Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

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Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special - lots of this was quite amusing. a fun entry in the film universe, though not nearly as fun as the Baby Groot shorts. also, man does chris pratt seem entirely checked out in this, like he wants to be literally anywhere else. he's the low point here, while kevin bacon rules in it. thankfully, it's very short.

Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

63
Volume 3 - watched it last night. Man was it brutal. I don’t mean “not a good film”, I mean that what they’re showing you happening is brutal. Like, extremely dark. I heard people say it was “sad”, so I figured a main character died or something, but holy shit. “Sad” isn’t really the word, although there are certainly sad parts. The film is essentially a Rocket origin story, so the baddie is essentially an all-powerful being (again) playing god, trying to create the perfect species. Also, he doesn’t give a flying fuck about lives, animal or otherwise. So…
Not only do we “get” to see vividly how they experiment on young rocket, but he befriends three other “misfit” creations - an otter, a walrus, and a rabbit - all of which have been maimed nearly beyond recognition and melded with mechanical parts. Gunn makes us really like them, makes Rocket love them, then has no problem having the baddie just kill them without a second thought. Of course later, he also obliterates an entire civilization that he created (again, after Gunn shows us how kind/cute they are, and how they help Quill) because it isn’t perfect (it’s a direct clone of Earth, and seems to have the same people problems).

So yeah - dark. But, it’s not really dark in tone most of the time. It is a GOTG film after all. It’s got a ton of humor and fun mixed in. I really enjoyed it. Laughed a lot, dug the action set pieces, etc. And, it’s no secret that this is the last GOTG film (at least, the last with this squad and Gunn), so they do set up a “new crew” at the end while some of the current members “take a break” to explore personal things. It all felt like a good place to wrap it. Watching the gag reel, sure seems like they had a blast doing this and all really like each other. I’ve certainly never seen Gunn so giddy.

So yeah, worthy entry in the trilogy. Need to watch them all again to really compare them and see how I’d rank them, but this felt like a good GOTG film for sure.