"Once more with feeling." That's the tagline on the poster above. You can imagine why some marketing brain picked it - it feels like an idiom somehow even though it isn't one, it seems like it implies meaning but it has none, and it begs you to open the nostalgia center of your brain to that thing you liked before. With feeling seems like it's good, right? Everyone loves that. I, too, think it's a good tag line for this movie, but for a totally different reason. Once more (yet again) we are seeing the same exact thing; and this time, with feeling! Feeling meaning "shallow pathos," in massive, gushing amounts.
Every single scene begging you to be sad, or celebratory (mostly sad actually), to Feel; just please, never ever think. And don't even understand why you're feeling, for that matter: Feel because the music tells you to and it just seems like now is the time. If you stop to think, you'll realize that none of these characters will ever die, and none will ever go away, and all stakes are fabricated. Of course it's like that in all superhero movies to some degree but it feels more obvious when it's the third iteration of the exact same film. It is just Jeb Bush asking you to Please Clap, but for Movie Sadness. Ultimately, that is the heart of my problem with this movie, I think; it's just the same thing yet again, pasted over with an attempt to draw out emotions in a very shallow, superficial way.
Even the music thing that Guardians does, which seemed like a fun little twist in the first one, feels really played out by number three. I just didn't really enjoy it anymore. Maybe the songs just weren't a great fit? Or maybe we grew into an era where I actually was alive for the music itself so I can realize that we're really just getting the Pop Radio version of what music is like; was it always an ethos of "we will play Radiohead, but only Creep" (this is a metaphor) but I simply didn't recognize it in the earlier era? Maybe! At any rate it no longer feels like a fun twist, but like the thing you have to do because that's what these movies do.
To be honest, I can see why many people think this is one of the Best Ones of the modern era of Marvel movies - they actually like the shallow evocation of fake sadness, and they like the nostalgia and remembrance that they liked the other movies, and they like the non-stop Quippy feeling. The DCEU would be a lot more successful if they took this approach, for instance, instead of their totally different (and possibly even worse) approach of pure raw spectacle for almost every movie. It is almost exactly what Shazam tried, and people did indeed like it! But as this movie reminds me, it is certainly not for me. The Guardians characters are all supposed to be a bit Out There but this is just asking them to be too much more than they are. For me, at least, it just doesn't work (not without the jokes actually being funny, anyway).
Score: 3/10
IMDb: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
PS: "lol" at the idea that I was supposed to watch every single one of Marvel's TV shows and nonsense like "Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" (!) in order to see all the character development and threads that lead us here. One thing they got right about the Infinity War Saga in the MCU, and have gotten wrong in their greed since, is that they put everything important in the tentpole films. Now they put out all these secondary and tertiary offerings and want you to watch those, too. No thanks!
PPS: One particular thought I have about the musical choices is that the use of the Beastie Boys just makes me sad in contexts like this, now. Their music used to be funny and cool, and it's just sad seeing it used for extremely bland corporate movies like this one. The biggest offense will, however, forever be Star Trek: Beyond in the garbage Abrams version of that series. The use of Sabotage in that movie in such a stupid, ham-fisted way has forever ruined the song for me. I can no longer dissociate it from the idea of Star Trek being reduced to blockbuster spectacle in the way it is in that particular, awful scene, and the kind of "check out how cool I am" pandering that JJ has mastered (in a bad way).
