Spoiler warning, obviously. There are a lot of amazing moments in Guardians
of the Galaxy Volume 3. Mantis taming the Abilisks, the Beastie Boys bloodbath, and
just everything about Rocket s past, and the way it s paid off in the climax. But one part
takes the cake, and that s the ending. I don t mean the actual ending sequence, the Florence
and the Machine, the catharsis, the dancing, the long-awaited goodbyes, the long-awaited
hellos. I mean the fact that it ends, really ends. The story of the Guardians, these Guardians,
at least, is over. Definitively. We ll probably see a few faces pop up again sometime in the
future Rocket, Peter, maybe Phylla, definitely Adam Warlock but the story, the group, the
found family, the idea, that started back in 2014 that s over. And I m thrilled. Not
because I don t like these films, but because I do. Let me explain.
The MCU has built one of the most successful franchises of all time, and it s done so with
comic-book movies, and that s a term we throw around so much that it s easy to take for
granted. It s easy to discuss these comic-book movies without consciously thinking about
this specific medium, but let s. For the sake of brevity I ll be generalising a little,
but I think most of you ll agree with the broad strokes. So:
Comic-book movies are nothing new, and fundamentally, all the term connotes is a feature film inspired,
in some way, by characters or stories originating in comic books but the past decade and a half
has seen a new age of comic-book movies, with the Fox, Marvel Studios and DC universes being
the most prominent attempts at interconnected franchises, built around a connectivity beyond
sequels, prequels, the odd spinoff a connectivity creating the illusion of whole worlds, galaxies,
even. From this period onward, the comic-book movie begun to connote something more than
a standard movie adapting something with pictures instead of just words. The core impulse of
these franchises, particularly the MCU and DCEU, was to build out expansive settings,
to push further and further outward, latching together different places, people, periods,
tones, an attempt to cinematically recreate that shared universe that d existed within
and defined their comic-book empires for decades already. The main thing, to me at least, that
separates this modern age of comic-book movies from the Reeve Supermans, the Steels, the
Keaton Batmans, is the attempt to capture not just the narrative, characters, or aesthetics
of the books, but to translate its unique formal features, the things that differentiate
comic-books, or at least superhero comic-books. The main ones being: first, that interconnectivity,
and second? The way they don t end. Y know originally, I did write out a whole
section evidencing and expanding on this, but I m now realising you all know what I
mean already, right? There s always more story, characters can always come back, they re not
limited by what film series they re in, or by their own stories wrapping up, or even
by who s playing them. So the balance of comic-book to movie seems to have shifted some, and to
a lot of fans, to a lot of money-hungry studio heads also, this shift feel like a no-brainer.
Why should our stories ever have to end? Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 answers that
question. This is a film that really ends, and which
ends its series. And I don t just mean narratively if Guardians 1 was man vs. man, and Guardians
2 was man vs. his father, this is man vs. god or the lack thereof. But, y know, I do
mean narratively, also. All the dangling plot threads are tied up or rather, tied together,
in meaningful ways and every character we ve come to care about gets to finish a journey,
in ways that just ring so true. Star-lord stops running, stops papering over his wounds,
faces them, y know, learns to swim. Mantis, who can tell what people are feeling, finally
figures out what she feels. Drax s fatherhood was stripped away from him by Ronan and Thanos,
and was replaced by vengeance, destruction but here, finally, Drax the Destroyer gives
way to the original, to Drax the Father. Gamora finds a family, but it s a different Gamora,
so it s a different family. Nebula, who d been torn down and rebuilt against her wishes,
had her own image taken from her, now gets to be the builder. And Rocket? Those flashes
of leadership we d seen in the first two volumes, that fiercely kind underbelly he s always
tried to hide, cover up with snark? After seeing his past, after seeing he was a leader
all along, the film s close sees him take over command of the new Guardians, and this
character arc s conclusion might be the best of all it feels obvious, it feels earned,
it feels right. None of that s hard to see, it s all spelled out very clearly by the film.
For better or for worse and honestly, I think for better there s not much subtlety to the
any of the character beats here. That isn t to say there s nothing below the film s
surface - I think there s some really fascinating stuff to dig into with the High Evolutionary,
Rocket, and Warlock, maybe I ll make a video on that sometime but the film wants you to
know where our characters end up, why they end up there, and that these are ends.
Look, making a video talking about the fact that a final film is final, that a trilogy-concluding
film concludes, might seem boring and unnecessary, but in the MCU that s rarer than you d think,
and I think Guardians volume 3 is, in some ways, a first. This is a trilogy that took
nearly 10 years to get done, it s the one that this universe s interconnectivity screwed
with the most, it s one that studio politics almost derailed. Again and again, Gunn, the
cast, and everyone else were reminded by Marvel, by the universe, by the relentless passage
of time that the sky might be forever, but the Guardians franchise, this set of characters,
even the MCU isn t, could not and should not be.
This is a comic book movie, but it s a comic book movie. It isn t striving for that endlessness,
it embraces its own finite nature, it takes an infectiously sincere joy in giving everyone
in this battered, traumatised family one last run to show why they deserve a happy ending,
and then also in giving them one. And it doesn t even think about making its characters and
their arcs subservient to furthering the saga s story, and it doesn t waste any time setting
up future events because as far as Gunn and the Guardians are concerned, there are no
future events. This is it, and so every minute of these actors screentime is used to tell
their story, to resolve this interstellar saga of creation, destruction, hate, love,
ego and sacrifice, to drag all the pieces in play to their final positions.
Comic-books might be able to go on more or less indefinitely, but films can t. It takes
years and mountains of cash to make one movie, to get 2 or so hours of finished material,
to tell one story. Continuing that story takes backers, takes corporate confidence, takes
more time and more money, and the actors are people they have their own desires, they want
to do other stuff, and they re always getting older. In this sense, film is a more limited
medium than some others and the way today s comic-book movies are resisting that limitation
is sometimes interesting, but increasingly, it s starting to feel thin, like butter scraped
across too much bread. You see, that limitation isn t a bad thing, necessarily. Because of
these limits, because filmmakers know their stories will end, how they ll end, they re
able to use all of the tools offered by the medium and make every moment count, make sure
those final moments make sense and mean something. When all those pieces reach those final positions,
when it becomes clear that s where they re staying? That part of your brain that s holding
off on conclusions, final judgements, that s maintaining an awareness of who the players
are, what could come next, what it would mean, and so forth finally shuts off. The realisation
that you don t have to interpret provisionally anymore is almost a physical relief. You can
just sit for a moment with Peter and his granddad, with Drax and the kids, with Rocket, Groot
and the new recruits, take it all in, and let it all go.
Films aren t comic-books. They re more limited in some ways, and far richer in others. They
re different, and at the end of the day, comic book movies are still movies, first and foremost
so maybe embracing that difference, those limitations is the best way to succeed in
projects like this. Across the first two Guardians films, in The Suicide Squad, too, but here
clearest of all, we see Gunn do just this. It's hard to say just how remarkable this
ll seem in a few years time. I do think that Disney+, the integration of TV into the MCU,
had the potential to complicate all this, to really evolve live-action comic-book media
had these projects functioned less as independent stories, more as series-length continuations,
elaborations, in-betweenquels, all seamlessly integrated into the big screen offerings,
the already simplified dichotomy I ve drawn in this video could have really been broken
down. Since this hasn t really happened, though, I think we re left with two options for the
future. Either we ll have the infinity of multiverses, returns, non-conclusive conclusions
will continue, the Flash, the new DCU, Secret Wars will come and go, soon enough we ll see
our first deepfaked role-reprisals, too much bread, too little butter, and so on or we
ll have the finity of Mantis riding off on an Abilisk, of Peter and Gamora s last farewell,
of this family dancing one last time, to Dog Days are Over. And especially after seeing
this film one of those options looks a lot better to me than the other.
Well, that s that. Why drag it out? Thanks for watching. I m currently working on a super
long Moon Knight retrospective, and I have been for a while, I d guess there s about
a week s worth of editing to go, and after that I ve got another Good Place video as
well as this month s Patreon-determined project coming so head over there and join up if you
want to throw some suggestions at me, or vote in the imminent poll, and influence what comes
out and when on this channel. Big thanks to all my current patrons, whose names you re
seeing now, especially Daniel Goldhorn, Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and Weirdybeardy, and I
ll see you next time.