Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the second sequel to the original film from 2014. It’s based on the 2008 comic book of the same name but not to be confused with the 1969 comic of the same name though it does share some characters.
This movie has been a long time coming, as it should have
come out some time ago, striking while the iron from Avengers: Endgame was still
hot. The short version as to why it took so long stems from the public firing
and re-hiring of writer/director James Gunn. I plan on writing a blog about the
DC Comics movie woes and wins very soon and I imagine I’ll go into greater
details then, but to keep this blog as short as possible, Gunn was fired when tweets
from a decade prior resurfaced of him making many terrible, offensive, and tasteless jokes leading to a backlash from
some fans but apparently mostly far-right conservatives and Russian bots (this
all happened after months of Gunn publicly shaming then-president Donald Trump,
but I’m sure that’s a coincidence). Gunn was then nearly immediately hired by
Warner Bros. to direct The Suicide Squad. Around that time Disney, now dealing with
a much larger and less bot driven backlash from fans and actors about their knee
jerk decision, offered him his job back which he accepted but as he agreed to do
Suicide Squad that had to come first. This fiasco directly led to Gunn becoming
the one of heads of DC’s film studio, but we’ll talk on that more another day.
Add the COVID-19 shutdown into to equation and today’s movie is many years later
than it should have been.
[Also note that Gunn also directed a TV/streaming Holiday
Special starring the cast which acts as a brief prologue to this move but
luckily it’s not that crucial if you want to skip.]
With Gunn already waist deep in building out the next phase
of a competing studio, this movie is, and frankly always was going to be, the
final GotG film with him in charge and possibly at all, as several actors have mentioned
that they plan on this being their final performance. But with all the waiting for
this final chapter the question remains: is it any good, or were all the Zack Snyder
fans on Twitter correct when they said everything he does is “mid.”
Full review after the jump.
