Young Writers Society

Content Warning: violence / assault / sensitive topics mentioned below

Okay - well I just wrote a book on my wall, so I thought I'd make a post here too in case anyone else wants to read / has thoughts they wanted to share... but here are some of my reflections on "Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3" there may be some slight spoilers, but I'll try to mostly avoid that. I'm also going to go on a little bit of a tangent on the topic of Ezra Miller.

Overall: I would recommend it if you like marvel movies I think - but not if you are sensitive to violence!

My main critic is on it being a genre-mismatch compared to previous films and is fairly violently-disturbing despite just having a PG-13 rating. I also find James Gunn problematic and I think that's something that film reviewers ought to consider. I think as writers / humans we have an ethical responsibility to make sure our actual lives don't drastically conflict with the art / writing we produce - and while the author's choices are the whole of a film / book, they should bear weight when we assess their impact / meaning / quality - would be interested in any discussion on this! And then finally I guess my main praise is the film was quite a bit more emotionally compelling than the last few marvel films I've watched.

Genre-Whiplash & Disturbing Violence
So my main criticism of the film is I feel like I had a little bit of genre-whiplash from it. I think I was expecting a lighter? / humor-heavy action film - because it seemed like the other Guardians of the Galaxy movies were pretty heavy on humor - but this was really really dark. Like even though the movie ends fairly happy in a literal dance-scene - I think this had some of the heaviest scenes out of any marvel movies I've seen. I think if the film had an "R" rating I would not be so critical of this, or if the previous films in the series had leaned closer to serious / gory than humor I also wouldn't be so critical but ...

cw. for violent descriptions
Some scenes were just unnecessarily vividly violent - ie. a main character strangling + drowning a villain without changing the camera perspective to look away from his dying face and then cutting into his face with a knife, some pretty gruesome animal-testing / surgeries / dismemberment and animal-deaths, a few decapitations + carrying head around, children in cages, a villain getting their literal face pealed off?? and at one point they are breaking into a planet? / space station thing that to break in they need to cut into the ground and the ground looks like skin with pores and is pretty gross. A whole planet also gets blown up and another character's body set on fire so that only the skull remains. I understand that in a super-hero movie characters are going to die - but I believe there were several moments that went way beyond what was necessary to show on-screen and made the film particularly grotesque and dark (the face-scene in particular and some of the sounds /images of experimentation I think didn't belong here - and the story could have been told without it.)

Here's an article on this topic: here

I don't know if I would consider Marvel Movies "family-films" but I would not be comfortable bringing anyone under 16 to watch that and just found it so viscerally violent that after the film I was almost more caught up on the disturbing images than the plot itself. Which ... if I had gone in to the film with a better idea that it would be about animal + child abuse + animal testing and didn't think it was going to be humorous maybe I would have been more comfortable - but like I said genre-whiplash. I've watched a lot of Marvel films / shows and I would say this was the darkest / most disturbing that I've seen. All the disturbing scenes also made the humor seem a little misplaced / tacky to me rather than a light break from the violence. I believe I read online that this was the first MCU film to have an uncensored f-bomb, and I don't think that was necessary too - I think a movie can be good / impactful without an abundance of swearing and gore.

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James Gunn as writer & director - Do the actions of actors / writers / directors outside of the film matter to the film? I say yes.

I guess James Gunn was initially cancelled because of some tweets he made earlier in his career regarding pedophilia, r*pe, child r*pe, the holocaust, molestation, minorities etc. etc. and then was re-hired because people like him a lot. I somehow missed that until after watching the movie - but having just read a little bit about it, I wish they would have just completely canceled him especially if he's not going to have a really dramatic apology or do something tangibly helpful / supportive for survivors of r*pe, violence, & racism. How am I supposed to get behind a film that advocates "sticking up for the vulnerable" if the film's writer and director seems to find r*pe, child-abuse, and racism funny... I'm sick of Hollywood making excuses for these creeps - no one is talented enough / irreplaceable-enough to make it okay for them to joke about those topics.

Paired with the Guardians of the Galaxy movie having a commercial for that new "Flash" movie with Ezra Miller - that left a really bad taste in my mouth. I think Ezra Miller is a dangerous predator (who has been documented as having assaulted people, strangled people, and kidnapped children for the purposes of grooming / molestation?? & may be in an ongoing relationship with a literal 12 year old - oh - and did I mention also thinks they are the next messiah -> you can read the long list of allegations against them here & here) and I have been very unimpressed with DC's response to his crimes. He is disgusting and a little statement of "sorry he did that </3" is not good enough - in fact some of the DC responses have downright excused his actions as simply mental health issues, which I think is also problematic. Having mental health issues, does not excuse you committing violence towards other individuals or having romantic relationships with minors. The people who hired him need to be taking tangible steps to avoid hiring violent people in the future (especially for their heroes?) and DC ought to be taking steps to fix the harm he has done / continues to do, rather than making excuses for Ezra's behavior and continuing to cast him.

By the way, James Gunn who is moving his career to DC now is a big supporter / excuser of Ezra Miller, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised the commercial was in there. But given the controversy with James Gunn I'm surprised Marvel would be willing to feature commercial featuring Ezra Miller as a "hero" before this movie. Honestly paired with a "hero" in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie strangling one of the villains before cutting up his face - it leaves me a little bit tired / discouraged about what message they are communicating as to what it means to be a "hero" - if behind the scenes we also are allowing these violent and problematic individuals to be lifted up. I won't be watching any movie that Ezra Miller is a part of - and with the lackluster response from DC on their crimes, I think I'll probably avoid all DC films in the future too.

Yes this is a little off-topic - but I think it's really important that people are thinking about these things. Afterall, if viewers don't criticize these sorts of moves, how are movie-studios to know it is unacceptable.

What do you think on this topic? As fellow-writers I think it's something we ought to consider! If your book was getting produced into a movie and the options were someone with a documented history of violence towards women & children or a less-qualified actor would you try to advocate that they avoid the problematic actor? What's the line of what we allow? What if production had started? What if the film had already been completed? Does conduct outside of our "writing-work" matter to our writing?

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As far as the movie's themes...
I respect that they did lean into some animal rights themes. I think that's an important philosophical and ethical dilemma for us to be considering and for viewers to sit with. The movie also I think was one of the more emotionally-compelling movies. I don't think I cried during any of the Thor / Ant-man / Spiderman movies (maybe the last scene of spiderman...) but this one had at least 2 or 3 tear-jerker moments where you really couldn't help but be touched - all centered around Rocket's character. I also thought they did a wonderful job meshing his backstory with the contemporary action in a way that didn't feel distracting / or break the story-line - but really added to the overall arc. The final battle + resolution felt like a lot of loose-ends pulled together in a heart warming way.

tl;dr: if you are sensitive to violent imagery - especially anything to do with animal testing / decapitations - not a good film to watch! if you are not sensitive to violence and are a big marvel fan, I think this was one of the more emotionally compelling films as of recently.

Let me know if you have any comments on these things!

Yeah, it was definitely a lot more violent than I expected. I thought Rocket's backstory was well-executed though, and the stakes were compelling(I also cried when Lila died lol).
Pretty good movie, didn't know about the controversy when I watched it. Was kind of appalled that there were literal four-year-olds in the theatre with us, though. Who brings their tiny kids to watch a violent superhero movie? Especially one about animal cruelty...

I think part of the problem is their two previous films & holiday short-film set up expectations on the level of mature content for what would be in this film -> watching the trailer I anticipated things being a tad more serious, but I don't think could have reasonably predicted that level of violence with a PG13 rating. To some degree I can understand why a parent might feel safe bringing their kid to a Disney/Marvel movie featuring a cute raccoon and a tree and a talking golden retriever - especially if they're more familiar with like Spiderman-level violence - how could they know the level of violence that would be in this film?

Honestly maybe movies just need to release like better content warnings than what is usually published as a film rating, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for intense sequences of violence and action, strong language, suggestive/drug references and thematic elements." <- I guess if I had my way, this would say "intense sequences of violence and action including prolonged medical torture scenes, animal abuse and testing, decapitations, drowning, and disturbing bodily gore"

If I had brought someone like 12 or under I would have walked out. Hope the film didn't scar those 4 year-olds too badly.

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I agree plot-wise that the stakes were compelling, I found myself interested in what was going to happen next the whole time, despite the film being 2.5 hours long.