First, a firm and honest apology for the click-baity headline. Fact is, I truly feel there’s potential for a better GotG3.
Next, let me be perfectly clear: I did not have sexual relations with that Xandarian.
Oh wait, that’s a different thing. And a different person.
Anyhoo, I’m a big fan of Gunn’s. Super was a heck of a crazy, dark film, his and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was the first popcorn flick since Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (the first and only worthwhile Johnny Depp pirate movie) that truly touched the child in me.
Oops. Poor choice of words.
But the fact is, Gunn, who made some really funny, dark jokes about some really dark things, also made some vile and offensive jokes — so much so that, as much as I’ve railed against his firing on my Twitter account, I don’t honestly know if I’d give a James Gunn movie my money.
So with Disney apparently firm on not bringing Gunn back, let me be clear: Disney has every right to fire whomever they want for whatever reason they want, especially in consideration of the well-known “Disney image.” But Disney’s Bob Iger (and company) was duped. Fooled by a fringe group into firing someone over pressure that didn’t really exist. It is that reason alone that I’m against his ousting.
However, with Gunn out, the question becomes, What does Guardians of the Galaxy 3 look like without James Gunn? My belief: More like Guardians of Galaxy 1.
I loved Guardians 2. I did. I’ve watched it about seven times on Netflix. But here are some facts about GotG2…
The plot of the movie doesn’t really make sense. (This can be said for Marvel’s Civil War as well: Had Zemo just played that tape at the local P.C. Richard & Son at the mall, the movie would’ve been over in six minutes.) Let’s take a look: Guardians leader Peter Quill has a space dad who’s many millennia old and has been taking over worlds with his glowing blue space semen in order to, what, bequeath the universe to his living space seed (Quill) and…um…then die? So he killed Quill’s mom with cancer for reasons never explained, tried to have him kidnapped but lost him, even tho’ his adopted family, the Ravagers, seems to be known across — and even seem to reside within — numerous galaxies across the cosmos. Yeah, I don’t even know what’s going on anymore…and I’ve seen it eight times.
Another issue with GotG2 is the characters don’t really grow in any real way. Rocket, caretaker to Baby Groot, really had an opportunity for actual growth. But rather than focus on the parental needs of Baby Groot, Rocket is the same a-hole he was in the first movie for what seems like no reason at all. By the same token, one-time vengeance-driven family-man Drax is written with an almost entirely different personality, and he has no growth at all. And Yondu is virtually retconned into a “good daddy.”
And what really pissed me off is that, and I don’t care what universe this is, whether we’re in the future or the past, there will never be a “spray paint” that can repair complex electronics while also fixing steel plating. What the hell was that about?!
Ahem.
Finally, Guardians 1 beautifully worked in character moments that also pushed the story along, as they should. Guardians 2 on the other hand has a 15-minute “half-time show” where Quill and Gamora get serious, Drax and new friend Mantis talk about love and family, and Rocket and Blue Man Group reject Yondu have a moment — and all of it brings the actual story to a complete halt.
As much I love the movie, that’s just bad storytelling.
Guardians 1’s look, pacing, characters, and so forth were clearly all influenced by Gunn. But it’s my belief that screenwriter Nicole Perlman is the real genius of that film. She developed that team, created the backgrounds and the characters — albeit with flourishes by Gunn. But, based on Guardians 2, it seems the backbone of that film is Perlman.
Without the original screenwriter, what we got in GotG2 was a series of fun set pieces — the monsterish abilisk battle at the start of the film, the scene in the self-serving Sovereigns’ palace, the arcade space battle, the Rocket/Ravagers woods scene, the Rocket/Yondu escape scene. In spite of all of these sequences being great fun, I have to admit several of them barely made sense.
For example, Rocket’s reasoning for stealing some batteries, subsequent to the opening sequence, and honest-t0-a-fault Drax not saying something about it are both hang-ups of mine. Following the theft, battery-owners The Sovereign come after the team in a space battle. It had me wondering, Where was adult-in-the-room Gamora? Gamora who should have grabbed the batteries, gotten on the horn to the Sovereign leader, and apologized or even just shot the darn things back into space to give them back. Sure, the Sovereign folks would’ve said,“Eff you, a-holes — too late.” But as it stands, to make it work, at least three characters had to act out of character…and the purported bad guys, the Sovereigns, were actually in the right for being wronged by Rocket and the Guardians.
The inciting incident of the film portrays the Guardians as bad guys, or at least in the wrong. These characters weren’t needlessly vile in the first film, they were selfish. And that’s a big difference in concept, a concept which changed drastically in this second film.
When we look at the MCU as a whole, there’s yet another reason for Guardians 3 to have an advantage with a new director: With MCU fans waiting for the sequel to this year’s Infinity War movie, those who’ve seen it are well aware of the universe-altering capabilities of the movie’s featured weapon, the Infinity Gauntlet. It’s possible that a post-Infinity War 2 universe could have an entirely different look thanks to the power of said gauntlet, so Gunn’s style being absent, or altered, could even be an actual plot point for the MCU as a whole.
In sum, the resolution I see is this: Bring back Perlman to write GotG3; have her meet with Bautista, who’s threatened to leave, and the other actors to see what they’d like to see happen next with their characters; finally, get a director with his own visual style — but, and this is key, be sure this director knows how to weave a tight story with the characters we’ve come to know. And, in the end, the firing of Gunn will actually further both the characters and the MCU itself in a positive and interesting direction, which can also be enough win back the love of an angry fandom.
Keith is an editor who began his career interning at Marvel, DC (& Vertigo), and even worked at Malibu Comics and Wizard magazine’s spin-off Toyfare. Today, he’s an editor and the Creator & Writer of a series of adventure comics — The Reality…a world that promises to up-end everything you expect from the tropes of superheroes, monsters, sword and sorcery, and more. Check his books out at: TheRealitycomics.com.