James Gunn Archives - MovieManifesto

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3: Journey to the Center of the Mirth

May 12, 2023May 11, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldaña in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3

James Gunn is best known for his eclectic needle drops, but he also has a visual signature: the Right Stuff-style shot of a troop of swaggering warriors striding forward in slow motion as a pop song blares on the soundtrack. He delivers that image twice in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, and while the second is more conventionally satisfying—the final prelude to some long-awaited interstellar ass-kicking—the first is more memorable. It’s noteworthy in part because the characters aren’t walking but floating, having just leapt from a spacecraft onto a bulbous planet (kindly shelve your astrophysical fact-checks), but what’s really striking is that each hero is outfitted in a bulky suit of a different bright color. There’s a simple beauty to the image, an eye-catching quality that’s rare for the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a cultural behemoth which, for all its commercial savvy and box-office supremacy, isn’t exactly a pioneer in terms of visual innovation. In this context, it’s oddly gratifying to be watching a superhero movie that actually cares what it looks like.

Let’s not pretend that Guardians 3 is some sort of aesthetic revelation. It’s still an MCU flick, which means it traffics heavily in green-screened locations, weightless special effects, and haphazard streams of light and fire. When an unknown gold-skinned invader (Will Poulter) zooms through the atmosphere and crashes into the chest of Rocket—the computer-generated mutant raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper, and again embodied on set by the director’s brother, Sean Gunn—the impact is as forceful as that of a coder clacking away at their keyboard. But the value of James Gunn—the canny maneuver that helps distinguish the Guardians pictures from their costumed brethren—is his knack for minimizing the genre’s inherent drawbacks (sloppy action, dull world-building) while emphasizing his own vibrant strengths (sharp dialogue, giddy imagination). Sure, Volume 3 is yet another chaotic adventure involving a desperate rescue mission, a precious MacGuffin, and a megalomaniacal villain. But mostly, it’s a family vacation comedy. Read More

The Suicide Squad: I Think I’m Gonna Thrill Myself

August 13, 2021August 13, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

John Cena in Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad

What makes a good superhero movie? Given the routine onslaught of costumed crusaders at the multiplex, the question seems pertinent. It also seems irrelevant, as the discourse surrounding the genre’s overall merits—a perpetual battle between triumphant, weirdly hostile fans (comics rule, deal with it!) and bitter, exasperated detractors (get a life, nerds!)—tends to feel preprogrammed, regardless of the particular installment at issue. But even if all superhero flicks are the same, some are less the same than others. And The Suicide Squad, the entertaining and ridiculous sequel/reboot/standalone/whatever from James Gunn, possesses an unusually keen understanding of how such films should work. Funny, colorful, and only occasionally tedious, it keys in on two fundamental truths: Superheroes are comedians, and superheroes are psychopaths.

It’s easy to miss that second one, as popular culture tends to connote masked vigilantism with virtuous qualities: responsibility, integrity, sacrifice. (They’re called superheroes, after all.) The job’s less savory aspects—the constant deception, the maniacal narcissism, the extralegal beatdowns—tend to be secondary considerations, or obstacles of self-doubt that the protagonist must hurdle en route to saving the world and getting the girl. One nice thing about The Suicide Squad is that it scarcely bothers to imbue its demented warriors with any righteousness or internal conflict. Instead, their motivations are squarely selfish; most of them are convicts, and they agree to participate in the obligatory searching and rescuing in exchange for years being shaved off their prison sentences. And of course, if any of them misbehaves or goes off mission, then their no-nonsense director, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, all business), will remotely detonate the explosive charge embedded in their skull. Read More

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Saving the World, One Wisecrack at a Time

May 12, 2017May 21, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"

In the middle of the hectic opening set piece of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, the green-skinned alien Gamora reproaches two of her squabbling colleagues: “Can we put the bickering on hold till after we survive the massive space battle?” It’s a sensible request that comes from the troupe’s most sensible member, but at the risk of mansplaining (human-splaining?), allow me to point out the flaw in Gamora’s logic. Whereas the typical superhero extravaganza centers on its high-octane action sequences, the first Guardians of the Galaxy made its mark by inverting the formula; it emphasized writing and character, pushing its passable pyrotechnics into the background. With this franchise, the bickering isn’t ornamental—it’s the main attraction.

That canny focal adjustment made the original Guardians a welcome antidote, a rejuvenating tonic that helped offset the fatigue brought on by the glut of superhero pictures constantly invading the American multiplex. The challenge now facing James Gunn, returning as both writer and director, is how to reconcile the bracing freshness of the first installment with the rigid demands of the cinematic universe. The standard operating procedure for comic-book sequels is simply to take what worked the first time around, then blow it up to even greater dimensions, but spunky originality isn’t so easily amenable to magnification. How do you bottle lightning twice? Read More

The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 6 & 5: Guardians of the Galaxy; The Imitation Game

February 11, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews, Top 10 Lists

The Manifesto is wrapping up its rankings of all of 2014’s movies with its look at the best movies of the year. If you missed previous installments, check out the following links:

Nos. 10 & 9: Locke; The LEGO Movie
Nos. 8 & 7: Nightcrawler; Boyhood

6. Guardians of the Galaxy (directed by James Gunn, 91% Rotten Tomatoes, 76 Metacritic). It is so, so hard to make a good comic-book movie, much less a distinctive one. The genre’s myriad requirements—the commercial imperative for outrageous spectacle, the numbing obligation of fan service, the daunting duty to connect with installments from other franchises—all conspire to make comic-book productions feel more like prepackaged, interchangeable morsels of formula than actual movies. But despite its cutting-edge special effects and dazzling space-opera aesthetic, and despite a cameo from the mega-villain of The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy never once feels like it rolled off the blockbuster assembly line. This is partly due to what it lacks: It doesn’t feature any historic action sequences, it doesn’t conjure a particularly menacing antagonist, and it doesn’t even tell an especially original story. What it has, however, is something far more important: a personality.