GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological*

A point important only to me: why am I stating that GUARDIANS 3 has strong mythicity, when I rated the other two films as merely fair? The first film was an entertaining reprise of the "Dirty Dozen" template. Volume 2 was more ambitious, and I did initially give it a good rating, only to reverse myself when I decided that writer-director James Gunn didn't bring much of symbolic significance to the Star-Lord "son of God" plotline, except to establish that the hero's sire was basically a deadbeat dad.

I should note that I have not seen the 45-minute "GUARDIANS XMAS SPECIAL," which takes place between Vol 2 and Vol 3. Gunn used this special to lay out some details about the Guardians' setup since the characters made their last big-screen appearance in AVENGERS ENDGAME. None of the details are overly important, and I imagine that in most cases the audience was able to roll with the new information, the most consequential being that Mantis (Pom Klementeff), introduced in the second movie, also happens to be the half-sister to Star-Lord Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). 

This GUARDIANS is like the others in offering the viewer the quarrelsome "esprit d'corps" of its mismatched crusaders, punctuated by dozens upon dozens of saucy jokes, most of which land, though I could have done without Nebula (Karen Gillian) struggling with a car door. Nebula, by the way, has become a regular member of the Guardians since ENDGAME-- not sure how Gunn got around all the devious time-distortions therein-- and has essentially replaced Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The Gamora known to the Guardians was eradicated and then "brought back" as a doppelganger with no memory of her experiences with the group, even her former lover Quill. Drax (Dave Bautista) , Mantis and Groot (Vin Diesel's voice) are largely the same, while Rocket (mostly Bryan Cranston's voice) finally gets the origin-tale suggested for him since the first GUARDIANS. And since not everyone in a seven-person ensemble can get equal treatment in a feature film, Rocket's arc is strongest, followed by that of Quill, while only moderate development is devoted to Mantis, Drax, Nebula, Groot and Gamora 2.0, who finds herself enmeshed once more with the Guardians' current mission.

So what makes this GUARDIANS more mythic than the others? From a superficial standpoint it might seem to be an interstellar SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, in which the members of a group seek to preserve the life of a fellow hero. In this case the hero is Rocket, injured in a battle with a new foe, a golden-skinned superman named Warlock (Will Poulter). Passing over the very involved complications, Rocket's fellow Guardians can only save his life by learning how and why he came to be as he is. 

The architect of Rocket's creation is none other than a being with an Earth-name, Herbert Wyndham (Chukwudi Iwuji), though he doesn't really seem to be an Earthman. Wyndham is patterned upon the comic-book character of The High Evolutionary, who was essentially a less demented version of Wells' "Doctor Moreau," but with much better technology. Where the comic-book character was rather benign-- transforming ordinary beasts into humanoids and creating new planets with a minimum of fuss-- Wyndham exceeds Moreau's conscienceless cruelty by Warp Factor Twelve. Over an unspecified number of years Wyndham has created numerous species, including the one from which Warlock hails. It was at Wyndham's bidding that Warlock attacked the Guardians, though Warlock himself is a naif who doesn't know right from wrong. Late in the film Wyndham claims to have taken the role of God because said deity was absent, and his credo comes down to, "Be thou perfect, or be thou dead."

For the most part Wyndham is indifferent to the fate of his experiments, but he wants to recover Rocket in order to harvest his brain, though this seems later to be an excuse. Wyndham declares war on the Guardians in order to recover his "property." Because of the evolutionary maniac, the heroes end up extending their rescue of Rocket to a reclamation of all the victims of the mad creator's designs. 

In addition to passing over a lot of the film's jokes, I'm also omitting much mention of Vol. 3's many moments of heartfelt sentiment at the fate of Wyndham's victims. Few MCU films have succeeded in wringing strong emotion over massive fatalities, which usually come off as commonplace audience-manipulation, as with the Sokovia Scandal of the AVENGERS continuity. 

Whereas the High Evolutionary of the comics is a benign "god," Wyndham wants to remake all living things into his image as an act of supreme egotism. But when Rocket shows an ability that Wyndham didn't anticipate, this is tantamount to the creation outdoing the creator. Discounting a few early pagan tales, few major religions will countenance such blasphemy, except maybe certain types of Buddhism, in which those with Buddha-knowledge transcend even the gods (though this may be more metaphor than anything). Gunn doesn't go so far as to condemn all father-gods as SOBs, though comparisons of  Wyndham to Ego would not be out of line. But he does include an amusing reference to classic Christian art. In an end-scene where a chastened Warlock rescues Quill from deep space, the iconography is patterned after Michelangelo's famous scene of Adam's creation, but with Warlock taking the place of God and Quill standing in for Adam. (In contrast to the film, the comic-book Warlock actually does use the first name "Adam.")

Wyndham is IMO the best supervillain in all of the MCU movies, precisely because, even though his mania has relevance to the human situation, Gunn is quite clear that his Big Bad really is morally deficient. Due to either conscious or subconscious Leftist sentiments, many MCU heroes have been weak in their moral priorities, while fiends like Thanos and Killmonger sometimes come off as almost sympathetic for their "burn it all down" philosophies. Gunn will probably never return to any form of the GUARDIANS franchise, but he provided audiences with one of the best superhero films of the twentieth-first century on his way out the door.