, which was the kind of joyful thing I wanted for the characters.

There's an interesting Youtube video out there about how the MCU movies are perniciously capitalistic, not just by virtue of their existence but also the message they send within their own plots; it's called "Defenders of the Status Quo" and it's worth a watch.  The GotG movies are the only ones that didn't feel that way all the time.  Instead, they had their own sense of community that was populated by folks you'd actually want to know (yes, even Bug & Doofus).  Hopefully that slack gets picked up, somehow, in the future, but Gunn I think had a better sense of the value of such a thing than most Marvel execs could dream of.  Ms. Marvel and the trailer for The Marvels gives me some tiny sliver of hope that Kamala might continue the tradition.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Contentious C

[twiztor]

holy fuck, this movie. got out of the theater an hour ago and i can't stop thinking about it. i have NEVER felt such an attachment to a CGI creation. couldn't wait to get home and shower love onto my cat.

[BrianS81177]

Yeah as soon as I got home I made sure to tell my dog what a good girl she is.

[Technico Support]

On 5/6/2023 at 9:41 AM, Fighting a man with a perm said:

the running beats you know will pay off (bad dog) get paid off in a satisfying way

Hell yeah...I saw "AIM WITH YOUR HEART BOAH" coming a mile away and it was still wonderful.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Technico Support

[jaedmc]

I'm not a big marvel movie fan at all, but Guardians was probably the only IP among all of them that would get me into the theater opening weekend.

I think that it's the only one that still feels like it's legitimately by the weirdos for the weirdos. James Gunn still has that Troma punk feel even within the confines of Disney. It's kind of incredible to think about.

We left the theater saying "Man Guardians 3 was really great!" and then proceeded to name a whole bunch of flaws that bothered us, before saying "Man it's still great!
 I won't bother to list them all here, who really cares anyway. - But my biggest may be a movie about Rocket that doesn't have nearly enough Rocket being Rocket. He's a big loss throughout the movie, and by the time he comes back - he doesn't really have much to do. When The High Evolutionary said what makes him special is the ability to invent, I thought Rocket was going to...you know... invent something for the climax. Instead he says "I can't pilot this thing the console is all fucked up." And Nebula takes care of it.

But despite the flaws, I probably teared up every 10 minutes of this movie from the opening Radiohead number to everyone beating the shit out of the Evolutionary for their best friend. I think ultimately I love these misfits and their private corner of the universe. They're diverse without telling you they're diverse. They're flawed and accepting of others and their flaws. Everyone deserves a second chance.

OH AND ONE MORE THING

This movie made me hate Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness even more.

In Guardians we got a fucking space ship made of skin and organs, with people wearing fat flesh space suits.

A movie that had both STRANGE and MADNESS in the title gave us "IN THIS WORLD RED MEANS GO AND GREEN MEANS STOP... CRAZY."

[Technico Support]

You know it’s a great movie when I forgot all about the David Cronenberg space station.  Holy fuck that thing grossed me out.  Every single thing on the ship was designed to be as oogy as possibly, like “hey, instead of buttons to open doors, let’s just have reservoirs of snot!”  
 

I don’t think I’ll be eating ham for a while.  

Edited May 8, 2023 by Technico Support

[Craig H]

I cried so much during it. Some of that had to do with this being the final movie in the trilogy and realizing I wouldn't see this team anymore. The last time I felt that way was when I saw BttF 3. I teared up a lot in happiness when I watched the first Guardians movie because before there were new Star Wars movies, it was like pure joy and watching what was potentially a new Star Wars movie but set in the MCU. That movie was everything I hoped and dreamed for. So to see the journey finally end was sad.

And then there was the content in general. Man, James Gunn really went at everyone's heart with this one. I think I've see Nazis on screen that I thought were not as bad as the High Evolutionary. That guy was just the biggest piece of shit of all time. He might be at the top of my list of Marvel villains. Just a disgusting, evil piece of shit. 

All of the settings were such a joy too. You just don't get settings and the look the Guardians movies have in any other MCU movie. They truly are just something else from the look of the movies, to the jokes, to focusing so much on growth and maturity, etc. 

I thought this was the best of the trilogy. It wrapped up everything beautifully. And, oh man, the audience basically being part of the team and understanding Groot's language for the first time ever really got to me. For those that don't know, I'll put it in spoilers:

Spoiler

When Groot says, "I love you guys," that's what WE'RE hearing. In the scripts to the cast, it was just "I am Groot." Part of the Groot language is that you learn it by getting close to them and forming a relationship with them so you no longer hear "I am Groot," you hear what he's actually saying. That's why past-Gamora doesn't understand him at first and finally, by the end of the movie, starts to understand him. She forms that bond with him. So for the audience, after all of these movies, we all formed a bond with Groot and finally got to understand what he's saying when he says "I am Groot." 

I thought that was one of the loveliest gifts a filmmaker has ever given his audience. I'm really going to miss James Gunn being part of the MCU and I hope to hell he can bring the same sort of weirdness and thoughtfulness to the DCU. 

And beyond that, I hope it's not the last time we see these characters. I know it already isn't with the Legendary Star-Lord. If it is though, and we don't see the rest ever again, then what a ride it's been and this is the perfect place to same goodbye to them.

[Craig H]

Plus! Best soundtrack ever. I had been hoping beyond hope a Beastie Boys track would make it in to Vol. 2 and it didn't happen, but we finally got it in Vol. 3. Not only that, but we got a motherfucking Faith No More track in an MCU movie even if it was "We Care A Lot."

[The Natural]

On 4/25/2023 at 7:21 PM, Dolfan in NYC said:

For example....   We look into Rocket's past:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I have a reluctance to see this film as I despise animal cruelty. Fiction and non fiction. Always have but even more so when we rescued an abused Westie who was so bony dumped in the snow to die. People who abuse animals are cunts. If I do watch it, it'll be at home or completions sake but I'm not looking forward to it.

Edited May 12, 2023 by The Natural

[The Natural]

On 5/5/2023 at 5:51 AM, keith_h said:

Saw it tonight, best movie from the MCU since at least NWH, maybe Endgame. As an animal lover this one hit hard. 

 

On 5/5/2023 at 6:00 PM, NikoBaltimore said:

I'm hesitant on seeing this in theaters, particularly due to thinking how my wife will take it.  Looking at trailers it appeared Rocket was going to get killed which would have been gut-wrenching enough.  Toss in Conentious's spoiler box about cruelty and I think I might be best waiting for it to come on Disney+.

 

On 5/6/2023 at 2:41 PM, Fighting a man with a perm said:

Yeah, group me with the animal lovers turning to blubbering messes. Had to go straight to the "lair" (the spare bed above our home office) of my cat, Bowie Bang Bang (named for Ziggy Stardust himself and for Rinko Kikuchi's character in the Brothers Bloom) and give him a big old fussing behind the ears after seeing this.

 

On 5/8/2023 at 4:00 AM, twiztor said:

holy fuck, this movie. got out of the theater an hour ago and i can't stop thinking about it. i have NEVER felt such an attachment to a CGI creation. couldn't wait to get home and shower love onto my cat.

 

On 5/8/2023 at 4:34 AM, BrianS81177 said:

Yeah as soon as I got home I made sure to tell my dog what a good girl she is.

Yeah, up in the air I see this for these posts and my OP in the topic.

Edited May 12, 2023 by The Natural

[Craig H]

You like your dogs too much to see this movie. To quote Teddy KGB, "this one is no good for you."

[The Natural]

4 minutes ago, Craig H said:

You like your dogs too much to see this movie. To quote Teddy KGB, "this one is no good for you."

Thanks, man.