It is easy to overlook, however James Gunn, the schlock visionary behind Marvel’s first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, nearly did not get to make a 3rd entry. In the summertime of 2018, Gunn was fired from his job directing the film, which was then in improvement, after right-wing trolls dug up a slew of previous tweets that have been in decidedly poor style, and which included jokes about violence towards youngsters.
However poor style was, after all, exactly the purpose. Earlier than Gunn landed on the helm of a top-tier comedian e book franchise, he was a low-budget gross-out horror provocateur. His filmmaking profession began with Troma Leisure, the corporate most well-known for the Poisonous Avenger franchise, and his credit included work on movies like Tromeo and Juliet, a hyperviolent, sexually specific, gleefully vulgar reboot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Shock, outrage, ultraviolence, and scatological humor have been the instruments of Gunn’s commerce and he crafted a public persona to match.
When proof of that persona resurfaced, executives at Disney determined to offer Gunn the boot. The famously family-focused firm did not need to be related together with his model of black comedian grotesquerie.
Gunn, in flip, went to Marvel’s chief rival within the superhero film enterprise, the DC Comics universe of characters, to make one other superhero film with a model extra forgiving of his previous picture. That movie, 2021’s sequel-reboot Suicide Squad, was an exuberantly violent however in the end sentimental romp that not-so-subtly handled themes of cancellation by murderous (starfish monster–managed) mobs.
The film served as a type of private remedy—and a job interview. Late final 12 months, Gunn was put answerable for rebooting the DC Comics film universe, giving him inventive supervision over all the universe, together with characters like Superman, Marvel Girl, and Inexperienced Lantern.
Within the interim, nonetheless, Gunn was rehired on the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which hits theaters this weekend. The sequel—Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3—has all of the emblems Gunn has change into recognized for: intelligent musical cues and spectacular setpieces, snark and sentimentality, an outsider sensibility melded to heat and heartfelt emotion.
Additionally, quite a lot of fairly bizarre, fairly gross stuff: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is not almost as violent as any Troma movie, or as Gunn’s Suicide Squad. However its solid features a quartet of monstrous-looking experimental half-robot animals that will be terrifying in the event that they weren’t imbued with such candy personalities. There is a scene set on an enormous organic spaceship/station that the protagonists have to chop via to enter like they’re performing surgical procedure on some gloopy spaceborne Cthulhu. The central story revolves round animal mutilation and experimental organic modifications that viewers are supposed to see as inherently merciless and dehumanizing. There are jokes about homicide and feces. There’s even an amusingly gratuitous F-bomb.
Gunn, who each directed and co-wrote the movie, has shaved off sufficient of the tough edges of this materials to maintain it throughout the PG-13 confines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). However what’s notable concerning the film’s pulp grotesquerie is not simply its presence. It is that these bits are sometimes the film’s finest—essentially the most entertaining, essentially the most amusing, essentially the most stunning, essentially the most poignant.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is not fairly a fantastic film. But it surely’s a better-than-average superhero movie. And it is a superior Marvel film exactly due to all of the methods it incorporates Gunn’s oddball, typically outrageous, obsessions. It is Gunn’s penchant for schlocky, freaky organic vulgarity and quippy crudeness that makes the film stand out from the gang. Together with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, it is simply among the finest post-pandemic entries within the struggling MCU mega-franchise. Sure, there’s nothing within the movie fairly as graphic or specific as within the tweets that obtained Gunn axed from the mission again in 2018. However Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is in deliriously and delightfully poor style—and higher for it.
