Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: A Movie with No Stakes
X-Men: The Last Stand of the MCU!
MOVIES
Fun Fact: Star-Lord’s MP3 Player is called a Zune. Peter Quill was abducted from Earth in 1988 and hasn’t been back since. Microsoft released the Zune in 2006. Where the hell did he get the Zune from? It was just shameless continuity breaking sellout product placement check out: www.Zune.net for more info I guess. And that is all I am going to talk about music wise for this film. Having a catching soundtrack can only get you so far!
Are you looking for an action packed superhero movie? Do you like watching every single Marvel movie that comes out with no regard to how good the story is just as long as it’s packed with action? You’re in luck! This is the next movie in Marvel’s long history of prioritizing action and adventure over a good solid story. There are plot holes and continuity errors galore! Rocket Raccoon’ s heartwarming backstory is the only thing this movie has going for it. As you watch this movie you’ll find yourself wanting to skip past the cookie cutter action scenes to get back to more of Rocket’s story. It’s a shame there wasn’t more!
Overall Movie Rating of : 4 out of 10
Originality:
4 out of 10
You can really tell that this is a James Gunn superhero movie. You could take all of The Guardians and replace them with characters from DC and the movie would be the same.
Innovation:
2 out of 10
Nothing new here.
They did make a space anus planet called The Orgoscope, so there’s that!
Story:
4 out of 10
So many continuity errors! An utter disregard for other events that happened in the MCU, but outside of The Guardians Trilogy.
Rocket’s back story is the one saving grace for this movie.
Synthesis of Themes:
6 out of 10
If you have a movie about a group of wild superheroes in space where anything can happen then just about anything fits in your movie.
The quippy jokes that ruin heartfelt scenes that are James Gunn’s bread and butter feel out of place at times as per usual.
Enjoyment:
6 out of 10
It’s enjoyable if you don’t think about the errors in the story and don’t get annoyed with the large amount of unneeded jokes.
The action and fight scenes are solid. There is a sweet one take fight scene with all of The Guardians that is awesome right up to the point that the one take scene cuts and then continues to be a one take again.
Differentiation Among Characters & Environments:
6 out of 10
A whole lot of different locations. A whole lot of different characters. Probably too many different locations and characters. It has strong Star Wars: The Force Awakens vibes. One MacGuffin leads The Guardians to a planet where they find another MacGuffin that leads them to another planet and so forth.
Now let’s get to the juicy shit!:
Many spoilers ahead!
"He didn't want to make things perfect, he just hated things the way they are." - That is what Rocket Raccoon says in the trailer for the movie. If you are one of the 15 million people who watched the trailer you then know that Rocket can't die until he says that line. All of the stakes for the movie are gone before it even gets going. You can't be invested in The Guardians Of The Galaxy's mission to save Rocket because you know he has to wake up again to say that damn line you heard in the trailer. A pretty shitty edit for the trailer that's for sure.
If you’re looking for a movie with a heartbreaking death scene like the last Guardians movie you won’t find it here. This movie doesn’t even have the same level of stakes as Vol. 1 or 2 did. The only real edge of the seat 'almost death moment’ that Star-Lord has in space was already done in Guardians Vol. 1. Nothing new to see here folks!
Anamorphic human looking "aliens" are getting old. What if all the aliens in The Orgosphere were Lem aliens like Krugarr the gilled magician alien in Stakar Ogord’s Ravagers? Not just humans or anamorphic human looking ‘aliens’ in those weird Quantumania alien suits. Imagine how much wilder and interesting it could have been. The High Evolutionary’s henchmen were just humans with cyberpunk computers in their heads. What if they had been cloud aliens like Fart from Rick and Morty? Imagine how interesting that would have been.
Now let's talk about the inconsistent piece of shit that is Nebula’s new arm. Why didn’t she use it to help them escape from The Orgosphere? Why did it stop working when she was captured with Mantis and Drax on The High Evolutionary’s ship? Why did she not use it to kill the three Abilisks? The ‘Nano Partical’ mesh design of her new arm is over used by Marvel and lacks creativity.They missed out on the potential of giving her a really cool cyberpunk arm that transforms into a gun, maybe like how Bloodsports gun transforms in The Suicide Squad or something. There was only one cool scene with Nebula’s new arm and it was at the start of the movie when she first uses it against Adam Warlock.
Speaking of Adam Whine-A-Lot, Adam Warlock was a whiny child that didn’t fit in the movie. You could clearly tell that James Gunn was forced to put him in the movie when he didn’t want to. It’s a shame that Gunn did Adam Warlock so dirty and didn’t show him the love he deserves. Gunn took an A list character with a rich history from the Silver Age of comics and made him a pretentious little bitch for no good reason.
You can tell that this movie was written in the 2016-2018 era. There are two glaring continuity issues that I guess the writers were just too lazy to fix. The first one is that Star-Lord’s helmet was broken at the end of The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Then Peter is seen with a repaired helmet in Infinity War, but then Star-Lord's iconic helmet and jet boots are nowhere to be seen in this movie. When some distressed fans asked Gunn about this on twitter he stated that, “Peter forgot them in his desk on Knowhere in his rush to save Rocket.” What dumbass answer is that? Talk about bad story writing. No iconic look for Star-Lord was such a disappointment.Imagine how awesome it would have been at the end if Star-Lord had clicked his helmet on and soared to safety instead having Adam Whine-A-Lot save him. Then there is the issue of Gamora. As I said before, you can tell Gunn wrote this movie before Infinity War and put as little effort as possible into changing it to fit in within the current MCU continuity. You can tell that Gamora wasn’t intended to be dead in this movie. They awkwardly patch her death and past resurrection into the movie and then just have her fight alongside The Guardians like she has known them for years about halfway into the movie.
James Gunn on Twitter: "It’s in his desk drawer in Knowhere. He had to get out of there fast as you know! (And as for the next question people ask - the rockets that clip onto his boots are far inferior to the jet packs Rocket has made them so they’re not around at all anymore)." / Twitter
Throughout the movie you’ll hear The Guardians sporadically use nicknames for each other on and off. This was executed in such an awful way. Everytime it happened it felt forced and out of place. The movie tries to add more depth to The Guardians' relationships with each other by having them do this. It doesn’t work because they don’t just use the nicknames. One scene you’ll hear Nebula call Mantis ‘Mant’ and then the very next scene she will call Mantis her full name again. If it was a nickname they all would use them consistently!
Some of the CGI scenes didn’t feel as natural as they could have been. The movie is shot pretty well, and you can tell lots of practical sets were used. This makes the completely CGI scenes in space look even worse. There is one scene in particular where all of The Guardians are floating through space in different colored suits and it looks like everything including The Guardians were CGI and it just doesn’t work.
Now to name a few more inconsistencies and plot holes that happened in this shit show of a movie:
How did Groot go from having just a head to a full body of wood armor in just one scene when it previously took him two movies and a special to grow to his current age at the start of the movie?
Why didn't The High Evolutionary’s guards search or scan Groot for weapons when he got on the ship like they did with Star-Lord?
How did Krakglin kill the massive army that attacked Knowhere so fast? There were over a hundred of those bitches attacking Knowhere and then only like 6 got on to the planet proper for Krakglin to kill?
Broken windshields on your spaceship that Adam Warlock makes right in the middle of space are fine and no one will freeze or die, but as soon as you jump through space from The High Evolutionary’s ship to Knowhere you freeze and die.
Why were kids still out of their cages and able to talk to Drax, Mantis, and Nebula? Why didn't the Abilisks eat said kids? Did The High Evolutionary just summon the Abilisks out of his ass when he lifted the cage off of The Guardians?
Why does Rocket have an utter disregard for the lives of the attacking mech animals under The High Evolutionary’s control? Why doesn’t he want to save them? Rocket is the same thing as the mech animals that all of The Guardians hack to bits without a care in the world.
There are so many different characters with no real development in this movie that it gave Fox’s X-Men: The Last Stand a run for its money. Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot, Rocket, Nebula, Mantis, Ayesha, Adam Warlock, Kraglin, The High Evolutionary, Cosmo, Stakar, Lylla, Reefs, Floor, Karja, Kwol, Ura, Martinex, War Pig, Howard the Duck, Yondu, Blurp, Fitz, Krugarr, and wow I didn’t even name them all! The only reason Infinity War worked with so many included characters was because Marvel spent 10 years building up all of the characters for that movie. The only new characters were Thanos and his four Black Order henchmen. Guardians Vol. 3 is more akin to the X-Men movies, you’ll be introduced to so many new characters you’ll end up forgetting about half of them by the end of the movie. James Gunn has a tendency to do this with all of his superhero films and I hope he realizes that Fox already tried this and failed.
In conclusion:
The citizens and buildings on Knowhere get destroyed at least two times in this movie. The outside of Knowhere gets crushed to a great degree. The current residents of Knowhere are forced to take on a large amount of helpless children and wild animals to feed and house in their destroyed planet. Plus three giant Abilisk without having a say in it! Knowhere sounds like it sucks ass. Just like the plot of this movie.
But hey, at least Blurp the F’saki alien pet that Adam Warlock acquires after murdering Fitz is super cute!
The Movie was 4/10