This is how its Gunn

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and to some extent the whole trilogy, shows what a Marvel movie can be when it's allowed to be it's own thing and not beholden to furthering other projects. It has its flaws but the focus on character and satisfying resolutions make this one of the MCU's best efforts in years. In fact, one of its best ever.

The film begins with an attack on The Guardians by Adam Warlock, teased at the end of volume 2 and played brilliantly by Will Poulter as a gold dusted himbo, leading to Rocket being critically injured. This leaves the rest of the team in a race against time to track down a cure and brings them into conflict with the racoon's creator, The High Evolutionary.

They say that if you want the audience to hate a character just show the character kicking a puppy. By that metric The High Evolutionary will go down as one of the most despised villians in cinematic history. He's a full on animal abuser who's frustrations with life's imperfections give him no regard for the suffering of others and have him creating and genociding entire species on a whim. Played with an air of Shakesperian grandeur by Chukwudi Iwuji, The High Evolutionary makes a case for being the MCU's best villian to date.

Pretty much all the cast get time to shine and develope. Quill and the new (or is it old since she came form the past?) Gamora re develope their relationship but maybe not in the way you would expect, the change in Nebula over the course of three films is visable and believable, returning the favour from Volume 2 Mantis helps the others see Drax's worth and Kraglin gets his chance to live up to his old boss Yondu. The only one who doesn't see much development is Groot, who is curiously on the periphery of preceedings while his closest companion is in mortal danger. While Rocket is in many ways the main protagonist of the film he mostly appears in flashbacks as a very different character than the smart mouthed rodent we have come to know and his banter with the rest of the team is missed.

Making the stakes more personal rather than more epic for the conclusion of the trilogy is an unusual move in a genre that tends to favour spectacle but its a fitting send off for a series that has always placed the emphasise on its characters. That's not to say there isn't plenty of bang for your buck, with action scenes aplenty and the traditional drawn out MCU final act that makes the movie longer than it needs to be. It's also, like it's predecessors, actually funny and packs in some of the best gags Marvel has to offer, even if it could be accused of going lowest common denominator a couple of times too often. Its not all laughs though, throwaway jokes and humour filled chats are mixed with some truly dark events.

Is it too dark? No, but if you have young kids I'd check this out on your own before deciding if they can handle it. James Gunn is a filmmaker who has never been afraid of playing away from the light and on his final hurrah for the mouse house he doesn't hold back. There are multiple scenes of cute things in distress and some visual grotesquery that reminds you that the director of Slither is behind the camera. One shot in particular (you'll know it when you see it) stretches the level of gore you can get away with in a family film to the absolute limit.

Volume 3 isn't perfectly paced and it may give you tonal whiplash but character and heart make Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 a fitting end to the most unique of Marvel trilogies.

8 fathers out of 10 destroyers

Comments

One Dog and his Man

Heart of the Beast is a man and his dog against nature film. As such, it requires a lead who can be tough but also vulnerable and has the screen presence to draw the audience in without dialogue. This film has such a lead. It also has Brad Pitt. See, the star of the show really is ex-army dog Odin (played by a German Shepherd named Uber, with three of his sons helping out). Odin has metal teeth, an artificial leg and suffers from PTSD but soldiers on with the joyous spirit only a dog can muster. It's just as well, since he is the only thing holding his human, retired Special Forces Command Sergeant Major James Belmont (Pitt) together. Belmont is himself haunted by nightmares of the mission that left him and Odin as sole survivors and it's safe to say he isn't a people person. The pair are exploring the Alaskan wilderness when a potential heart attack leads to Belmont crashing his little plane and leaving them with an arduous and dangerous trek back to civilisation. That thi...

Sick in the Mud

Like its shape shifting titular character, Clayface attempts to be many things. Billed as DC's first horror movie, it is also a supervillain origin story, a modern-gothic romance, a tragedy and a crime drama. With all this in the pot, what it actually ends up feeling like is a throwback to the '90s/early 2000s era of comic book adaptations. A time of modest budgets for the genre, when studios cared less about shared world continuity and were prepared to let filmmakers have some fun with weird characters. Tom Rhys Harris stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who got out of the Gotham City slums and is now Academy Award nominated. His high flying life comes crashing down when he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of a prominent Gotham mobster and is left hideously scarred by the scorned gangster's vengeance. With his career in ruins, he finds showbiz loyalty in short supply as his manager, lawyer and possibly even his best friend quickly abandon him. Scientist Dr. Caitlyn Co...

Enter the Dragon Punch

Street Fighter 2 was a phenomenon when it blew through arcades and home consoles back in the early 90s. There have been many more instalments in the franchise since but while each one has been a big deal in the game industry, none of them have come close to penetrating pop culture the same way. It's no surprise then that Street Fighter takes most of its cues and characters from that breakout hit. Whether nostalgia for a mostly plotless thirty-plus year old game warrants a third live action adaptation, after 1994's film with the same name and 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, is another matter. One thing this iteration has going for it over those that came before is the fact it actually features a fighting tournament (the entire premise of the games), albeit fairly briefly. All the Street Fighter 2 characters make appearances (as do a couple from later games) of varying importance. Chief players are M.Bison (David Dastmalchian), evil tournament organiser looki...

The Bourne IT

The set up for The Amateur is a well worn one, a man loses his wife in a terrorist attack and goes on a mission of revenge. The twist is, that while Rami Malek does play a man with a particular set of skills, they aren't the ones you would expect. Charlie Heller is a socially awkward CIA cryptographer with precisely zero fighting ability and no experience using firearms. He is though, a technological genious who invented half the agencies cyber security and can track and predict patterns like a computer. When his blatantly shady boss, played with smug glee by Holt Mccallany, refuses to act on Charlie's info about the killers he blackmails him for some training and the green light to pursue the perpetrators himself. The two main questions are, can the mild mannered tech guy thrive in the field and is this twist on the formulae enough to carry a fairly by the numbers espionage thriller? The answer to both is, pretty much, yes. Malek is tailor made for roles like this and it'...

Dance of Death

John Wick spin off, Ballerina , swaps out Keanu Reaves (mostly) for Ana de Armas but almost everything else remains pretty similar. We still have the intricately choreographed fighting in a dark gloss colour palette, minimal plot propped up by ridiculous lore and the same waffling dialogue. Series die hards rejoice, but for someone who zoned out somewhere during Chapter 3 and was distinctly unimpressed with John Wick 4, these films are becoming something of a chore. Eve Macarro (de Armas) is orphaned at a young age when assassins break into her home in an attempt to abduct her and her father (also an assassin) dies fighting them off. She is then raised by the "Ruska Roma" (more assassins, roughly 40% of the worlds population are assassins in the world of John Wick), who train her in the arts of both ballet and murder. After somebody from the faction that killed her dad attempts to off her, she embarks on a revenge quest, despite being explicitly forbidden from doing so by R...

Predator Chadlands

After revitalising the Predator franchise with 2022's Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg brings us a very different take on the extraterrestrial big game hunter. In Predator: Badlands , the titular monster is the main character. Considering how terrible that premise could have been, we actually end up with a decent action adventure movie. Our protagonist is Dek, a Yautja (the species name of the Predators) who is considered something of a runt. Such a runt in fact, that his dad wants to kill him for being a pitiful disgrace to the clan. After his brother saves him, he makes his way to "the Death Planet" Genna to hunt a supposedly unkillable monster in order to show his father who is boss and force the rest of the clan to put some respect on his name. When he gets there he discovers that, not only is all the wildlife deadly, but Weyland-Yutani ( yes, the evil corporation from Alien) have sent a bunch of synths there to collect and weaponise his prospective trophy. He forms an...

An Apple a Day

Bad Apples opens with a colourful procession of apples making their way through a processing facility. There is a problem, though: stowing away is a solitary child's trainer, hidden amongst the apples and about to jam up the machine and bring the whole enterprise to a halt. Turns out a bad kid can do the same to a classroom, as poor Miss Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) knows only too well. This darkly comic satire doesn't go much deeper than the above metaphor but it entertains and is propelled by a trio of strong performances. The offending trainer belongs to Danny (Eddie Waller), a disruptive pupil whose out of control behaviour has the timid Maria on the verge of losing her job. When Danny seriously injures another pupil and gets suspended, Maria goes to see his dad but ends up in a scuffle with the troublemaking youngster that leads to her imprisoning him in her basement. With the rascal out of the picture and nobody missing him much, things start to look pretty rosy for t...

Stars and Their Cars

Crime 101 is named for the California freeway one of the characters commits all his robberies along. It also doubles as describing his MO, he is successful because he makes sure he gets the fundamentals right every time. It can also describe the film itself, which nails the basics of making a slick crime thriller better than just about any other movie has in quite some time. The professional thief is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a meticulous planner whose jobs never lead to anyone being hurt and are so well executed that nobody even has any idea they are all the work of one man. Nobody that is, except for Mark Ruffalo's Detective Lou Lubesnick, who is determined to catch the "101 Robber" even though his obsession is starting to lead to him being ostracised in the precinct. Both characters come into contact with high value insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) as Mike plans a big score and Lou joins the dots in an attempt to track him down. A potential fly in the ointmen...

That Wasn't All Folks

Coyote vs. Acme was originally scheduled for release way back in 2023 (in the theatrical slot that eventually went to Barbie, no less) but a change of leadership at Warner Bros led to them deciding to scrap the film, figuring a tax break was preferable to releasing a complete movie that hundreds of people had worked on. A combination of public outcry and tenacity from independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment has led to the film finally getting its day in cinemas. Congratulations are in order as the live-action/animated combination comedy is one of the most entertaining family movies of the year. After faulty ACME products foil yet another of his attempts to capture Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote sees an advert on TV by Will Forte's lazy lawyer Kevin in which he promises a payout for faulty ACME goods. In reality Kevin is a bottom feeder who has made a career out of settling lawsuits against the corporate giants for peanuts, but Wile E. forces him to engage in the trial of the cen...

Straight Outta The Further

Insidious has always been a fairly low tier horror franchise. The Conjuring's budget cousin, if you will. If you look at it that way then Insidious: Out of the Further is actually fairly good. It's certainly the most entertaining the series has been since the first instalment. Like that first breakout hit from back in 2010, Out of the Further has a much stronger first half than it does second. We start with a fairly harrowing scene of a young girl named Gemma witnessing the grisly death of her erratically behaving mother. We then fast forward a couple of decades to find the adult Gemma working as a dentist while raising a young girl of her own, yet still living in her childhood home. Spooky things begin to happen as some unfriendly OAPs start stalking the neighbourhood and Gemma tries to keep her daughter safe while worrying she is becoming like her mother. In typical Insidious fashion, things become more silly than scary as the plot is revealed and we build towards a ludicr...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog