James Gunn Gets It.

Here’s a fun fact: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the first physical disc Walt Disney Home Entertainment has sent me for review since Captain Marvel.

Their various publicity teams have always offered digital codes for review, and I can see how that’d be helpful to some writers, but … well, the whole premise of this newsletter is physical media, so I’ve always asked and they’ve always been very apologetic. Until this one, when I said I’d love to write about the 4K disc edition and they said “yep, it’s on its way.”

Maybe they’ve changed agencies. Maybe it’s a new understanding that discs really are the best way to promote a given title, what with the increased bit rate for stable delivery of UHD video and lossless audio and all that other good stuff. Or maybe it’s just that they know how good this particular movie is, and want to do everything they can for it. I’d like to believe that. It’s how I feel.

The Guardians of the Galaxy movies have always occupied this little pocket universe within the Marvel franchise. Over the last decade, as most of the studio’s productions have adopted the slick, glossy house style established by the Russo brothers in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and especially Civil War, James Gunn’s goofball space opera has only grown weirder, expanding on its colorful palette and monster-movie aesthetic in every chapter.

Taika Waititi’s Thor movies can have a silly soundtrack, but they still look like every other Marvel movie; the Guardians movies give Gunn license to create the gloopy organic tableaux of Ego the Living Planet in Vol. 2 or dress his heroes in primary-colored spacesuits to bounce around a planet engineered out of puffy pink flesh. Each one of them feels like a rebellion against the machinery trying to grind all the life out of commercial cinema, with Gunn finding new ways to honor his Troma roots on a scale that’s visible from space. Like, Lloyd Kaufman literally turns up playing space poker with Howard the Duck. No one saw that coming back in the days of Tromeo & Juliet.

How does Gunn get away with this? He delivers. Over and over again, he’s pulled genuine heart out of this squabbling family of comic-book dillholes as they pinball through the universe helping people out of jams and annoying galactic overlords. He lets Dave Bautista hint at profound sadness beneath the blustering confidence of Drax the Destroyer; he coaxes delirious silliness out of Pom Klementieff as the giddy Mantis, and gives Karen Gillan entire symphonies of testiness as the furious Nebula. Gunn even pushes Chris Pratt out of his comfort zone to give real performances in these movies, knowing that overgrown-kid enthusiasm of Star-Lord is just protective armor created by the frightened, traumatized child Peter Quill still is.

And Gunn also knows Quill isn’t the only one who’s adopted swagger as a defense mechanism. Over the course of these films, it’s become clear that Rocket has some very real issues underneath his wisecracking mechanical genius; Bradley Cooper’s delightfully pissy voice work has planted signposts all along, and of course the CG character design (built on Sean Gunn’s on-set performance) has become increasingly expressive over the years, even soulful. Rocket is the heart of Vol. 3, even if he spends most of the picture in a coma.

So, right, the plot. The Guardians are just hanging out on their home base of Knowhere – well, except for Quill, who’s still drinking himself into oblivion on a regular basis over the loss of his beloved Gamora (Zoe Saldana) in the Avengers movies – when their downtime is interrupted by the alien Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), who was teased at the end of Vol. 2 as the ultimate weapon of the annoying golden Sovereign. He’s been dispatched by an unknown villain to capture Rocket; the Guardians rally and fight him off, but Rocket is badly injured in the battle.

After their attempt to treat his injuries nearly kills him, our heroes discover that Rocket’s body is coded as proprietary technology, and they must go to a galactic bioengineering company called Orgocorp to unlock their implanted safeguards. And as they figure that out, Rocket flashes back over his origin story as a creation of the High Evolutionary … who, as it happens, is the guy pulling Warlock’s strings.

And so, while the space dinguses have their fun hijinks infiltrating Orgocorp (with the reluctant help of the alternate Gamora that survived Avengers: Endgame, but never joined the Guardians or fell for Quill, and yes it’s complicated), we get to delve into some truly nightmarish scenes of the baby Rocket being plucked from his littermates and being surgically and cybernetically improved into the walking, talking genius we know – growing up with three other forcibly altered creatures in what’s basically a kennel, and gradually realizing terrible things are coming if he doesn’t take action.

Chukwudi Iwuji, from Gunn’s Peacemaker series, gives the High Evolutionary a much broader range than he had in the comics; I remember the character as a stiffer, alien version of Magneto, obsessed with building a perfect society, and all that is here, but Iwuji makes him an obsessive, deluded martinet, capable of glee and even tenderness when things are going his way, and turning cold and vicious the moment something displeases him. It’s a great performance, even more impressive when one considers that Iwuji’s playing his most emotionally charged moments against a guy in a leotard who’ll be digitally replaced with the Rocket we know and love.

As with everything Gunn does these days, Vol. 3 keeps undercutting its own sense of scale with fun running gags and character details playing out against a grand canvas, where a handful of righteous dorks can take on a madman who’s just burned an entire planet to a crisp and not lose their minds with gibbering fear. (Well, Drax wouldn’t gibber. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.) It’s big and busy and full of stuff, and just when you think it’s too bloated it collapses back into the things that matter, and gives the Guardians the closure – and the future – they deserve.

And when it’s over, with Rocket possessing a sense of purpose he never allowed himself to have before, we get to understand that James Gunn has made a movie about what it feels like to take in a rescue dog. We hope they didn’t have to endure too much trauma before we met them – but we worry that they have – and we hope they understand it’s going to be okay from here on out. Maybe I’m stretching, but I don’t think I am. I think Gunn knows exactly what sort of story he’s telling, and why he’s telling it now. And I am grateful for it.

Somewhat surprisingly, Guardians Vol. 3 brings the movie to disc in its split-format IMAX presentation, shifting between 2.35:1 and 1.85:1 just like it did on the giant screen. Most recent Marvel movies are available this way on Disney+ – just select the “IMAX-enhanced” version – but if you wanted to see them this way on disc, you had to buy the 3D Blu-ray. I’m very happy to see this version of Vol. 3 offered on all disc formats, right down to the DVD release. It’s just more cinematic, man.

The 4K presentation is beautiful, with HDR amping up the primary colors of Gunn’s universe and the additional definition bringing out even more of its general weirdness; you can really appreciate the bulges and folds in Nathan Fillion’s tardigrade-like Robocop sentry suit, or the contrast of Daniela Melchior’s skin against her contact lenses, or the sheer uncanny-valleyness of hearing Judy Greer’s voice come out of the hulking War Pig in Dolby Atmos. The Blu-ray looks very nice as well – as you can see from the screencaps – but if you’re set up for 4K, it’s absolutely the way to go.

Extras are all on the Blu-ray, and they’re kind of the standard package: A gag reel, a few deleted and extended scenes, and an audio commentary by Gunn (which I regret I haven’t had time to listen to yet, but I look forward to finding out if my rescue-dog theory holds up). There are also two featurettes running about 10 minutes apiece: “The Imperfect Perfect Family”, which looks at how Gunn and the Guardians cast have bonded over their decade together, and “Creating Rocket Raccoon”, which parallels the evolution of the character with the development of the Rocket performance, with both James Gunn and Sean Gunn discussing their approach to making Rocket a real presence for the actors on-set, the importance of Bradley Cooper’s voice work and the entire cast’s very real love for the little guy.

Not mentioned in any way at all is the fact that this is almost certainly the last time James Gunn gets to make a Marvel movie, given his new job as DC’s chief imagineer or whatever, and how very different any other Guardians project is going to feel in his absence – if anyone is foolhardy enough to attempt one. Maybe he gets into that on the commentary track too. He’s earned the right to feel a little protective.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is available right now on 4K and Blu-ray from Walt Disney Home Entertainment, and it might make you cry a little.

Coming soon: New 4K catalogue titles from Warner and Paramount, and yes, I am still working on that Mission: Impossible franchise piece. Soon! I promise!