A powerful god-figure, the High Evolutionary has genetically altered Rocket, other animals and even children to create a perfect race to inhabit his imagined utopia. While Rocket is in critical condition, Peter and company do some risky snooping through Rocket’s traumatic back story to figure out how to save his life and stop the man pursuing him, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). (There were some dancing Groots and a cute holiday special about abducting Kevin Bacon, but - sorry, Kev - they were irrelevant.) nightmare of a film is only for completionist fans like myself, arriving at the theater armed with overpriced popcorn and the hope that the director James Gunn’s latest could replicate the romp and anti-gravity gambol of the first.įor those who need help getting their multiversal timeline untangled, “Guardians” is the second film of the so far ecstatically bad Phase Five of the M.C.U., after the, to quote my colleague, “thoroughly uninspired” “ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” We last caught our whole team of lovable riffraff together in “ Avengers: Infinity War,” when Thanos (Josh Brolin) threw his adopted daughter and galaxy guardian, Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), into an abyss to get one of the Infinity Stones, which he used to snap away half of the universe. Perhaps this dour, visually off-putting two-and-a-half-hour A.S.P.C.A. Animal lovers, comic book fans and unofficial adjudicators of narrative continuity, action and style in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Lend me your ears.

Half bad half wild