2023, James Gunn (Peacemaker) -- download
Didn't get to the cinema for this one. I went from waiting until the crowds had died down, to trying to find a good night on a decent sized screen (now that I have new eye glasses that allow me to enjoy cinema viewing better), to ... oh, its only in shoe-box cinemas, to ... oh, its already out on digital. So, 4K download it is, for first viewing, and better quality (colour!!!) 4K download for second viewing (currently ongoing).
Yes, the watching of a movie is as much a part of my process as the movie itself. You know that by now.
The promotion of this movie already had me warned that this was going to be a tear jerker. The background to Rocket the Raccoon, and how he was made, was very obviously about hurting cute lil fuzzy wuzzy animals. But what was not expected was about how the Guardians had reached a place where they actually did act and feel like a big family, even Nebula, though she is still angry and everyone, all the time. That said, I wasn't as moved by the "hurting the cute fuzzy wuzzy-s" as I expected to be, but more by the family's reactions to Rocket's predicament.
The movie begins on Knowhere, the now based of operations for the Guardians and the various beings that have attached themselves to them, including Kraglin and Cosmo. Peter is drunk again, still not dealing well with the death and reappearance of Gamora. He has difficulty understanding she is not his Gamora; intellectually, he kind of does, but emotionally not at all. But he has never been the most emotionally intelligent person in the universe. And then a flying man with laser hands, a member of the Sovereign people, shows up to attack Rocket. He takes the Guardians down pretty easily, and only is stopped by a hot blade through his chest. Alas, Rocket is hurt, badly, and the medical equipment they rely on does not work on him because of all the technology embedded inside. They need to go to the source of his making to attain help.
Despite being a long-ass movie, the pace is break-neck, with barely a moment to breathe. Rocket is hurt, the tech mentions Orgocorp, so off they go to the ooey-gooey, fleshy headquarters of the company that The High Evolutionary uses to monetize his experiments all over the universe. Apparently entire planets and cultures were of his devising, basically making him a god-like being to some. There are a LOT of god-like beings in this universe. Anywayz, an ooey-gooey infiltration of some success and then a combat scene that is pretty much a recreation of the prison break scene from the first movie, including the act of fucking with the gravity -- which kind of makes sense, considering how one-note Peter is.
When I said the movie doesn't have many breathing moments, the few there are, are served by flashbacks of unconscious Rocket, and his utterly torturous past. The High Evolutionary has issues, but on a galactic scale. His goal is to create a perfect being, a perfect society and if he has to break a few billions eggs to get there, so be it. Rocket's batch are broken toys, all cute & fuzzy animals bent and twisted and rebuilt with slap-shod mechanical parts. Spider Bunny Floor, Walrus in a Wheelchair Teefs and Robot Arms Otter Lylla. Young Rocket believes he and his friends are destined to join The High Evolutionary's final plan on an idyllic planet. Yeah, right.
The MacGuffin (a code to allow the standard healing tech to ... heal Rocket) slips past them at ooey-gooey corp, so they chase it down to Counter-Earth, the latest in The High Evolutionary's created homeworlds for his inventions/creations. Think Earth in the 80s but populated by animen, or anthropomorphized animals all speaking Orbose, which none of the Guardians speak. But a little ad-libbing later, they find out the MacGuffin,which is inside the head of one of The High Evolutionary's flunkies, is at the headquarters on THIS planet. Time for a Peter Plan.
Of note, Gamora is still around because they didn't have time to drop her off with the rest of her Ravager friends. Yes, though this divergence (oooooo, nice reference! S2 of Loki coming up!) of Gamora doesn't join The Guardians, she does hook up with the criminal organization / mildly good guys and THEY are her new crew, her new family. Now that Peter has a distraction from his timey-wimey crush, she just sort of idles in the background, but with one Plot C insertion as she alerts The Sovereign of her presence on Peter's ship, with the wounded Rocket. The High Evolutionary tasked them with attaining Rocket, thus laser-hands guy (The Warlock, awoken from his cocoon too soon, and it shows) and Ayesha (her perfect golden hair out of place, and nobody to roll out her carpet [that sounds diiiirty]) are trying to get him before anyone else does, to ... well, save her entire species? The High Evolutionary raises petty to a galactic scale. But this idling time does give her opportunity to observe The Guardians and their ties to each other.
So, Peter Plan Time. Confront The High Evolutionary, but get ignored. That's alright because they really just want what's in Recorder Guy Theel's head. DON'T IGNORE ME !! Yeah, The High Evolutionary has galactic scale issues, which Peter calls him on before going all I Am Groot, "kill em all" on the bad guys. After constantly telling Drax to not with the killing, Peter has had enough. Evil Corp (TM) has to go down, but NOT before they jump out of the now-flying headquarters window, with Theel, falling towards the now exploding Counter-Earth. The High Evolutionary has pointed out that the planet isn't as idyllic as he hoped, so time to wipe another slate clean and start again. Fuck, this guy sucks. The collateral damage of Animen is staggering, is absolute. All of them, even the fucked up Ninja Turtle Bad Guys ones -- dead. Planet exploding, turning to slag below the Headquarters as it flies into the sky.
But that's (kind of) alright, as Peter has attained the code for Rocket's head, and healed him, saved him. And there we have it, the one moment that had me almost lose it. Not cute animals dying, not poor cute child Rocket seeing his friends die, but the character portrayal I have most disliked in the entire series -- Nebula always yelling -- her reaction to Rocket's recovery; well, it makes my eyes misty just writing this. Yes, she is always angry, and she has many reasons to be, yes she hates herself and probably mostly hates the entire crew, but in Rocket she sees another creature, friend, broken by another galactic scale nutjob who tortured someone just because they could. I doubt she even understands the depth of her connection to Rocket. And sure as fuck, he won't acknowledge it.
Of note, the running gag of Mantis constantly landing badly is ... noticeably there. Is her neck made of rubber?
So, planet exploding, headquarters taking off, the two parties (never split the party!) swapped places -- Nebula and crew inside the headquarters; Peter and Groot scooped up by Gamora as the planet dies around them. Now its Team Nebula that has to be rescued. Time to recreate attack on the Dark Aster, by blowing a hole in the side of the big, flying headquarters spaceship. Inside Team Nebula is discovering the jub jub kids, The High Evolutionary's latest creation of perfect beings, while outside Peter has The Head of a Giant Dead Space God (Knowhere) show up with a single shot cannon. Both teams end up dealing with icky-squid-demon-monster goons, before the two ships collide and the crews have to offload all the innocents from the flying headquarters. The defeat of The High Evolutionary is kind of lacking, but the destruction of his legacy is more the point.
Of note, you would think genius boy could do something more useful in repairing his own face than just covering it with a rubber mask.
So, Rocket saved, lots of cute fuzzy wuzzy's saved, lots of jub jub kids saved (ummmm, has anyone seen Village of the Damned? Don't trust those white hair creepos!), Peter almost dies trying to save a Zune -- finally a caught-in-space scene that is almost realistic? Lots of plot lines summed up and REALLY summed up by Peter deciding to finally go back to Earth and confront his past. Rocket is the new leader, Drax dances, Nebula smiles (fuuuuck that looked eerie), Adam the Warlock has found new friends/family, Mantis is off to find herself with her new battery-eating buddies and Cosmo is a Good Dog. A nice summation to almost ten years of a movie legacy. Not quite bows on everything, but... nice.
Final note: The Zune. Its not quite the mixtape of the first two movies, but it does allow for Peter to be exposed to a few decades of music from Earth that weren't his Dead Mom's choices. I like the conceit, but considering it is/was the 8-track of digital music players, it definitely fits the whole nostalgic broken-toy vibe of The Guardians. That said, aren't digital music players the 8-track of music sources? They came, they diversified, they climbed inside your phone [diiiiiirty] and they went away, for the most part. Digital Music is currently sitting mostly in the non-medium format of its early days (radio) being entirely transitory, while on the side, physical LPs make a come-back. All this in about 20 years. What's next? And what was the rest of the Galaxy using as music sources while Peter was seeding it with retro Earth music?
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