Like many others, I suspect, my super-hero fatigue had reached saturation point. The relentless Marvel march of one film and TV show hot on the heels of another right now, seems to be the definition of diminishing returns. And who has the lion’s share of free time to keep up with multiverses, quantum realms and dancing She-Hulks? But I did have a soft spot for Guardians because it felt like the unified imagination and talent of a true auteur. I remember Joss Whedon suggesting to writer/director James Gunn that his initial draft of the first in the series, re-writing the original screenplay by Nicole Perlman, needed more Gunn in it. Corporate Marvel seemed to be hands-off (to be fair to Phase-runner, president and producer Kevin Feige, he chose directors well and kept his involvement carefully under-reported although Joss Whedon had a few issues with control on Age of Ultron). After one of the early scenes of the first Guardians film nine years ago set to the needledrop that of course inevitably closes the third film, Come and Get Your Love by Redbone, I was genuinely charmed. As this one was to be an ending of sorts, Gunn had set himself a mighty task. In some preparation, I’d watched the TV show The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special despite being personally cursed with horrifying flashbacks to the über-embarrassment that was The Star Wars Holiday Special and was relieved to be amused, mildly so but amused. So I was curious. Yes, the direct sequel was like hearing a lot of great jokes… twice. And the design overload, far from being awe-inspiring, felt like my eyes were being clubbed blind by a giant sock full of Smarties. In fact with the exception of a de-aged Kurt Russell, I can remember very little of it.

So I sort of knew what I was in for and after about half an hour, my brain’s capacity for this genre of near indestructible humanoids, massively overblown CGI and relentless action started to swiftly contract. I felt very uneasy about my response because I genuinely liked the characters but like Middle Earth and Pandora, I’d simply overstayed my visit despite the welcome being offered. And then we meet Rocket as a baby and something primal stirred inside me (which was the whole fecking point, I guess, curse you James Gunn). You want to make a villain as hideous and hateful as possible? Well, Gunn has read Villainy 101 and came up with The High Evolutionary, a scientist who is dissatisfied with natural evolution’s results and also its glacial speed that he makes it his mission to perform surgical experiments on animals to learn how to attain organic perfection. What an asshole. These animals are treated so badly, with such lack of care and casual sadism that if you are animal sensitive, some scenes may be a bit much for you. Rocket’s story may be the B story but to me it saved what was becoming humdrum and turned the whole enterprise around. The bad tempered, gun-toting racoon, borgified by unfeeling human monsters turns out to be the beating heart of the Guardians and it was a hugely surprising emotional journey despite Rocket being sidelined in the film’s present timeline on a makeshift hospital bed waiting for his friends to save the day (and the racoon). His backstory, which involves befriending a walrus with grafted-on wheels, an otter with grafted-on metallic limbs and a rabbit similarly cursed is way too affecting despite the ludicrous absurdity of the animals themselves and the villain’s mission. It’s as if The High Evolutionary had read The Island of Doctor Moreau many times, had it pulped and liquidised and injected into his brain. His ambition and goals are so ridiculous, it is a small miracle that emotions (primal ones to be sure) were able to be evoked as his rampant awfulness and improbability as a human being rank right up there with the performance of Jeremy Irons as Mage Profion in the 2000 original and utterly execrable Dungeons and Dragons.

Without burdening you with too much detail, here’s a short precis of the plot. Together at their home base known as Knowhere in deep space, one guardian is having issues. Quill is drunk having lost Gamora, and wallowing in self-pity. The other guardians are not happy about this. Out of nowhere (hurtling towards Knowhere**) is a Golden Man unfazed by the terrifying effects of space on a person’s body… so clearly not a human then. Given my dim recall of Guardians Vol. 2 I can just about be forgiven for forgetting the Golden Man’s introduction in that film. Smashing into Rocket and subsequently seriously injuring him, the Golden Man struggles to kidnap his target as each guardian takes him on. Eventually he is wounded badly enough to leave Rocket and return to his own base, Bad Guy Central. Rocket is barely alive and being proprietary hardware of the ultimate bad guy, he also has a kill switch inside him and the movie is essentially ‘find the key to save Rocket’. Woven in between all this semi-comic shenanigans is Rocket’s flashbacks, by far the most absorbing and affecting drama of the whole trilogy.

A big shout out to Bradley Cooper whose vocal performance nails the character with an angry and cynical front repelling any threats or danger to the sensitive soul beneath it and credit to James Gunn’s younger brother Sean who performs Rocket’s motion capture performance on set. Rocket’s ‘racoonity’ ascends the heights and plunges to the depths of emotional engagement. He finds love in the strangest places (and strangest beasts) and suffers heartbreak that should not be – but is – terribly touching. I only single Cooper and brother Gunn out because if I wanted to name check every digital artist that gave life to this wonderful character, the review would be six pages long. Suffice to say, Rocket is as real as any of the other of the guardians and the animation, as we know it must be, is first class. Bravo team. Let’s not stay digital with all the back pats. The on-set special effects are of an extraordinarily high standard. There’s a great story regarding Nebula carrying Quill in the trailers. After working on the scene, one of the two editors Fred Raskin or Greg D’Auria, asked director Gunn “Where are the wires?” Karen Gillan is an excellent actress not known for her super powered strength but Chris Pratt is not the lightest man in the world and Gillan had to have had some help. Well, the director was thrilled by this question. The Quill she is carrying is, astonishingly, a lightweight model and is practically indistinguishable from Pratt himself. There are many videos online showing off this special effect that earns the term ‘special’ in spades. Bravo Legacy Effects.

Each of the guardians is given an end to their story in mostly satisfactory ways and while the humour sits uneasily next to the harrowing Rocket backstory, the humour is part of Guardian DNA and no matter how dark or emotional you want to go, you can’t abandon or get around the DNA. All the cast get their moments in the sun and as send offs go, it’s a pretty good one. It’s never a chore to watch Nathan Fillion in action. As our own Captain Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly and Serenity, he’s such a likeable performer and it was also fun to hook up with Sylvester Stallone again reprising his Ravager role. But taking the top spot for thespianic villainy is Shakespearean actor Chukwudi Iwuji. He plays the most loathsome mad scientist ever whose delusions of godhood are so over the top, no actor could ever make him believable but Iwuji has taken on the character to such a degree, he seems like he’s having a ball while audiences can barely contain their hisses. It might sound patronising (not meant to) but he’d be wonderful in pantomimes as great as he is in his Shakespearean roles. His evil is almost exquisite in Guardians Vol. 3. Also in this series’ DNA are the inevitable pop songs – supposedly sourced from Quill’s mum’s mix tapes – those that pepper the action throughout. While I recognised a few in the first, fewer in the second, I did better clocking Springsteen, Earth, Wind and Fire and, from left field, a song from the oeuvre of Matt Johnson’s band, The The, This is the Day which really made mine.

Let’s say that if Marvel and Disney are having some problems, I can think of no better film than Guardians Vol. 3 to arrest the downward spiral. Yes, it’s not perfect by any means but it’s always diverting, sometimes genuinely funny and this time around surprisingly moving. If Marvel is suffering from too much success making the failures all the more perplexing then some new thinking is required at HQ. Good luck with that.

* https://torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/chris-pratt-and-james-gunn-talk-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-marvels-first-f-bomb-and-that-awful-screen-test