For James Gunn, Beauty Comes from Brokenness

[Spoilers ahead for all three Guardians of the Galaxy movies]

It’s been odd seeing reviews of Guardians of the Galaxy trying to tie to the larger MCU. I suppose you always have to acknowledge the Marvel of it all, but writer-directors James Gunn has been an outlier among Marvel directors and the Guardians of the Galaxy have been outliers among Marvel characters. They’re not really superheroes even though they do heroic things. Instead, they’re sci-fi stories about deeply broken individuals who come together to save a universe that has caused them so much pain. To put it another way, the Avengers are co-workers (“He’s a friend from work!” as Thor shouts about Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok); the Guardians of the Galaxy are a family. Each film in Gunn’s trilogy not only brings these characters closer together, but also attempts to map out the world they want to build together.

When you look at Gunn’s larger filmography, you can easily see two recurring themes: what makes people outcasts is what makes them special and that conformity is evil. These are movies that love what’s messy and broken in humanity and actively reject any attempt to quash that out. I don’t think it’s an accident that Dawn of the Dead (he wrote the 2004 remake, which Zack Snyder directed), Slither (2006), The Suicide Squad (2021), and the TV series Peacemaker (2022) all have the same antagonist, which is a zombified populace stripped of all humanity. For Gunn, it’s better to be a damaged individual than to be a faceless member of the horde.

Gunn also builds on this in his Guardians movies. While none of the three movies use the horde as an antagonist, they go a step further by noting Gunn’s disdain for god figures. You get kind of the bog-standard Marvel version of this in the first Guardians with Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), but Volumes 2 and 3 are strongly anti-god in their designs. In Volume 2, the gang meets up with Ego (Kurt Russell), a “living planet”, but he can take human form. Ego’s goal is to spread himself across the galaxy, a distant father who only takes to his offspring Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) when he realizes that Star-Lord possesses an ability that Ego needs to achieve his own goals. That dynamic recurs in Volume 3 where The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) seeks out Rocket (motion capture and young Rocket voice by Sean Gunn, adult Rocket voice by Bradley Cooper) because Rocket has the capacity for creativity that the Evolutionary’s other creations lack. Gunn is even more overt here where the Evolutionary shouts at a subordinate, “There is no God! That’s why I stepped up!” The High Evolutionary is essentially the antithesis of Gunn’s own beliefs, a god figure looking to perfect creation and Gunn believing that such quests for perfection overlook the imperfections that make life worth living.

And yet I wouldn’t say that the Guardians movies feel redundant despite the similarity of the themes. I’d argue that each installment is about building forward the notions of what it means not simply to save people from obliteration, but what we want to create moving forward. The first Guardians is about building a team, but even here, you can see Gunn laying the foundation about what makes this team special. In The Avengers, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) spits on the team, and asks Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), “How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?” which is then countered by Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) later in the film talking up the team:

Compare that to Star-Lord’s rallying speech at the second act turn of the first Guardians:

These are not the hero types, and the way they save the world in the first movie isn’t because they hold the Power Stone, but because they’re holding hands long enough to use the Power Stone against Ronan without being destroyed by it. They’re stronger together, and that’s a good foundation for a team.

Volume 2 feels like Gunn having more creative freedom in his storytelling, and it’s all a story about a building a family together. The story begins with the gang raising Baby Groot, but all along the way it’s about setting aside idealized notions of what family should be and embracing the family you have because you love people for who they are, not for what they can do for you. That’s the realization Star-Lord makes when he sees Ego is a fraud and that the Guardians are his true family. Rocket, as churlish as he can be, realizes at the end of the story that people who love you won’t abandon you just because you might have a tendency to be kind of a jerk. While getting a bunch of heroes together at the climax of Avengers: Endgame is very impressive, I don’t think it tops Rocket realizing that he’s worthy of love.

Which brings us to Volume 3, where all the characters are racing to save Rocket’s life. Yes, this further cements the notion of family, but it also feels like Gunn is casting his eyes beyond this one group to thinking about society at large. The story begins with the gang hanging up their shingle on Knowhere, and the recurring plot point of what kind of world we want to build together. While The High Evolutionary can’t stop building and rebuilding (he has “Counter-Earth” which is like Earth except it’s populated by Island of Dr. Moreau manimals) as he seeks perfection, the Guardians always emphasize their inclusiveness. Again, they’re not super-people (Star-Lord even gives up his superpowers in Volume 2 when he defeats Ego), but what matters is that everyone belongs. While The High Evolutionary has no hesitancy about blowing up Counter-Earth and killing its entire population, The Guardians don’t just save the children on The High Evolutionary’s ship; they also save all the animals.

But if the Guardians are so inclusive, then why isn’t there redemption for guys like Ego and The High Evolutionary? Why does Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), an artificial being birthed by the snobbish and immaculately designed Sovereign and their high priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki)1, get a second chance but The High Evolutionary doesn’t? Even though Adam was created to be perfect (and clearly falls short of that by being kind of dumb and childlike), he doesn't aspire to be a god. For Gunn, the logic is straightforward--once you leave the bounds of humanity and aspire to godhood, then you've sacrificed your right to compassion and empathy because you seek to stand apart from creation.

That doesn’t mean you need to be a Guardian of the Galaxy. The Guardians split up at the end of Volume 3 to find new meaning (similar to how Gunn is leaving Marvel to go lead DC Studios), but that doesn’t mean they’re alone. Even Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who now stands apart from the Guardians, has her tribe among the Ravagers. Star-Lord reunites with his grandfather (Gregg Henry). Mantis (Pom Klementieff) heads out to parts unknown to find her purpose. Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Drax (Dave Bautista) want to build a better Knowhere for the children they saved. The Guardians are a family, and families that love each other allow their members to grow, change, evolve, and leave the nest.

In this way, Gunn sums up his trilogy by arguing that all that’s left is us. As Germain Lussier pointed out on a recent article on io9, when Groot says, “I love you guys,” at the end of Volume 3, it’s not that Groot now speaks English; it’s that we as an audience speak Groot. The circle has grown wider from where we were back in the first movie when Star-Lord didn’t understand why Groot only says, “I am Groot,” to now even the audience can understand this big tree man. It’s a sly way of breaking the fourth wall while also showing Gunn’s hope that in making these movies, he has pulled the audience into an inclusive world of weirdoes, outcasts, and losers.