Fun banter, great characters but overlong...
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 (12A), (150 mins), Cineworld Cinemas.
There are times when you feel that it is never going to end – and when it does actually end, the new Guardians Of The Galaxy film allows itself multiple endings before starting up again during the credits.
Far longer than either of its two predecessors, there is huge self-indulgence to the entire project.
But there is also imaginative brilliance, plus a remarkable creation of a world which doesn’t make any particular sense but which is often stunningly realised and delivered with an awful lot of wit and energy.
The detail with which this world is delivered is stunning, though quite why it’s such a down-at-heel retro world is difficult to understand.
It’s all a bit shabby – maybe appropriately given the bunch of misfits who have come together to be the guardians of our galaxy.
And it’s the interplay between them that is the great strength of the film.
There’s a tree trunk that barely speaks, a very sweet mantis, a thuggy rather stupid oaf with a heart of gold when it comes to the children, plus Chris Pratt’s Quill pining for Gamora (Zoe Saldana) who’s dead apparently – except that she is very much there, one of the film’s many oddities. As odd as the fact that it all revolves around an apparently dying raccoon who is meanwhile having an alternative existence with lots of other animals… even while he seemingly breathes hislastontheoperatingtable.it all kicks off when a mysterious golden manboy Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) swoops in to try to kidnap our raccoon, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper). In his bungled attempt he mortally wounds Rocket, but not in any way that can be treated medically. No, some kind of switch has been implanted in him – and the film becomes a mission to flick it without actually killing him.
There is precious little sense of peril as our guardians head off in various combos to sort things out. There is very little sense of anything much actually being at stake. It’s hardly edge of the seat stuff, but it is great to look at. And it is the banter that makes it. Drax (Dave Bautista) is a great character, unwittingly witty and appealing; Mantis (Pom Klementieff ) is also a lovely part of the mix. Presumably someone somewhere understands what’s going on with Nebula (Karen Gillan). But really it’s about the roguish, lovably earthling Quill and his joshing with the strangely-coloured is-she-dead-or-alive Gamora. They once had something going.
Little remains of it now, though it is fun to watch their sparring.
How anyone came up with a plot as labyrinthine as this one is a marvel. Indeed, a Marvel.
How on earth did it then get turned into a film?. But it romps along merrily – insofar as anything two and a half hours long can romp – a fabulously indulgent piece of filmmaking which would certainly have offered more had it been less. And yep, there’s clearly going to be even more after this. Some of the guardians seem to go their separate ways at the end, but that little coda in the credits suggests it’s all going to be rejigged and reconfigured for another outing. And that will probably be fun too.