#i've been gone for months but i am BACK with the unwarranted scifi movie longposting

[rmbunnie]

Watched GOTG3 on friday! Here are some of my personal thoughts (spoilers obvs):

- I really liked it, first of all. To be honest, Rocket is my fave of the group alongside Nebula. I just think they’re neat, and I like characters that cause drama. If there’s no personality traits that are a little abrasive and offputting, then i’m not saying that’s a flaw, but perhaps i am saying its a bit of a missed opportunity. This is probably one of the reasons I am still interested in GOTG when most of the mcu is a bit worn out to me, there’s this neat focus on why they’re acting the way they are and letting their reasoning steer the story to a good extent rather than using it like an add-on (especially if the way they’re acting is flat out dickish,) and I think that’s a fun approach. All this to say, Rocket is one of my faves, and so a movie largely focused around his character is pretty interesting to me by default.

- The hallway fight was great. Loved it no notes a plus.

- I really liked the tardigrade suits on the tech planet-meteor-lab thing! They looked weird and offputting, don’t get me wrong, but space suits that are visually inspired by the creature that can naturally survive the void of space, boiling temperatures, and so much else are REALLY well-suited (haha) to the organic planet founded by the man who uses existing creatures as the bases of his "creations.” I can absolutely picture the High Evolutionary learning about a tardigrade and being like “hell yeah i just came up with a GREAT and original idea”

- I also liked the organic planet. Very cool the meat was so gross and the eye motif was fun.

- I have mixed thoughts on Adam Warlock, but mainly positive. I think that with the amount of things that were happening in the movie some of the scenes that were necessary for his development made the runtime drag a little and lose some momentum, but I’d rather have them than not have them. He was funny, and the creation of Adam posing at the end was both fun, cool to look at, and kinda something to think about, seeing as he was the one taking the place of god, but he is also the one named Adam. Maybe the idea there was that the first good act he does is the birth of his own humanity, as in existence as a person or as anything more than a passive invention? Or maybe they just thought it would be fun haha. Regardless, the idea of the divine being the one who can gain something through contact with the human is a sentiment that fits in the movie about the dude who plays god via animal cruelty but lacks what his "lesser” creations have and can never get it due to his failure to recognize their personhood idk.

-The ending is how it should have been imo. I know it’s so so sad to see a found family leave each other and it bums us out, and I am bummed out best believe but particularly in the case of Peter, Drax, and Mantis, it seems like what the movie was going for (if you’re taking the latter two’s writing as anything past comic relief which, like, of course I am) is that being in the Guardians was keeping them from evolving into the people that they were meant to grow into, and stunting their potential. Again, very relevant with the High Evolutionary, evolving people against their will isn’t right but remaining frozen in time isn’t natural. It was nice to see them get unstuck.

- Speaking of evolution and the characters, Gamora seemed like she had a little divergent character evolution thing going on, with 2014 as her sorta common ancestor. The ravagers seemed a little out of nowhere but not the the extent that it was unbelievable. “I bet we were fun” was really sweet. It’s nice to see her gain some of the things that she had before the time travel death bullshit personality-wise, the idea that she would always end up kinder and happier when she was free of Thanos (who i hate btw, not even as a character although that too, there was just NOTHING interesting done with him the whole goddamn franchise) than when she was with him is not something it takes a genius to figure out, but it’s still good to see. It’s also worth considering that original Gamora had to choose to be free of Thanos everyday and work with the consequences of his actions while 2014 Gamora was brought into a world where Thanos was gone regardless of her feelings or actions. This is kinda explored in the movie, and neither Gamora is bad, but I feel like its very important characterization-wise to understand that she didn’t fight to leave and struggle in doing so the same way original Gamora did, and so their worldviews are different, too, not only their experiences. To original Gamora the Guardians were fundamental to her indepence, without Peter she wouldn’t have gotten the orb so easily and without Rocket and Groot she might not have survived the Kyln. To 2014 Gamora, Thanos is out of the way and now these other people are kinda just here.

- Gamora dying in Infinity War or Endgame or whichever it fucking was was bullshit and i won’t debate on that but it is funny to see the directors of the mcu doing the exact same thing comic writers have been doing forever coordination-wise. Trying to work with the absolute trash that’s going on in the concurrently-running title is a comic struggle that transcends medium. GOTG did pretty well with it.

- I loved the High Evolutionary! Of course, not as a person, he’s the worst, but he was consistently really interesting to watch and his actor did a really really good job with him! The religious-type traits were really interesting, and specifically his bit with the opera song and music and how he valued literature and art was really interesting and not to be too jojo in marvel but it kinda gave me Dio or Pucci vibes. That’s the type of weirdass tangent one of them would say (specifically their convos with each other or the Pucci Hallelujah moment.) Everyone has already said more than i could say about his weird evolution-genetics shit but it remains weird. 

- “There is no god, thats why i stepped in!!1!” and the bit wheres he’s scrambling to the cage where Rocket is to find out how he knew the filtration system thing were two particular highlights of his character for me. He is messy and emotional and all over the place, and he thinks he is perfection incarnate. His emotional outbursts add humor and are a big part of what makes him interesting and fun to watch, but he would ridicule them in any other being. This is proof that the High Evolutionary is a hypocrite with poor taste.

- Ayesha dead. She was a bitch but she slayed. she will be missed, for the comedy of those fucking gold lenses was a highlight of GOTG2 for me.

- Rocket is a creep. Rocket is a weirdo. What the hell is he doing here. The Radiohead singalong in the beginning was so fun. I loved it so much, genuinely. 

- Lylla, Teefs and Floor were. so much. Everyone says they’re sad, and of course they are, but the whole thing was offputting too. Not as in like “oh they’re so gross” the vibe was just horrifying and sorta nightmarish because it’s not like you think they’re gonna make it out, you see Rocket in GOTG the first and you know there’s absolutely nobody with him but Groot. The scream was, a lot, and very well voiced, I guess? It seems weird to say, it’s not like, oh wow cinema i loved the part where his friends died and he screamed as he watched them get shot in his face but i felt my stomach drop in that theater even though i fully knew it was coming so i guess what i’m saying is mission accomplished you did the thing the way the thing was meant to be and it gave me bone nausea.

- Also it has been pointed out before it is not original thought of mine but the cage death scream vs the dance party scream. I’m thinking about that. Similarly in the sense that i’ve seen it mentioned but I keep thinking about it, the Dog Days are Over was quite a choice, seeing the zune scroll to the most recent decade it has was, bittersweet, or cathartic i guess? They can finally just move through time, they get to be growing people again now. I love the Dog Days are Over. I love Florence.

- On the Lylla topic, everyone’s been saying this sad quote made them sad or that sad quote bummed them out but the thing that got me most was “We were right. The sky is beautiful, and it is forever.” in the final dream sequence. Idk why that one particularly got me like that, heaven and the sky as a pair is a pretty common concept, eternity is just hefty I guess. Compared to the cage though, I’m glad they get such a nice place to be.

- We got “vocabulistics” and now we have “emotionallistic problems.” In GOTG 1 I could give him the plausible deniability of smushing together “linguistics” and “vocabulary” but no, Rocket just likes putting “ballistics” inside words. As is his prerogative. 

- I like how weird and retro some of the sci-fi elements are. The movie isn’t just a rehashing of older sci-fi concepts of course, it implements the retro elements interestingly and makes them fresh, but mad scientist experiments and unnatural experiment beings in a slightly more horror/negative approach is like RETRO retro sci-fi, like heavy book Frankenstein original first-ever sci-fi, so it was interesting to see past sci-fi incorporated into story elements in addition to world aesthetics and soundtracks like we’ve already seen. It’s nothing new to say GOTG has a bit of a 70s vibe just as a franchise, which I absolutely adore, but particularly counter-earth has a kinda “wouldn’t it be fucked up if that happened” vibe to it that I think is really fun. We got meat planet. We got animal planet. Lets go. This is peak fiction.

- Speaking of GOTG being retro-esque this trilogy LOOOVES that fucking yellow slime. Every movie there is a prominent yellow slime feature, it’s the most consistent character in the mcu. Did they accidentally order too much on movie 1 and save the rest for later? It kills me. 

-Speaking of, it’s very funny to me that they end up living on Knowhere. Like in the grand scheme of things. They did well with it, they have lovely homes with nice tables and blankets and lamps and such but like. Imagine you break out of jail and you go to kill time at some shady weirdo planet because the guy who wants to buy your orb is there, and the guy who wants to buy your orb is also Spongebob. You call up the guy who killed your family while you’re there and he stabs you and throws you into the yellow goo to die. The weird guy you’re stuck with breaks down and gets in a fight with you and threatens to shoot you in the face after doing this weird venty monologue that you don’t get at all. This is all one night. Nine years pass and you’re besties and you live there. The goo vat you got thrown in is probably like two blocks away because the planet is kinda small. Idk it just doesn’t seem like that would give homey vibes to me but they made it work and i commend that!

- Overall it was a good movie. I definitely have some thoughts that I’m missing but the thing about situations like that is that I can’t remember them. I will be bummed that the trilogy has ended but things end and this is life. Oh well. It ended well.

- Oh one more thing but the High Evolutionary ultimately lacking creativity was really interesting. All he can ever do is use bits and pieces of things that already exist so he can’t ever achieve what he would consider true perfection, because he can’t appreciate anything that exists due to its inherent and unavoidable flawed nature, and since his “inventions” are based only on preexisting stuff the flaws aren’t going anywhere. When he does come up with something worthwhile he effectively discards it because he doesn’t understand what makes it special, he just knows that it has something that he doesn’t and he’ll destroy it and eventually ruin what was good about it in the first place in the pursuit of replication, so if he ever did achieve perfection he wouldn’t even be able to do anything with it. The one thing he makes that he values, the only thing he can think to do is copy it and ruin it. His mindset won’t allow ingenuity because his pursuit of something without flaws can only ever be informed of traits he’s already seen in flawed beings. He owes everything he ever did accomplish to the flawed. If he wants something perfect so bad he should have at least tried to start from scratch (it would have been a move of immense hubris but obviously he’s not above that) but he can’t, because not only is he uncreative but like Rocket points out, he doesn’t even want perfection, he just hates everything the way it is.