Checking In On The State Of Marvel: 'Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3'
#225: "Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3," "Barry," "Layer Cake," "The Spectacular Now"
Edition 225:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: My sporadic check-in on Marvel and how my tastes continue to differ from mass blockbuster entertainment. Then three recommendations — one show, two movies — that do hit on everything I love in filmed storytelling. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” king weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos has a new, trippy movie coming later this year.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
When I see the cascade of positive reviews for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, I can’t help but think about the proverbial frog in boiling water.
Marvel fans who have now invested in all 30+ movies may not realize the degree to which we’ve gone from a guy in Malibu who is really rich to band of alien bandits who need to rescue the gorbildy gook thingy from some purple-clad villain creating humanoid kangaroos in his rocket ship. (You think I’m being facetious until you realize the Guardians headquarters spaceship thing is quite literally a disembodied floating celestial head…)
At this point the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gone way WAY beyond anything grounded in reality. Fans of the comic books and those victims of Stockholm Syndrome who have sat through every movie may not be flustered by sticker shock, but considering the MCU is the closest thing to monocultural entertainment currently on our puny little planet, it’s pretty wild the degree to which these movies are no longer trying to appeal to Joe Schmo.
This is a line I’ve used several times before, but in order to understand the inside jokes and shared weight of experience, I feel like I needed a PhD in Marvelology.
The bridge that director James Gunn offers to lay audience members like myself is supposed to be humor. In fact, Gunn is credited as the architect behind the MCU’s quip-heavy style. He holds nothing sacred, and is willing to make fun of everything. But for someone on the fence about buying in, it makes you wonder whether you should be looking at all this objectively ridiculous artifice and thinking it’s ridiculous. Before I have a chance to laugh at it, it laughs at itself, but then how is it supposed to convince me that the events of the plot are also the most important thing in the world?
Guardians 3 goes back and forth over this line. Oftentimes the characters pause in the middle of a very important, world-saving task and stand still for a minute or two trading funny yet meaningless banter only to unceremoniously resume the action after.
Despite the obvious stakes (save the world!), as with many Marvel movies there is nothing really on the line here. None of the ensemble characters die, even after being in danger for essentially the entire two-and-a-half hour runtime. And even though defeating the villain in the end is a given, it was disappointing to see yet another climax be settled in a CGI punchfest. And even after the credits roll and the band has gone their separate ways, the Disney suits are sure to reassure audiences that Chris Pratt will return as Starlord.
I’m told this is the best of Marvel’s “phase four,” a collection of multiversal stories that are causing even the most enthusiastic MCU fans to feel the heat on their frog legs. Apparently there was more practical locations and elements used in this movie, which feels to me a bit like damning with faint praise. The movie is still painted in drab grays and muted browns, and outside of a few impressive feats of digital fight choreography (none of which was real), there isn’t a lot to brag about visually.
Music has always been a big part of the Guardians series, and yes, of course it’s going to look cool if your heroes slow-motion walk to The Beastie Boys “No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn.” But as with much of the Marvel project, it’s just painfully obvious and on-the-nose, evidenced by the fact that this same exact song was needle-dropped in Super Mario Bros. just three weeks ago. More broadly, it feels cheap to continuously use popular songs as a short cut to an emotional beat (like, this song makes me sad so now I’m sad).
I could almost sympathize with how difficult it is to produce good storytelling within the Marvel system, considering you have to please $1 billion worth of audience each time out, but Gunn’s reputation is as a subversive disruptor.
In the context of this movie, that’s hilarious. The thrust of the plot is saving innocent animals from experimentation — a bold stance if I’ve ever heard one — and as far as I can tell the superpower of one of the Guardians is literally just being a mental health counselor? I’m not sure any of this counts toward challenging the cultural status quo.
Needless to say, my check-in on the state of the MCU didn’t go well. The chasm between what these movies have become and anything resembling what could be considered a “film” (not to be too pretentious), has become so large that I’m not sure either side can hear the other screaming across the void.
Consider this newsletter my own personal scream. I don’t know how you could watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and then something from my Cinephile Bucket List, for example, and not lose all taste for the former. Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait.
Something New
Barry (Max): Just checking in on the TV front to solidify what I’ve said here a couple times before — “Barry” is my favorite TV show of all time. In the midst of its final season, the show continuously finds surprising new angles and twists to both keep a viewer on his/her toes and also guide our characters toward an ultimate climax.
I’ve been less than thrilled with how “Succession” is wrapping up ever since the big plot twist early in its final season, and we all know how “Game of Thrones” ended, so to see a prestige HBO show wrap up this well is a testament to star Bill Hader, who also directed every episode of this season. The filmmaking has been top notch, the acting is elite, and the tone balancing humor, absurdity, and this season much more gravity and inner demons, all in a coherent way, is almost a miracle. Can’t recommend this show any more highly.
Something Old
Layer Cake (2005): I’ve spent a lot of newsletter time this year praising Guy Ritchie, especially those cockney gangster movies he directed. What I didn’t realize until this week was that his producing partner on his early movies, his right hand man, eventually split off to direct his own movies. This guy, Matthew Vaughn, has gone on to have a heck of a filmmaking career — Kick-Ass, X-Men First Class and three Kingsmen movies.
But his first movie is pure Ritchie-core (or maybe it should now be called Ritchie/Vaughn-core). It’s a gritty south London crime movie with several factions of colorful criminals all backstabbing each other and hurling colorful insults in heavily accented English. Daniel Craig stars in the movie that undeniably got him the James Bond role, as a smarmy drug operator caught up in a web of underworld dealings. Also popping up in the background is a very young Tom Hardy! If you like these kinds of movies, this one is as good as anything I’ve praised Ritchie for in the past, so it’s definitely worth your time.
Something to Stream
The Spectacular Now (Max): Miles Teller stars as a high school senior who’s so self-confident that at first the movie might as well be sci-fi. Of course, he gets brought back down to earth with a breakup, a neglectful dad and a drinking problem. But shot through the gauzy filter of youth, the movie kind of floats along with a sweet innocence that makes the happy moments happier and the sad moments more heart-wrenching. This is a great, modern version of a classic coming-of-age, life-at-a-crossroads story.
It’s also notable for how insanely successful each member of the cast would go on to be. Teller is now the star of Top Gun: Maverick, the most important movie of last year. His love interest Shailene Woodley would go on to star in the Divergent movies, “Big Little Lies” and of course marry QB Aaron Rodgers. The ex-girlfriend is Brie Larson, now a Marvel superhero. The boss is Bob Odenkirk, eventually Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” The best friend is Kaitlyn Dever, now one of our best young movie stars. The dad is Kyle Chandler, post “Friday Night Lights,” and the mom is Jennifer Jason Leigh, pre The Hateful Eight.
What a cast!
Trailer Watch: Dune: Poor Things
There’s an anecdote floating around out there that Yorgos Lanthimos writes his scripts first in his native Greek and then Google translates them. I have no idea if that’s true, but it feels true, because in all of his movies the dialogue and writing doesn’t seem quite right. The effect perfectly amplifies the weirdness of his premises — think The Lobster or The Killing of the Sacred Deer.
He hasn’t made a feature since 2018’s The Favourite, which launched him into the mainstream Academy Awards conversation, and I’d be surprised if his new movie isn’t at least a contender this year. Especially considering this strong cast list: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Ramy Youssef, and then a half dozen demented-looking guys who pop up in all Lanthimos movies.
This teaser doesn’t show much, but I’m pumped to watch it this fall.