GOTG Vol. 3 (Guardians) Out Of Theatre -Spoiler Free Review

Here it is!! Our fresh-out-of-the-theatre thoughts on Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 ! 

TOTALLY SPOILER FREE!

Want to have your say on the show?

Leave us a voice note HERE with your comments or questions, and we'll respond ON AIR on a future episode!   

And be sure to drop us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser, or Stitcher.

And if you want to be friends, check us out on X.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, it's Frank McGuire, and I'm fresh out of the theater from Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and I'm gonna give you my out-of-theater thoughts and a spoiler-free review. So let's jump into it. So the first thing I want to say before I touch, and I will get into more detail about this, but rest assured, there's nothing woke about Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And like I said, I'll go into more detail, but there's no political proselytizing, no social proselytizing, and it's just entertaining, man. And honestly, I feel like the magic of the MCU is back. The magic of Marvel is back in this movie. For such a long time, I have lost my passion, my enthusiasm for the MCU due to what we experienced in phase four or the projects that we experienced in phase four. And honestly, I can tell you that this movie has reinvigorated my passion and my excitement for Marvel. So I I cannot recommend you go see this movie more. It is fantastic. It has everything that you're looking for in a Guardians of the Galaxy film. This is true to form James Gunn. It is everything you'd expect from Gunn. It is funny, it's emotional, the action scenes are fantastic, and the character development is so on point. In fact, I'd go as far to say that the character development is on the level of the Marvel films that were in phase one to phase three. It is just so good and so generous and rewarding and dimensional and nuanced. And oh man, I just can't say enough good things about this film. I had a great time. When you go in to see this movie, be prepared to ride an emotional roller coaster. Okay. You're going to be on the edge of your seat in awe of some of these scenes, especially the action sequences. They're fantastic. You are probably going to cry. So bring some tissues because the emotional, the emotional beats of this film are what's at the heart of it. It's what drives it. It's it's it's obviously we've seen in the trailers that it's such a core element to Rocket Story. And the way that they do Rocket Story is just so beautiful, and it's ethereal, and it's really gonna hit you everywhere. It's just it's it's so powerful. You're gonna feel it, you're gonna feel it when you get home. That's how powerful the story is. It's just it's so so great. Well, while we're talking about emotion, let's talk about the the villain, um, the high evolutionary Chuck Woody A Wuji, who you might know from uh Peacemaker. And my god, dude, his performance is incredible. So much uh you know, dimension and so much layer to his performance, but it doesn't, you know, one thing that becomes you know very evident and very clear is that this guy is just just a bad guy. There's no nuance to this character like Athanos or even Kang to some degree. There's no nuance to this guy. This guy is basically Joseph Mengela. Um, you know, it's that level of character, but there's a part, you know, there's a part in the movie, there's a connection between him and one of the other characters um that really does explore a little bit of the nuance, a little bit of of the character, the villains in her struggle, um, that I found very interesting and compelling. So try and keep an eye out for that. That was very interesting. It's definitely very subtle, but if you're looking for it, I'm sure you'll find it. Uh, but his dude, his performance was like every time he was on screen, he just grabbed your attention. It didn't matter who was in the scene with him. He was just electric the entire movie. Um, you couldn't have asked for a better performance from this guy. He was just fantastic. Um, the rest of the cast, by the way, performances, we got to talk about that performance-wise, this movie, everybody brought their A game. It almost felt like they were doing it for each other. Like because this is their last movie together, like they were almost there to just knock it out of the park together as a family. And it it was just phenomenal. Everybody was amazing. You saw you saw Chris Pratt go to places with Star Lord with Peter Quill emotionally that we've never seen him go before. Um, well, it it was a lot more intense than what we got to see uh, you know, in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 when uh Yondu died, his reaction to that, or any of his other reactions, it was a lot more intense. Uh, but it was so so incredible. And uh Karen Gillen, she's just insanely good. Insanely good. She has just so many layers to who she is and and the characters that she gets to play and how she plays them. Um, she was great. Bradley Cooper was great. Uh Dave Patista was definitely a standout as Drax, the destroyer. Uh, we got to see some new sides of him. And uh there's a you know, there's an ending for him in the movie that I just I absolutely loved. Um, I can't say enough about that. I really love that ending for him. And one thing I'll definitely say about this movie, oh, you know what? I also got to talk about Zoe Saldana. Um, she was amazing. You know, she's playing this different Gomorrah than the Gomorra before, but the Gomorra that we got to see in Endgame, but she really just added um so much texture to it that we didn't get to see in Endgame. So I was very excited to see that. Then when you factor in, um, well, let's talk about the characters in general, the character development, the character um exploration in this film. So, one of the things I love about this movie is that every character gets an incredibly satisfying ending. They all get their spotlight moment throughout the story, they all get their moment to shine. One of the things that we've seen in the MCU over you know, phase four and uh maybe a couple times in phase three is that we've seen other characters be cut down in a scene to elevate other characters, uh, especially if it's uh there's a power dynamic between the two characters. Well, not here. James Gunn equally respected all of his characters, all of his characters got love, they got respect, um, they got the you know the full breadth of exploration. You know, nobody got shortchanged on this. James Gunn did all of his characters justice. And I love that about this movie. I think that's one of the things that I love most about it is that all the characters got the attention that they deserved, and I think that the fans wanted to see. One of the best scenes in the movie is a fight sequence that I think was wholly inspired by James Gunn playing the Guardians of the Galaxy video game, because it was one of those co-op uh collaboration type style battles where everybody's just sort of working together, and it was fucking phenomenal. The use of space, the the inventiveness, the creativity in the movements, in the fighting styles, and the weaponry. It was just awesome, and it's definitely one of my favorite scenes in MCU history. And you know what? Now that I think about it, that's not the only good action sequence. There's actually quite a few great action sequences. Um, there's a lot of weird stuff in this movie, but it was kind of fun, weird. Uh, it was almost like an homage to sci-fi, uh, almost an homage to just the science fiction genre in general. And it was it was interesting, it was really funky. Uh, some of the production design on this movie is just fucking mind-blowing. Uh, the production design on this movie is definitely on par with something like Shang-Chi, or uh, what was one of the other uh big ones for production design? I'd say probably Doctor Strange, the multiverse of madness. The production design on this film is just so good. Um, there's so many different settings, and every setting that you go into, your eyes are just darting around. There's so many interesting supporting characters, funny supporting characters. The supporting characters really added uh quite a lot to the story, quite a lot to the experience for the for the audience. Now, the Guardians movies are typically known for being funny, they're known as comedies. And I gotta say, this was definitely a funny movie. There was a lot of funny moments, uh, very ha ha, laugh out load type of moments. There was a couple of clever jokes here and there, more witticisms, but it was a funny movie. It was definitely a funny movie. And this movie, the comedy is very organic, it's driven by the characters. You know, a lot of it doesn't feel so out of left field as some other MCU movies, and no humor is undercutting any uh emotional moments or any sort of intense moments. The comedy sits by itself and it's sort of plotted throughout the movie in the places where it should be. And Rocket's story isn't the only source of the emotional moments in this movie. There's actually quite a few, and they're all great. Um, they're all very intense, they're all very uh they resonate with you um definitely, and uh they're all yeah, they're all great. And one of the most consistent themes throughout the Guardians films has been this idea of found family, and they definitely explore that. They explore friendship, they explore found family. And if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you know that found family is a very big deal to me because I don't really have the type of relationship I'd like to have with my biological family. So I have a found family, it's my friends, so this really resonates deeply with me, and I think that's one of the reasons I'm such a fan of the Guardians of the Galaxy, is because of how tight they are and how much love that they have for each other and the support that they provide each other, even though that you know they're yelling at each other quite a bit in this movie, actually. But no matter what takes place between them, they always have they're always there for each other. There's always that love and support. And there's an interesting uh comment by one of the main characters about the entire group um that I found interesting, uh, making a comparison against one of the other characters. Um, and yeah, you have to keep an eye out for that. I'm not gonna spoil it, but I found that interesting as well. Uh, the special effects, uh, that's the last thing I think I'm gonna talk about. Oh, I need to kind of give some ideas as to what I didn't like about the movie. There's only like really a few things. The special effects were great, uh, they were eye-popping. Like we're talking edgier seat, mind-blown, just so uh meticulously crafted, and they looked amazing. Every scene looked fantastic. Um, I couldn't get enough. It was just a visually stunning film. It had uh tons of color, uh, tons of texture. Like I said, the production design was insane. Everything from uh, well, you had multiple multitudes of sets on this. There's also um uh there's some new Ravagers you get to meet uh where there's some visual effects that are done with them, and I thought that was pretty cool. So yeah, it's definitely listen. This is one of the MCU movies that I don't think is gonna disappoint anybody in the special effects realm. I hope not, because I thought it was I thought it was quite great. Now, what didn't I like about the movie? Well, um one thing I will say is that uh I felt like the choices for Adam Warlock uh were a little left to be desired. There's you know, I wasn't exactly uh stoked in on his depiction or where he fit into the story or the role that he played in the story or the amount uh that he was involved in the story uh or his degree of involvement. However, I kind of see why they had to go in that direction. Um, I've been thinking about it from the perspective of you know, if I was writing this movie, what would I have done with him, especially with everything else kind of going on around him and all the other choices I had to make? So I kind of see where James Gunn was coming from with that. And actually, that's another great thing about this movie was the pacing. The pacing was great. Uh, nothing really felt disjointed. It was uh definitely a cohesive storyline, and the pacing was fairly breakneck. There's a ticking clock element to this story, so the pacing moves uh very much in the same way that Multiverse of Madness did, where it's just they have an objective, they need to achieve the objective, and there's a lot of things that they sort of need to do as they get to this objective. And it was, you know, it was it was entertaining, like you're on the edge of your seat the entire movie, so you can't really complain. Um, you know, I thought at some point I thought I would have made a couple of different decisions as far as the pacing goes, but honestly, I think I'm nitpicking at this point. Um, overall, listen, you know, I've seen a lot of people saying that this was the best Marvel film since Endgame. I don't necessarily feel that way. I think it was the best Marvel film since Infinity War because I really wasn't an Endgame fan. Well, no, I like I like Endgame, but I think Infinity War is a better film than Endgame. I think Endgame is uh a ton of fan service. Uh, and honestly, the time, the time travel stuff was a little, you know, was a little taxing for me. Um, because it's not, I don't know. I when you when you're doing two time travel stories, I need to be able to make sense of it, and I couldn't really make sense of it. Uh, not that I could make sense of any other time travel movies, but I think that there's other time travel movies I have been able to make much more sense of than Endgame. So that was sort of a challenge for me. But, you know, I again, I think that this is definitely for me in the top five comic book movies of all time. I recommend everybody go see it uh and pay attention to the last scene. I really want to hear everybody's thoughts about the last scene because I felt like the last scene was almost um almost a depiction of how James Gunn felt the fan base would feel about this movie. That's I don't know, maybe that's just me projecting, but I sort of felt that way about this last scene, and uh I found it I found it so rewarding. And it's ironic that James Gunn was exploring the high evolutionary in this movie, and like I said, the high evolutionary is is is very much this you know, bioengineer, Joseph Mengala type character. Um, again, brilliantly played. And one of the things that I took away from that was it's almost as if James Gunn himself was um an engineer, you know, the bioengineer, the the high evolutionary, his goal is to make everything better. He wants to make everything better, he wants to, he wants to make everything perfect. And ironically, I feel like James Gunn has done that with the MCU in a sense of where it is right now in this, you know, in this vacuum of time. You know, we don't know what's going to happen with the Marvels, but I really feel like James Gunn has breathed new life back into this franchise, back into the MCU, back into Marvel Studios with this movie. And I really hope he gets recognized for it because it's just a fucking phenomenal film. And I'm sorry I didn't have enough, I don't have more negative things to say about it. I just don't. I really enjoyed it. And, you know, I don't know if you guys remember, but there was this article that James Gunn did. I think it was in Screen Man or ComicBook.com, I can't remember. But he was talking about work ethic in the entertainment business and how he sort of despises that there's these writers or these directors that show up, you know, almost unprepared for the job. They don't know where to put the camera, you know, they show up with half-written scripts, etc. etc. I don't think James Gunn did this. Granted, he had a lot of time on his side because, you know, during his hiatus from the film, he was, you know, he was writing it when he got canceled. And, you know, he's had a lot of time with the script. So that might have a lot to do with it. It's just he's had a lot more time to turn this project around. But it it's it's it's awesome. It is so good. And I hope everybody goes sees it. I hope everybody loves it as much as I did. If you don't, so be it. Well, I think I'll end things here and uh sign off. So thank you so much for joining me for this out-of-theater reaction. And uh, you know, let us know what you guys think about the movie. You want to hear from you guys, uh, let us know on Instagram or Twitter or any of our social media spots. Just drop us a note. We'd love to hear what you're thinking about uh Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three to be continued. I'm Frank McGuire.