Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 Is A Reminder We Still Need R-Rated James Gunn Movies

The way I see it, James Gunn has two main thematic modes: gleeful nihilist, and sappy idealist. It might seem like an odd pairing to some, but these two facets go together so well that they frequently blur into each other--like peanut butter and jelly. For the full James Gunn experience, you need them both.

But while the Guardians of the Galaxy movies have all the sappiness, their darker side isn't really all that dark. Vol. 3 definitely moved the needle in the right direction on that imbalance with Rocket's newly revealed backstory and some of the High Evolutionary's other atrocities.

But outside of Rocket's flashbacks, it avoids dwelling on the really bad stuff that's happening here. As soon as Counter-Earth was destroyed, for example, the film just kinda forgets it happened. It often teases something upsetting, but then it cuts away before you can really process whatever heinous thing Gunn tried slipping past the Disney censors.

Let's contrast that with The Suicide Squad, a movie that Gunn somehow eventually parlayed into running DC Studios.

In the middle of Gunn's DC flick, there's a scene in which our heroes--tasked with rescuing Rick Flagg--very gruesomely make their way through a military camp, slaughtering everyone they encounter in increasingly horrifying and disgusting ways. And at the end of the scene, they enter the tent Flagg is in--and it turns out that he wasn't being held captive, because this was a resistance camp full of good guys.

If that wasn't messed-up enough, the real punchline (gutpunchline?) comes a moment later when the resistance leader, played by Alice Braga, surveys the carnage with this look of, ah, extremely pained astonishment. The camera stays on her in a close-up for a while--it's tough not to feel the distress that Braga is selling.

This scene is peak James Gunn for me. We get this incredibly sick sequence with Bloodsport and Peacemaker contininually trying to one-up each other with increasingly complicated and cool-looking and graphically violent murders, even while it starts getting obvious that these might not be baddies--they shoot a lady doing laundry, and a naked guy who had just rolled out of bed, among other non-threatening folks.

And then, after the reveal that the protagonists had just wantonly slaughtered a bunch of their own allies, we have to watch the emotional torture that ensues. Gunn is rubbing our faces in it.

There is, unfortunately, no version of this scene that would make the cut in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Even putting aside the gore and language--the specific factors that would earn an R rating--Marvel wouldn't allow hero characters to gleefully murder innocent folks, even as a misunderstanding. The most the MCU could handle is collateral damage from superhero police actions, like in the opening of Captain America: Civil War. But actual, willful slaughter of innocents? Rocket Raccoon might make jokes about it, but the Guardians ain't going there.

I'm not trying to argue that the Guardians of the Galaxy should kill a bunch of their own allies as an extended joke. But the reason why I enjoy this scene is for its extremely complicated emotional whiplash. It's certainly a couple layers of emotional complexity beyond what most big-budget movies would attempt, Marvel movies included, because drawing out big emotions from the audience can be risky.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 really was a good try, though. It's much closer to what I'd say is Full Gunn than the first two movies were. Rocket's origin story in particular puts us through the emotional ringer while also giving us a little bit of the existential heebie jeebies with these messed up cyberpunk animals the High Evolutionary created.

On the lighter side of things, one of my favorite scenes in Vol. 3 was when Peter took a drive with Nebula and dropped the MCU's first F-bomb. The scene was glorious, and it actually has exactly that emotional honesty that I want from Gunn's movies.

During this part of the film, Star-Lord and Nebula are on Counter-Earth, that strange mirror of our planet that's inhabited by the High Evolutionary's animal people. And Peter wants to drive a car to the High Evolutionary's base.

Aside from the fact that he doesn't know how to drive a car, Quill has another, more immediate problem: Nebula doesn't know how to open a car door. Quill tells her to push the button on the side of it, which she does--but she's expecting it to pull itself open like all the cool sci-fi doors she's used to. When she asks what she's supposed to do now, an exasperated Quill just blurts out: "Open the f--king door!"

The scene is hilarious, and it's an example of a character using his words to say exactly what he's feeling at that moment. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has moments where it manages to achieve that level of honesty--as in Rocket's previously mentioned traumatic backstory. But for the majority of the movie, we're getting a version of James Gunn that's been filtered for mass marketability.

Is that a bad thing? Not at all. PG-13 James Gunn is still better than most MCU filmmakers this side of Ryan Coogler. The last two Guardians movies in particular were stunningly beautiful and visually imaginative in a way that no other corner of the franchise has been able to match. The MCU is better because James Gunn has been involved with it.

It's cool that they've given him all that money to make these very cool movies, but it's also a bummer to see him constrain himself so frequently. And with a Superman movie up next, it's doubtful that R-rated Gunn will be back any time soon.

As far as I'm concerned, that's too bad. But he's the boss now over at DC, so never say never.