The Guardians of the Galaxy films exist primarily to have the eponymous rogues walk in slow motion towards the camera while No Sleep Till Brooklyn tests the limits of the cinema’s speaker system. Other things do happen. Characters blub over fallen colleagues. Chris Pratt, as Peter Quill, works variants of Indiana Jones’s eternal “making this up as I go” quip into the action. Modest (thank heavens, only that) allusions are made to a wider Marvel universe that, in one very limited sense, aspires to the breadth of Balzac. But it’s mostly about a tree person and his pals moving slowly forwards to Since You Been Gone.
The James Gunn aesthetic has never been easy to pin down. Now a head honcho at rival DC, the writer-director has, however, certainly been much concerned with piling the greatest disreputable chaos around whatever is currently passing for a story. The final film in the brief Guardians cycle pulls that trick off reasonably satisfactorily.
We begin in a giant floating skull where the Guardians are resting following tragedies in that busy Part Two. One typical morning, a spoilt superbrat named Adam Warlock – “some douche with rainbow hands!” – arrives and spreads annihilation, seriously injuring Rocket Racoon (still voiced by a game Bradley Cooper). We learn that, in order to save him, they will need to infiltrate the realm of a mad scientist played, as is often the case in Marvel flicks, by a wildly overqualified actor from The Theatre. Chukwudi Iwuji, veteran of Shakespeare and Ibsen, has even more fun with the, ahem, High Evolutionary – a sort of intergalactic Dr Moreau – than Jonathan Majors is (for the moment, anyway) having with Kang the Conqueror elsewhere in the Marvel Universe. Scenery cowers as he walks by.
GOGV3 struggles to contain its own disorders within two-and-a-half groaning hours. So there is not much chance of our summarising them here. Watching the thing is like trying to drink water from something more powerful than the proverbial fire hose. It’s like putting your head back to be waterbombed by the same service’s aerial forest-fire team. Some decent work does survive the barrage of content. A good portion of the flick is taken up with genuinely creepy flashbacks to Rocket’s origins in the High Evolutionary’s secret research facility. He is among several unfortunate animals surviving in gloomy cages after limbs, eyes and inner organs have been crudely altered or augmented.
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The images are not wholly original. One is reminded of lessons the Toy Story films drew from the Czech animator Jan Švankmajer in their creation of neighbour Andy’s cruel distortions. But it is refreshing to see something so unsettling in this habitually neuroleptic film universe. Indeed, the levels of violence here look to be straining against the strictures of the 12A certificate. The usual warnings are issued to parents of more sensitive children.
Maybe it is as well that Gunn speeds so quickly past his high concepts. One does yearn to see a little more of the High Evolutionary’s Counter Earth, but perhaps its thin satires – this failed Utopia just seems our world with jackal-headed inhabitants – would not stand up to further exploitation. Maria Bakalova’s comic voiceover does as much with Cosmo the Spacedog as the character can support. It is probably funnier to have Sylvester Stallone float pointlessly in space than have him interact properly with any other character.
For all the extravagant special effects and efforts to tug at our heartstrings, what we get is more of an epic variety show than coherent space opera. Happily, most of the turns are up to scratch. Will Poulter is hilariously pompous. Elizabeth Debicki gives good cackle as his malevolent mother. Dave Bautista retains his sweet charm. As a distraction from growing worries about where Marvel is headed next, GOGV3 will do well enough.
