Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special 2022

Christmas Bacon

Guardians Of The
Galaxy Holiday Special 2022
Directed by James Gunn
2022

A quick note... I’m writing this very brief review in  the last days of Christmas 2022 and so it’s probably bad timing to put this one up before 2023. I’m going to pre-empt myself here and say that, by the time this review is published in December 2023, I will have already seen and reviewed Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3 for the site (right here). Therefore, any character arcs and terminations (which I suspect will be the case) are not yet known to me as I’m writing these words... so please read this in that context since, I’m sure some of the things in this might seem a little contradictory by the time this review sees the light of day.

Okay, so we have a specific Marvel Christmas special this year (as opposed to a Christmas TV miniseries such as Hawkeye... reviewed here). I have to say that I’m the only member of my household who actually thought this was any good and the only one who stuck with it properly until the end (even though it’s only 41 minutes long). There are a few bad things about it and also some good stuff. And this is going to be a fairly short review so, let’s look at the good stuff first.

Okay, so we have the film starting on a flashback sequence done in a late 1970s/early 1980s variant of rotoscoping animation, telling of how Yondu (played by Michael Rooker) ruined Peter Quill’s Christmas. So, yeah, the start looks deliberately cheap. Quill, aka Starlord, is once again played by Chris Pratt and he’s joined by series regulars Vin Diesel as Groot, David Bautista as Drax, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, Pom Klementieff as Mantis and Sean Gunn as Kraglin. Once Mantis and Drax are told this story, it switches into live action and the two pledge to bring Christmas back into Starlord’s life... by travelling to Earth and kidnapping Peter’s longstanding childhood hero in the GOTG series of films... Kevin Bacon, in order to present him to Peter as a christmas present. Comedy shenanigans ensue and Bacon eventually finds himself hanging out with the Guardians on their newly acquired base on Knowwhere (following on from Avengers Endgame).

There are some nice jokes, some songs (mostly terrible, although I liked the first one... nobody else in the house did), some tiny comic action sequences and... a bit of sentiment here and there. It’s pleasant and mostly harmless fun and, yeah, I guess for me that’s fine but I think others in the household wanted a lot more from it.

There’s some bad stuff too, though... but the one thing I will bring up in that context is Groot. I mean... what? What happened to the CGI stuff? Did they use it or not because, frankly, if looks like someone wearing a bad Groot costume for most of the time. It just looks cheap and horrible and I can’t help but think that maybe more extensive use of CGI effects might have been planned but either money or, perhaps more likely, time... was not on the side of the crew here? Yeah, I don’t know why but it just felt wrong. I’m hoping this is not the same kind of effect/look they’re going to be going for in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 when it comes out... but if it is, you’ll certainly already know that by the time this review sees the light of day on this blog.

Countering that though, Mantis seemed a little less subdued as a character and given much more to do, asides from being revealed to Peter as being his half sister. She was great in this. I could have done with seeing a lot more of Nebula and Rocket though, truth be told.

And, yeah, that’s me done with Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special 2022... it was basically fine but, certainly in my household, I was in the minority. Most people here seemed to think it was pretty rubbish so, whatever, I certainly think it was by far the best of the stand alone Guardians Of The Galaxy adventures though*... which, to be fair, isn’t saying much but, no, again, it’s basically fine.

*Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 is better than all of them by a long chalk, it turned out.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2

The Groot, The Bad
And The Ugly

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2
USA 2017 Directed by James Gunn
UK cinema release print.

And so I come to one of the Marvel movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) that I’d been looking forward to the least... Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. I’d been wary of this one because the first of the GOTG movies (reviewed by me here) was one which, although I found it mildly entertaining and, perhaps, gave it a better review than it deserved... I was mostly unimpressed by.

It’s been widely said already that this new volume in the series is either better than the first movie or at least as good as that one. I’d have to say that now I’ve seen this second outing, neither of these popular sentiments are something I would agree with. The second movie is at least consistent with the previous, though, in that it both fails and triumphs in the same areas as the first... for this viewer anyway.

Okay, the negative stuff. Action for the sake of action can be dull and mind numbing and this pretty much sums up a fair amount of my cinema experience with this one. Even though the movie was big and loud and dumb enough to be the kind of joyful Hollywood popcorn fodder I would hope for, this was a film in which I consistently found myself nodding off for a few seconds here and there, especially during the convoluted action sequences in the second half, which were edited in such a way that I couldn’t really work out what the heck was going on for a lot of the time anyway.

Perhaps one of the problems was that it felt like nothing was at stake. Even with a high stakes sacrifice towards the end of the movie (no, I’m not going to put any spoilers in here by elaborating on that statement), it felt kind of lifeless and ultimately like it was really not addling much to the current Marvel Cinematic Universe movies we’ve seen thus far. The director has gone on record saying that it’s a stand-alone piece and this does, at least on the surface, seem to be the case here. So you really don’t need to see this one to make sense of any of the MCU movies which are about to be unleashed on us... although there is at least one or two characters who would be unfamiliar or, in one instance, unexpected in their inclusion of future films if these characters are, as I suspect, making appearances in the forthcoming Avengers: Infinity War movie for 2018.

So yeah... for me this movie was noisy enough to keep me awake some of the time but, alas, dull and dreary enough for it not to succeed at that for any great length of time.

All that being said, there’s also some nice stuff happening in this movie too...

The regular Guardians cast... Chris Pratt as Starlord, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Vin Diesel as Baby Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, Michael Rooker as Yondu and Amy Pond herself, Karen Gillan, as Nebula... are all as solid as you would expect them to be and they are joined by such great actors as Pom Klementieff as Mantis and some old timer superstars such as Kurt Russel, Michelle Yeoh and Silvester Stallone. There’s some lovely stuff with a ‘younged up’ Kurt Russel set prior to the opening of the last movie which I can only assume is CGI and the character chemistry and development is, mostly, as good as it was on the first film... one of the strengths of the franchise, as far as I’m concerned. This meant, however, that as much as I enjoyed Bautista’s portrayal of Drax... he felt a little bit over-the -top and forced into his new role in some ways. Still pretty funny though, so there’s that.

And there were some great moments with characters from other bits of the Marvel Universe referred to or mostly unexplored getting a look in here. A character from the first movie which was a big surprise in the last one has another little moment here. There’s also a reference to a Christ-like Marvel figure who looks like he will at least appear in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Stan Lee continues his cameo against a creature (or creatures) who, similarly, also got his/their debut in the pages of Fantastic Four and this is all very nice. About that cameo... Stan has two sequences in this film and there are also, if you are interested, five post credits scenes in this one... which play out at regular intervals throughout the cast and crew shout outs. And absolutely none of them seem to have any relation to other movies upcoming in the MCU other than the creation of a certain person coming for Vol 3... who is mentioned by one name only. Also, about that Stan Lee cameo... it’s pretty cool because it references at least one other Stan Lee cameo and does so in a context where the seemingly random (as they were originally conceived) Stan Lee cameos can now be part of a single character cameoing at different points through Marvel history so... yeah, that was quite cool.

Ultimately though, as I said before, this wasn’t interesting enough of a movie to keep me from falling asleep for a few seconds at a time and it certainly, in my humble opinion, wasn’t as entertaining or as vastly ‘Universe trotting’ as the first installment. That being said, the audience I saw it with were certainly getting a kick out of it (kids dancing in the aisles to the end title sections) and if you were a big fan of the original movie then you are almost certainly going to love this one. Not a film I’d recommend to anyone else but, if you liked the original Guardians Of The Galaxy, then this is kind of a necessary watch, for you.

The Last Witch Hunter

A Witch In Time

The Last Witch Hunter
2015 USA
Directed by Breck Eisner
UK cinema release print.

I’m not a big Vin Diesel fan, it has to be said. I’ve seen him in a few things like Pitch Black and XXX and, although I thought the former of these two was an okay movie, I wasn’t all that impressed, at the time, with the main male lead, who I thought was a bit wooden. That being said, I also wouldn’t go out of my way not to see a movie with Vin Diesel in it... it’s just he tends to make films I wouldn’t usually choose to pass time with at the cinema. So when I saw a trailer for The Last Witch Hunter at my local a few weeks ago it looked kinda interesting to me... silly, but interesting. So I thought I’d take a look.

I’m kinda glad I did because, you know what, Vin Diesel is a bit wooden but, looking at the confidence and ease with which he is able to deliver lines against seasoned actors like Michael Caine and fill the expectations of the role in this movie, I’m giving him a long hard look now and thinking he maybe does this on purpose. It’s part of his on-screen personae in very much the same way that John Wayne used to cultivate a certain style of character when he could actually have been a lot more versatile than that if he wanted to be. I think Vin does alright in this movie and I’m gonna start looking out for him in other films at the cinema... if they take my interest.

The film itself is... well it’s a mixed bag when it comes to the style in which it’s been shot, marrying up hand held, slightly jerky shots to sprawling camera pans and then relying on the editing, which is skilled enough to just about make it all work. The story is great though and the impression you get of it from the trailer is totally accurate. It’s silly but fun... and those movies tend to occupy a large place in people’s hearts because escapist adventure tends to be pretty good when it does what it says on the tin... and this is no exception.

The film follows the adventures of Vin Diesel as a witch hunter called Kaulder, aided by his friend Dolan the 36th, played by Michael Caine, the latest of many ‘Dolans’ through the ages since Kaulder’s death and rebirth through a witch’s curse. Kaulder and Dolan are part of an organisation that makes sure witches through the centuries are kept on the straight and narrow to comply with the world’s laws that witches are not allowed to harm humans. Kaulder is that secret society’s blunt instrument, weapon of choice against any witches who stray out of line. However, when Dolan the 36th retires and is replaced by Elijah Wood as Dolan the 37th, that former Dolan is found ostensibly dead on the same day and black magic is obviously involved. This leads Kaulder and Dolan the 37th into a plot to rebirth the evil witch queen who cursed Kaulder with immortality over 800 years ago.

On the way, he finds himself flung in with a young witch called Chloe, played by the lovely Rose Leslie, who does the whole dynamic of not trusting The Last Witch Hunter through to risking her life on his behalf... and a heck of a lot of magic and battles in the quest to try and prevent the witch queen and her evil plot. Along the way there are betrayals of one kind or another and revelations about the central character, which is a key part of the jigsaw puzzle of the trick to defeating the queen at the end of the movie.

Now, I have to say, there was one surprise fairly early on in the movie which I didn’t see coming but, for the most part, the script is full of clichés and pretty much every twist and turn telegraphs itself way before it manifests on screen... but that’s okay because sometimes a cast and crew can get away with that kind of writing, especially in a fantasy action genre like this where the characters are themselves of greater interest than any plot that they are thrown into. And everyone does fine here... the acting is all pretty good and the writing, while not throwing too much originality at your brain, does succeed in writing interesting character types to go along on the adventure with.

It also helps that it’s a fairly solidly made movie and the set pieces, such as they are, are handled well, are mostly exciting (although the final battle sequence does tend to go on a bit, it has to be said) and the editing doesn’t get in the way of decoding and understanding the action sequences like it does in a lot of Hollywood blockbusters. I was pretty much entertained all the way through and that’s no mean feat with this kind of movie, to be sure.

I love films which are pretty much monster hunter movies like this so The Last Witch Hunter is right up my street. I was looking at a father and his two kids in the row in front of me and they seemed to be lapping it up too. I was looking them and thinking that, for these kids, this is the modern day equivalent of those old Ray Harryhausen stop motion action adventures that I used to watch as a young 'un in the 1970s. It took me right back, in a way. It also reminded me a little of the old Hammer and Amicus movies of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s too. Not in look, because pretty much every set and shot in this movie is enhanced with an abundance of CGI set dressing comprising special effects and such like, but in that this is just the kind of film that studios like those would have liked to have been making back then... if they’d have had the monstrous budget at their disposal back then to credibly create some of the magical creations in stories of this kind... which they wouldn’t have.

To be honest, I’d like to see more movies with this of monster hunter theme to them at the cinema. I loved films like Van Helsing and even the completely inaccurate to the source material but still quite fun Constantine, to be honest, and this film definitely follows in the footsteps of movies like these. There’s really nothing wildly new or different about this one at all but, it is convincingly put together and makes up for the lack of shining originality by being really on the nose when it comes to setting up a credible world and not deviating from that vision.

Steve Jablonsky’s score is okay too. Certainly appropriate although, again, I didn’t think it maybe went far enough to stress the dark, twisted bleakness of some of the characters in some places. Some more experimental orchestration might not have gone amiss, I think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely score and I bet it’s a great listen away from the movie (which is why the CD is going straight onto my Christmas list) but I did feel, in some places, that it sounded perhaps just a little too much like every other American fantasy movie out there. With a character like Kaulder, who is living on the edges of our reality and on the outskirts of a plain of existence where witches and demons gather at the periphery of mankind, I thought that it was just a little mediocre in certain places. That being said, I’m really not sure the composer can be blamed for that because the film has one of those noisy sound mixes where a lot of the time the music is dialled back in contrast to the various action sound effects which take centre stage in the audio range of the film.

Still, it serves the movie admirably and it’s really not a complaint. The Last Witch Hunter is, as I’m sure you’ve guessed if you’ve seen the trailer, not a frightening movie and I suspect it’s not supposed to be. It is a fun, action romp tinted with horror film trappings and filtered through generations of movie and literary characters who have sought to fight with demons and witches to keep the world safe. Vin Diesel’s Kaulder is one such character and the actors here do so well that I would love to see a sequel to this sometime. Not really expecting that to happen but, hey, I enjoyed it and I can imagine it will be a Christmas holiday favourite on TV in many households in years to come. Not essential viewing by any means but a solid, fun action movie that should satisfy most lovers of that kind of combination genre. One to watch out for, if you have the time.

Guardians Of The Galaxy

Groot Point

Guardians Of The Galaxy
2014 USA
Directed by James Gunn
Cinema release print.

I was both pleasantly surprised and achingly disappointed by the release of the new Marvel Phase 2 movie Guardians Of The Galaxy. When the film was first announced as being another of the series in the linking Marvel story arc that kicked off with the first Iron Man film... I was a bit taken aback. The comic this is mostly based on is the 21st Century incarnation of the Guardians Of The Galaxy as opposed to the original 1969 team... and I have not read any of their original stories in any of the various team line-ups to be able to pass judgement on this film as an adaptation. I was, though, very worried about how Marvel would be able to pull off a movie with characters like Rocket Raccoon and Groot in it and still make it fit in with their other properties in such an intimate manner. The various trailers didn’t exactly endear me to the idea of going to see it either.

Sure, the groundwork had been done by Marvel in terms of sowing the seeds for a more intergalactic piece of their giant cinematic puzzle with the Thor films (which are reviewed by me here and here), which are set off-world, so to speak... and, of course, The Avengers movie (reviewed here), which shares a common villain with this one. The character of The Collector, for example, had already appeared in the second Thor movie and Thanos had already been revealed at the end of The Avengers (aka Marvel Avengers Assembled) as one of the major players in the conflict depicted in that movie. However, this didn’t change the fact that I was finding it mighty difficult that a film of this nature, which would probably end up as “just another space opera” (and kinda did, actually), would be able to slot in neatly with the other films in the series without looking incongruous. It’s a lot easier to get these kinds of mismatched crossovers to work in comic books than it is to do it in the movies, I’m sure.

That being said though... I was, as I said in my introduction, pleasantly surprised by the movie. For two reasons.

One is because... it’s not a terrible film. It’s not great but it is at least watchable and has some quite good moments which give it some entertainment value. The other reason is because, as it stands, I think this should just about slot into the current Marvel universe if the producers, writers and directors can do it very carefully and write to the various characters’ reactions and interactions with each other as they meet up in various films. I can imagine, for example, that a well written scene between Tony Stark and Rocket Raccoon would go down a treat.

This film opens very, very strongly with an opening, pre-credits sequence which is guaranteed to tear at the heartstrings and bring trickles of moisture from the audience’s eyes. We see the young Peter Quill, aka Star Lord, as he refuses to hold his mother’s hand and then she dies before he gets a chance to do that. He runs out of the hospital in his grief and is immediately kidnapped by aliens, one of the original members of the 1969 Guardians Of The Galaxy as it happens, although in this movie that character (played by Michael Rooker) is portrayed as a villain rather than a hero.

The cast is strong and the main players... Chris Pratt as Peter (Star Lord) Quill, Zoe Saldana as Gomora, Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon and Vin Diesel as Groot... are all really good in their roles... with special mention of Bautista who does a really good job at making me care about his character’s motivation. They all get some really nice dialogue in their scenes and it’s when they are interacting with each other in a way that doesn’t involve people punching, kicking, shooting or stabbing each other to death that their characters really get to shine through.

Similarly, there’s a good supporting cast of particularly reliable actors who are great in this including the always watchable John C. Reilly and the highly talented Karen Gillan, an actress I felt was somewhat wasted in this. She plays it very strong but the scripting seems to be working against her, I felt and the denouement of her character seemed to me, to be a triumph of the “quick technological special effects punchline” as opposed to anything which seemed earned by the main protagonists. It doesn’t help that a similar sequence is used right near the end of the movie either... people seem to be pulling out big guns and unloading them in the direction of the bad guys as a “quick fix” too often in this movie, I felt. It has to be said that Gillan’s portrayal of Nebula marked her out as the only villain in the movie that I felt even remotely intimidated by... so maybe casting her as a henchman... um... henchwoman, in a film which is already full of those kinds of characters, was a mis-step. She needed a bigger role to flesh out, I felt, and I hope the people in Hollywood are taking note of just how good she is at what she does. They need to play to her strengths more, I think.

However, for all of the good stuff... I had a very strong dose of negative vibes from the film also.

It’s a good film, no doubt about it. It’s entertaining when it needs to be and I felt like I could root for all the main protagonists in this one with no trouble. However, the plotting on this one seems a bit obvious and the film, filled with epic action and effects as it is, felt to me to be a bit like overkill when the story isn’t justifying it a whole lot. I would have preffered a much simpler film which doesn’t hurtle you from one scene to the next quite so blurringly. Also, I have to say, that apart from those often but brief bits of shiny dialogue, the whole thing felt kinda dull to me in places.

Of course, it didn’t help that I couldn’t follow the action on this one too easily, either. I’m sure the choreography of the various battles made a lot of sense on paper but, frankly, the way these scenes were edited together just kept losing me. I could maybe see a vague sense of the direction of the thing in the battle scenes but, honestly, I lost interest a little way into most of these scenes because they were either unremarkable, distractingly edited or seemed to be serving a storyline which seemed over simplistic for the “everything and the kitchen sink” attitude which seems to be prevalent for most of the film. About the best action sequence in this is when the five protagonists break out of prison but... that happens fairly early on in the movie and so, as far as action scenes go, you’ve already seen the best one before the film is even half the way through.

Again, I wasn’t feeling the music in this one either... which is strange since the inclusion of music in a diegetic role and as an important component of the Peter Quill character, means that music almost becomes a character in itself in this one. It was a main hook of the trailers too, as I recall, but... although I’m okay with pop music, it’s not really my main source of musical interest and I really didn’t like most of the songs featured in this movie. Tyler Bates score is appropriate and serves the film by giving it what it needs but, again, I didn’t notice anything really remarkable in this one... although that’s not always possible when it gets buried in the noisy mix of an action vehicle like it tends to here. I’ll probably get more of a feel for it if I ever get around to buying the score as a stand alone listen... but nothing in this movie screamed out at me, in terms of the music, which made me want to rush out and buy the score.

And that’s really all there is to it in my view. Guardians Of The Galaxy is not the disaster I was expecting it to be... but it wasn’t that great either. It’s an establishing movie, though, and it could well lead to better things for the on-screen Marvel Universe at a later date, I suspect. If you’re a fan of the Marvel movies in this cycle then you probably won’t want to miss it.. although I suspect it’s not as major a set up for the incidents in next year's The Avengers: Age Of Ultron as I’d initially suspected it to be. In terms of the overall arc I’ve a feeling that this one could probably be dropped out of the equation entirely and the next movie would still make 100% sense by the inclusion of key players from previous movies... so there’s that. Not a movie I will be rushing back to the cinema to see again anytime soon but I’ll probably take another look at it on DVD at some point next year because... I know my mother liked it. As usual with Marvel films now, there is both a mid-end credits scene and a post credits scene and, I have to say, I wouldn’t be surprised if neither of them are necessary for understanding the next movie in the cycle... but if you are so inclined, you should probably stay for the final drop. All in all though, I wouldn’t exactly say I got hooked on a feeling for this movie.