Finally got round to seeing Guardians 3… What a waste of 2 1/2 hours that was. I enjoyed the first 2, but 3 was just terrible. The “story” is awful. Numerous, cheesy, cliché bits thrown together here and there. Nothing interesting or very cohesive. Nothing ever had a sense of consequence.
Even the soundtrack couldn’t quite save it (though was easily the best part).
“Written and Directed by James Gunn”.
Good luck DC, you’re gonna need it.
I agree in that the stakes for 3 are incredibly low. It starts trying to save Rocket’s life, but that’s nowhere near the same level as playing keep away with an Infinity Stone, or stopping a mad god from destroying the universe.
Rocket dies, or he doesn’t, it has an impact on a dozen or so characters.
Then, once Rocket’s life is saved, it becomes keeping him away from the High Evolutionary, who wants to use Rockets DNA to fuel a new race of beings just as creative (and destructive?) as Rocket.
But this is, ultimately, Rocket’s origin story. The flashbacks are heartbreaking, and, yeah, even though it’s smaller in scale, it has more emotion behind it than 1 and 2. It’s about the characters and each gets a chance to shine (even Cosmo!)
I enjoyed it a lot (probably more than 2 but less than 1), and for me the smaller stakes were one of the reasons why it worked.
Marvel have done the huge stakes already and it’s hard to top what they’ve already done - Thanos eradicating half of the universe. Much of what hasn’t quite worked in Phase 4 so far is that they’ve been trying to do exactly that though - it’s no longer about saving the universe, now it’s about saving the multiverse, and after a while the stakes get so big as to be meaningless. When you’ve already done the massive stakes, bringing it back to a smaller scale and more personal stories about beloved characters seems like a smart way of reconnecting with audiences without trying to top the untoppable - at least for a while.
I cared about the stakes in this film far more than I cared about the massive multiversal stakes in Ant-Man 3.
While I actually like the stakes to become lower again (we can’t keep increasing the stakes forever), I agree that the movie wasn’t what I was hoping for. The origin story stuff and cohesion of the group was nice, but the High Evolutionary was really odd overall.
Yeah for real, the High Evolutionary was such a weird choice. Throughout the movie, I kept thinking to myself, “this is the villain?!”
Matteo from Superstore as his top henchman probably didn’t help things.
Rocket’s origin story was cool, though.
This is why I loved the third more. I’m sick to death of the “end of world/universe” plots. I much prefer personal stakes. Almost every other marvel movie since endgame has tried to change the world or universe in some big way, and I’m bored of it.