Gamora can no longer even understand Groot, the gnarly tree-man with the expressive three-word language and the voice of Vin Diesel even her heated longtime rivalry with her perpetually snarling sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), seems to have gone cold. Gamora isn’t dead she’s just testy and amnesia-stricken, with no memory of her past adventures with Peter or his antennae-sporting empath sister, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), or the lovably dimwitted Drax (Dave Bautista), or the sharp-clawed, sharper-tongued Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), the Guardians’ goofily intrepid, ’70s rock-loving captain, who’s been drinking himself into a stupor ever since losing his bad-ass beloved, Gamora (Zoe Saldaña). They’re pretty much all back, if not quite better than ever. (Gunn, who also wrote and directed the first two “Guardians” movies, is now creative mastermind over at the rival DC Studios.) More to the point, the F-bomb lands in the middle of an enjoyably eccentric, insouciantly funny and often beautiful-looking jumble of an entertainment that plays - at least when it isn’t let down by a wobbly seriocomic tone and some excessive narrative multitasking - like a sincerely moving farewell to some of the more likable rogues and motley misfits in the Marvel cosmos. I won’t spoil the context - I couldn’t anyway, since the scene is already online - except to note that it feels like a nicely profane parting shot for the writer-director James Gunn, resident mischief maker among superhero auteurs, as he makes his way out of Disney/MCU headquarters.

I’m not sure the last was worth the wait, though by this point in the series - after some 64-plus hours’ worth of bombastic explosions, murky action, crisscrossing timelines, intergalactic skirmishes, butt-hurt baddies, tiresome daddy issues, genocidal cataclysms, box office conquests, military propaganda and strenuously breezy wisecracks - a single PG-13-compliant four-letter expletive is certainly well-earned.Īnd hilariously well deployed, I must say. 3” is the third movie in a trilogy (duh), the second Marvel movie to be released this year (yawn), the 32nd movie in the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe (sigh) and, as hyper-aware fans doubtless already know, the first of those 32 MCU movies to feature an uncensored F-bomb (about time). Let’s run the numbers: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

Love Spell by Karen Williams