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Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
GalGuard 3 feels a little overstuffed and weirdly paced, but overall I really liked it.

Rocket's probably my favorite Guardian, so having him be so central to the movie was a delight even if it meant we didn't get a lot of him verbally sparring with Quill. Everything to do with his backstory was very affecting, but how could it not be when it's all fuzzy, dewy-eyed animals?

The High Evolutionary made for a more interesting villain than Ronan (not that that's hard to do), but I don't know if he measures up to Ego. Maybe he just doesn't have Kurt Russell's charisma.

I have a lot of admiration for the way they resolved the Quill/Gamora romance. Narratively it would have been the easiest thing in the world to "Snowball II" 2014 Gamora into a carbon copy of the original and have her rediscover her love for Quill. But she's not that person, just as 2014 Nebula wasn't "our" Nebula, and she and Quill don't make sense together anymore. Maybe one day.

Adam Warlock didn't really add much to the proceedings, did he? (I get the feeling he was originally intended to be more important, but over time the story shifted away from him but they still had to pay off the post-credits from Volume 2.) I'm given to understand he's a big fuckin nerd in the comics as well, so maybe it all worked out after all.

Speaking of fucking, I like that they threw away the MCU's first f-bomb on a random comedy bit.

Not sure I love Mantis just casually erasing Drax's memory. The scene establishes that she loves him and it's meant to protect his feelings, but it feels like another case of Mantis escaping the consequences of her actions.

Ending the last GotG movie on a big dance party is of course perfect. I adore these characters and I'm sad that we probably won't see most of them again (outside of perhaps a cameo in Secret Wars), but better to end on a high note.

Having the new Guardians charge heroically into battle against what looked like a stampede of herbivores in the mid-credits scene for a movie about animal abuse certainly was a choice. Rather than leave me with hope for fun future adventures (even if they're off-screen), it left rather a sour taste in my mouth and had me questioning what Rocket actually took away from his experience.

There are mid- and post-credits scenes.
 
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Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Boy sure was dusty in the theater every time the focus moved to Rocket; must have been part of the 4D experience.

I… kind of think I wound up hating the villain of this movie more than any other bad guy in the whole of the MCU; including the Nazi so bad other nazis thought he was a bit much, and the guy who murdered absolutely everybody.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I liked the movie. I thought the High Evolutionary was a good villain. He's just really a piece of shit. A lot of times in superhero movies the villains are doing obviously bad things but you don't really feel it in your heart. This guy is just the worst.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Yeah I wound up despising him on a level I rarely experience with fictional characters.

My only complaint really, and it’s not one I usually have with movies, is that Rocket let him live.

He… did a whole bunch of genocides. He did a genocide, like, 20 minutes ago. He’s in the middle of talking about how he wants to continue doing them.

Morally, it is okay.
 

Olli

(he/him)
Totally agreed about High Evolutionary being a top-notch MCU villain. I was somewhat confused about the reveal of his face beneath the mask, though. At first I thought, "Is that the Red Skull?! What a twist! Is this related to Gamora being alive??", but then it was just... what you'd expect to see when you rip someone's facial skin off, muscles and bone.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
It was just a metaphor for his vision of a perfect society being a false facade and completely rotten underneath.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Meanwhile the chuds are mad that Cosmo, who is a dog, is female:

Guardians 3 Director Defends Gender-Swap Decision Amid Backlash

On Twitter, Logan78106803 inquired of Gunn:

“Why did you make cosmo a female when he had always been known as a good boy”
Gunn defended his decision, referencing the real-world dog Laika who was one of the first animals in space:

“Because Cosmo is based on Laika, the Russian dog, who was a female, so I gender-swapped her back.”
Notgoingsane also tweeted their views on the situation:

“But it makes no sense why to change it. Keeping it wasn't inaccurate as the comic is a male dog It serves no purpose to change it. The original comic was a male dog you are not 'changing it back' because it was never a female in the first place. Only inspired by.”
In his reply, James Gunn namedropped other Guardians characters, such as Drax and Mantis, who he modified from their comic versions:

“I’d rather honor the real dog who died in outer space. Cosmo would not exist without Laika. By the way, I changed Mantis, Drax, High Evo, and others from humans to aliens, which seems a bigger change. Why does it upset you so much?“
That same Twitter user doubled down on their complaint:

“Because the whole point of an adaptation is to adapt. You adapt the source material as I stated. And I hate comics changing established characters as well (unless they state its a multiverse thing. )”
And Gunn had none of it:

“It’s always a multiverse thing. That’s what the MCU is - a different version of Earth 616. And, again, you should look up the meaning of ‘adapt.’“

Just imagine how mad they'll be when they find out that half of all dogs in real life are female. The feminists are taking over!!
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Well, the Doctor Seuss and M&Ms thing didn't work out. It just made Tucker Carlson look stupid and unhealthily obsessed with candy.
 

Sprite

(He/Him/His)
Just imagine how mad they'll be when they find out that half of all dogs in real life are female. The feminists are taking over!!
They just want to be able to call Cosmo a good boy, for as we all know there is no equivalent term for female dogs
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Fun fact;
Over the course of thirty years and three distinct animals, My father has not once correctly ascertained the gender of my dog.

And it’s not just Assuming All Dogs are Male, because he refers to Bentley as female.

Maybe he wrote those tweets?
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
HEADCANON:

All dogs, regardless of gender, of a large size and later age sound kinda like Eeyore of Winnie the Pooh
All dogs, regardless of gender, that are generally large, but still continually zip around yards at maximum speed, sound roughly like Michael J. Fox
All dogs, regardless of gender, that are on the generally "small dog" side sound like an over-caffeinated Andy Daly
All cats, regardless of gender, sound like Eartha Kitt, but when playing Yzma

These are my beliefs, at least for now.
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
I have seen SPACE ASSHOLES 3.

It's... a good movie!

I also think it's an extremely rare case of Disney getting actually FORCED into making a "hey FUCK DISNEY" movie. I mean the bad guy is literally a psychopath who spends all his time trying to create the perfect world based on a version of America that never existed, out of cute animal people.

That's Walt Disney.

The bad guy in this movie is fucking Walt Disney.
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
I think Gunn might have been a LITTLE more pissed off about getting wrongfully fired than he previously let on.
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
I think Disney is so monolithic as a corporation that they just don't care. Where else are you going to go for comic book movies that meet an acceptable standard of quality and Star Wars sequels? I think Tim Burton's unnecessary live-action Dumbo was built around criticism of theme parks like Disneyland. As long as the films don't say "Don't go to Disneyland specifically, it really sucks ass... go to Cedar Point instead," I think Iger just shrugs it off. Gunn is just gumming the hand that feeds him.
 
I think Disney is so monolithic as a corporation that they just don't care. Where else are you going to go for comic book movies that meet an acceptable standard of quality and Star Wars sequels? I think Tim Burton's unnecessary live-action Dumbo was built around criticism of theme parks like Disneyland. As long as the films don't say "Don't go to Disneyland specifically, it really sucks ass... go to Cedar Point instead," I think Iger just shrugs it off. Gunn is just gumming the hand that feeds him.
It’s more than that. They allow this limp-wristed version of dissent so rubes can be like oh they mustn’t be all that bad because this and this. But that’s just a cheap way to buy easy cred. It’s the Fox News model of having a blubbering and impotent “liberal” sit across Hannity for years so that they can pretend they’re “fair and balanced”.
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
I'd say it's just the simple truth that there is no belief that capitalism cannot ultimately monetize.

il_fullxfull.923290076_kqcm.jpg


Yes, this includes the belief that there is no belief that capitalism cannot ultimately monetize.
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Just saw it. The High Evolutionary makes a fascinating yet loathsome villain...
this guy's got one hell of an inferiority complex, which he wants to project upon everyone else.
I don't know if that's a spoiler, but just in case!

Also, that second-stringer group of Guardians at the end... it's an even motlier crew than the original!
 

SabreCat

Sabe, Inattentive Type
(he "Sabe" / she "Kali")
Saw Vol. 3 yesterday m'self! A friend had mentioned crying like three times, and while I didn't quite get there I definitely could tell why.

A word of caution to anyone who flirts with learning life lessons from MCU movies: if you are evacuating an aircraft, do not under any circumstance turn back to pick up your belongings!

Not sure I love Mantis just casually erasing Drax's memory. The scene establishes that she loves him and it's meant to protect his feelings, but it feels like another case of Mantis escaping the consequences of her actions.

That confused me too. There was a whole gun rack of Chekhov's in the opening scene and they all paid off, but this bit--we learn that one of the Guardians has been doing something super evil to her bestie on the regular, and it's not commented on at all??

My only complaint really, and it’s not one I usually have with movies, is that Rocket let him live.

He… did a whole bunch of genocides. He did a genocide, like, 20 minutes ago. He’s in the middle of talking about how he wants to continue doing them.

Morally, it is okay.

And that one I was so baffled I reflexively said "What??" out loud.
Didn't Rocket just massacre his way through a packed corridor of foot soldiers on his way to this scene? What made them deserve to die while the honcho who brought them there doesn't? Heck, it was only accidental (read: not her archenemy) that Gamora's stabbity move didn't kill the Evolutionary outright. And while Starlord made a show of trying to avoid violence in an earlier mission, he also gave a "kill them all" order twice later; I have never gotten an impression that a 21st century Batman style "maim, don't kill" ethos was a Guardian thing.

Given they left the Evolutionary incapacitated on the floor while his spaceship exploded, the implication is that he died anyway, but we all know that's not how it works in the superhero genre.
 
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SpoonyBard

Threat Rhyme
(He/Him)
Saw it this past weekend at my town's spiffy new movie theatre. It's modest in size and they'll get movies a few weeks after their worldwide premiere but I'm happy to have one locally again. Anyway.

I dug it. I haven't been feeling the MCU movies since Endgame but this one felt like a strong entry largely due to it just doing its own thing. If there's anything in this movie setting up something that's coming in the next big crossover I couldn't see it. But I liked it a lot, I was happy with what they did with Gamora (they didn't just bring her back to the earlier status quo, she's off living her own life and Quill seems fine with that by the end) and overall it felt like a good sendoff to this cast of characters. Some of em will likely be back in the future, but if Guardians Vol 4 or whatever comes around and it's all about the newer group seen at the end then I'm down with that.

Re Mantis and Drax: That moment really came off badly to me as well. It felt like all the Guardians learned something important by the end, or faced some sort of reckoning, except Mantis (and Groot I guess, for such a Rocket-centric movie Groot spent a lot of time in the background feels like).

Re Rocket and the Big Bad: Rocket letting The High Evolutionary live at the end felt less like an act of mercy and more 'well this exploding fortress is gonna kill him anyway, so I'll just let that handle things rather than dirty my own hands'. Kinda 'I won't kill you, but I also won't save you' from Batman Begins in a way.

One big criticism, or quibble really, is that Adam Warlock felt just kind of... there. He could be removed from the movie and nearly nothing would be lost, it's like he's only there because he was in the post-credits scene of Vol 2.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
One big criticism, or quibble really, is that Adam Warlock felt just kind of... there. He could be removed from the movie and nearly nothing would be lost, it's like he's only there because he was in the post-credits scene of Vol 2.
That’s always gonna be a problem with this kind of franchise continuity... plans inevitably change in the years between movies, but fans will yell if you just pretend dangling plot hooks didn’t happen at all because someone decided to go in a different direction.
 
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