Hello ladies and gentlemen, the boy is back after a loss that crushed my soul. I’m sure you’re expecting a breakdown blog of sorts and I’m gonna be honest, you’re not getting it. Game 7 ruined me and low key ruined sports until football season starts back up, but hey that’s show biz. I got a few in the chamber mother fucking the team that won’t see the light of day but I don’t want to talk about them, too depressing.

Instead, I come here today to talk about another one of my passions, the ever-dying MCU. If you read my blog on Ant Man 3 you know that once upon a time I lived for this stuff. I still do, but I feel like Pasq during the dark days of the Wilpon era where I’m watching from afar as a jaded once passionate fan.

Let’s be honest, Phase 4 hasn’t exactly been the greatest. There has been a ton of OK, some dog shit, and excellence was few and far between. The movies (and shows for that matter) have declined in quality, we’ve seen better CGI in PS2 games, and then no one really cares about or understands the over arching story they’re trying to go for. It’s become a mess with too many cooks in the kitchen, but that’s what happens when you make money in Hollywood. However, with all that slop there was one shining light to look forward to, and man did it pay off.

As I’m sure you’re aware if you’re reading this, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 was released this past week. And while it’s not the saving grace the MCU needed, it was certainly a breath of fresh air compared to everything we’ve seen in recent times. You’re a fool if you expected anything less here. I’ve had this release circled on the calendar for some time now fully knowing I was going to get a great movie and James Gunn & co stuck the landing. I took my queen to see it on Saturday night and as we were leaving the theater she had to tell me to calm down because I was so giddy with excitement. I haven’t left a Marvel Movie feeling like that probably since End Game, Spider-Man was cool and everything especially because I truly didn’t think the cameos were going to happen (at least the big 4), but it felt more fan servicey than anything else, it wasn’t a movie movie. Guardians on the other hand, while still being an MCU movie, that was a movie. Despite getting mixed reviews from some of my close confidants, some saying its over-hyped and this and that, I loved what I saw and might even see it again, let’s dive into it.

So out of the gate, this movie explores the back story of Rocket, and man did it go deep. We knew he definitely suffered from some sort of trauma given his drunken breakdown in the first movie but man I had no idea it was going to be like this. That story was straight-up heartbreaking, so bad to the point where I had a nightmare last night about animal experimentation and stuff. We met Layla, Teefs, and Floor in the lab and I instantly fell in love with all of them (minus floor, while adorable she freaked me out with her spider-like appearance). The High Evolutionary was one sick son of a bitch. You know when you watch wrestling and there’s the heel that’s just the absolute worst you hate him, like really hate him hate him? That’s him, think Triple H or for you new school folks MJF from AEW. This dude was evil, straight up. Treating his staff like shit, treating his creations like shit, he just was so focused on being god and a bad one at that.

While on the topic of High Evolutionary, Earth 2 or whatever it was called was pretty cool to see. I liked the way everything looked, the comparison between suburbia here and there was awesome, I felt like I was right in Levittown for you Long Guyland folks. The creatures were grotesque, but what did you expect for human-animal hybrids, I just wish we got like subtitles or something to let us know what the bat lady was saying to her husband because his confusion about the whole situation was hilarious.

Pete Quill came out of the gate a depressed drunk and that was cool knowing what the guy is going through. Chris Pratt did a great job yet again as Star-Lord. I thought the whole thing between him and Gamora was very well done and I’m glad they didn’t retcon anything to make things more difficult lore-wise. It was also cool to see Gamora and Nebula have the sister dynamic in a more sinister way so to speak. Like based off the timeline here, Gamora is fresh off being a soldier of Thanos and while Nebula always had a mean streak to her, she knows what’s going on and is sensitive to the situation. Nebula was also terrific here, towards the end when everything works out when she cried it was a big time oh wow moment for me something I didn’t see coming at all. I guess after the snap (blip is a dumb name) all the work her and Rocket did really built a great friendship and we learned that robots can indeed have feelings.

I can sit here and say how great all the Guardians were but you already know they weren’t going to be messing around. I loved Mantis and Drax’s dynamic, especially after watching the Christmas Special. Bautista is the man, I loved him in WWE and I love him as an actor in a lot of his work. Groot was Groot.

I know this might be an unpopular opinion based on everything I’ve read and heard, but I really liked Adam Warlock. If we’re in the trust tree, I don’t know all that much about him. I know he’s strong as hell and plays a very large role in the cosmic aspect of the Marvel Universe, but that’s about it. People were all bent out of shape cause he was hyped up after GOTG 2, but personally I enjoyed the coming into his own character arch. He was after all, just a baby as the gold lady would never fail to remind us. The only thing I would’ve maybe liked to see that didn’t happen was him help out the Guardians a bit more, but I suppose him coming to the rescue towards the end was crucial to the story. It seems like he’s going to be a lot more involved in anything Guardians we get going forward, and I have to imagine he’s going to be very important come Secret War/Kang Dynasty/whatever the hell is the next big one.

But while on that, I don’t necessarily know if I want to have anything really Guardians moving forward. You gotta imagine with his new title over at WBD with the DCU, Gunn isn’t going to be directly involved with a competitor. To me, James Gunn is one of the mass appeals of the Guardians, he built these guys from the ground up to become a house hold name and being a fan of his other films this group very much has his “stink” for lack of a better word all of them. I know they said, and spoiler hopefully if you’re reading this you’ve seen it, Star Lord will be returning as well as more than likely some new Guardian action with rocket at the helm, but I truly don’t know how I feel about it. I trust Kevin Feige, but I don’t think we’ll get the same magic we had regardless of how much of a good dog Cosmo is.

My one major complaint with this movie is extremely nit picky and if you know me well enough you won’t be surprised at all. The sound track. Awesome Mix Volume 3? More like shoe horned mediocre mix volume 1. Now sure, there were some solid musical cues that I loved, like No Sleep Til Brooklyn and the Crazy on You Adam Warlock entrance, but I truly felt as if the music came into the movie because it’s what the Guardians are kind of known for at this point. And that goes double for all Marvel movies, not everything needs a fun catchy soundtrack, looking at you Captain Marvel. Also while on the topic of music, how the fuck do the Guardians know who Florence and the Machine are? I loved that outro scene I thought it was great and was another one of the scenes where it fit the bill really well. But I always thought the whole throwback soundtrack thing was because Quill left Earth when he did and only knows pop culture up until that point hence all the throw back tunes in the previous movies and countless Kevin Bacon jokes (which still land BTW). The song came out in 2009 so unless Knowhere has Spotify now, I call bullshit on this one. Nitpicky I know I’m sorry but I wanted to get it off my chest.

One other complaint I had with the movie was that I was promised an incredible one shot action sequence. It was certainly there, but when I think one-shots, I think Birdman (or the unexpected virtue of ignorance), I think 1947, I think that one episode of The Bear. Listen not to take anything away from the great work James Gunn did, but Marvel Movies are 80% computer generated ya know, it’s like steroids in baseball. Always awesome to watch, but not the natural thing. And that’s not to say the action sequences in this movie weren’t sick, they definitely were, that just let me down cause one shots are awesome.

All in all, like I said this movie made me feel some type of way. I nearly cried during the sad Rocket backstory parts, I was laughing through all the Guardians hijinks, and I was jacked up during the action sequences. The title of the blog says it all, and I’m gonna be honest I think this does more harm than good to the MCU. Because this showed us Feige and co can still make fantastic movies when they want to but instead feed us slop. My expectations are no where near as high for the upcoming Marvels movie (not because of Brie Larson, I actually really like her) but I will be honest I have high hopes for the upcoming Secret Wars show. We’ll see what happens, to my understanding the big picture is starting to take hold and things will hopefully start making sense soon but I also don’t know.

Whatever, I’ll continue to support them until I really can’t anymore which I was almost at. I really do think the quality in future projects will be going up now that Bobby Iger is back in the picture and not Money Bags Chapek who thinks quantity over quality is the right call. To bring us home I leave you with the song I think of most whenever I think of the Guardians of the Galaxy sung by the starman himself.