Character Highlight: Adam Warlock (Guardians of the Galaxy)

*Adam-related spoilers.*

I seriously considered a Favorite Characters post here, but I held back, if only because we still haven’t seen very much of Adam yet. But as the MCU continues to evolve, I hope he stays in the mix, since he’s a fun new character who made his mark amid the understandable showcase storylines of the main Guardians’ swansong.

In one of Vol. 2’s several mid-credit scenes, we got our first glimpse of Adam. The Sovereign Ayesha is making a perfect being, christening him as he develops in a high-tech cocoon. And when he first appears on the scene, he seems to be the sort of perfect worth worrying about. He’s immensely powerful, with abilities of flight, super strength, and generating heat/energy blasts, and he’s all but unstoppable when he sets his sights on you. He handily tears up Knowhere and delivers a hard blow to the Guardians, bringing Rocket to the brink of death.

But for all his power, Adam isn’t a perfect being. He might have been, but the High Evolutionary forced Ayesha to remove him from his cocoon too early. As a result, he’s very childlike, a brand-new lifeform with the capacity to cause colossal damage but little understanding of the galaxy around him.

On Knowhere, Nebula is the only one to get a substantial hit against Adam, stabbing him through the chest, but while his Sovereign physiology allows him to heal from that wound, he’s startled and indignant at feeling pain. He’s deeply devoted to Ayesha, who he calls his mother, but he doesn’t really grasp the precarious situation they’re in with the High Evolutionary, and that the Sovereign’s very existence depends on pleasing the obsessive scientist. While he has power in spades, he lacks finesse and basic strategy—when Ayesha tells him to “show [a prisoner] we mean business,” Adam completely fries him, losing any shot they had at interrogating the guy. And after he does this, Adam looks proudly to his mother for approval.

Obviously, this makes for an entertaining character. It’s funny to watch Adam display the powers of a god and then act like a pouty kid or completely whiff an assignment because he doesn’t understand it. It’s endlessly irritating to the High Evolutionary, and even Ayesha’s patience with her beloved son grows thin.

More than just entertaining, though, Adam’s naivete is useful to the story. Because he’s fairly “innocent” in his understanding of things, that means he doesn’t actually have any political or strategic allegiance to the High Evolutionary. Rather, he thinks very simplistically: “Mother says do this, so I’ll do it and make her happy.” This leaves him open to new ideas from better sources, and when he’s without Ayesha, he’s able to look for someone else to devote himself to. I doubt Adam would’ve helped the Guardians in the end if he’d stayed in his cocoon until he’d fully matured.

So now, he has a chance to be and do better. An official Guardian now, I hope Adam grows and thrives under Rocket’s leadership, and I hope we get it see it from him sooner rather than later.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023, PG-13)

*Premise spoilers (which include spoilers from Infinity War and Endgame, if anyone still needs those warnings.)*

I was finally able to get out to this film, and not to be basic, but it’s pretty awesome. Over time, I’m sure I’ll notice more flaws, but as I left the theater in my respirator (pretend it was Star-Lord cosplay,) I was pretty pumped.

After an encounter with a superpowered Sovereign named Adam, Rocket is on the brink of death. To save him, the Guardians are forced to venture into the sphere of the High Evolutionary, the utopia-obsessed scientist who augmented Rocket to begin with. Their mission requires them to call on the time-displaced Gamora who was left behind after the events of Endgame, and Peter struggles to interact with a Variant of his former girlfriend who was never with him.

I liked Vol. 2, although I do still think it was a step down from the first movie. But this final installment is the most Guardians ever in all the right ways: big action, cool needle drops, wild humor, and honest emotions. Rocket’s backstory is every bit as waterworks-inducing as everyone feared from the first teaser, and I’ll fully admit that I cried multiple times over this CGI raccoon and his fellow experiments. By the time the crew meet the High Evolutionary, we the audience have already been primed for just what they’re getting themselves into, thanks to Rocket’s history with him.

The main cast has grown since the first film, but I think Vol. 3 does well balancing its ensemble. Everything centers around Rocket, of course, and there’s great material for him both in the flashbacks and in the present day, and Peter and Gamora are probably just below him in terms of focus. But everyone gets their moments, not just to shine or save the day, but to express themselves in whatever way they’re capable of. I’m particularly impressed at seeing Nebula here—she’s come so far during her time in the franchise, and it’s great to see her really stepping up as one of the leaders of the team. Drax and Mantis get more of their comedy duo-type stuff, but we also see demonstrations of why the Guardians need them, and now that Groot is fully grown again, we’re treated to some pretty cool action from him.

My main critique of the film is that it’s a little too conscious of the fact that it’s the final volume of the trilogy. I’m reminded of the feeling in the air as people went to the opening nights of Infinity War and Endgame, that fear of, “Everyone I love is going to die!” There’s maybe one or two emotional speeches too many, and there’s too much of a reaction any time someone gets injured, both from characters screaming and from slow-motion camera work/sad dramatic music. But on the whole, there’s just so much to love.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the returning cast, because I’ve talked about them all before and everyone is great here. I will single out Bradley Cooper, whose voice work as Rocket is simply fantastic. I also especially liked Karen Gillan and Chris Pratt’s performances—as I said, Nebula’s been on such a journey, with Gillan steering her every step of the way, and Pratt’s performance here reminded that I do genuinely like Peter.

Then there’s the new cast. Chukwudi Iwuji, who played Murn in James Gunn’s Peacemaker, is excellent as the cold, ruthless High Evolutionary, continually striving for better and better lifeforms with zero regard for what was created before. Will Poulter does a great job as Adam; he has a very different characterization than I was expecting, but it works really well for me, and I definitely think I prefer what they do with him compared to the more typical route they could have gone. And her role is fairly small, but I love Maria Bakalova voicing Cosmo the telepathic Russian space dog. Her scenes with Sean Gunn’s Kraglin never fail to make me smile. The film also includes brief appearances from Nathan Fillion, a returning Elizabeth Debecki, Miriam Shor (Yitzak!), Nico Santos, and Daniela Melchior (a.k.a. Ratcatcher 2 from The Suicide Squad.)

Warnings

Violence (including violence and cruel treatment towards animals,) language, drinking, disturbing images, and thematic elements.

Character Highlight: Mantis (Guardians of the Galaxy)

*Mantis-related spoilers, including for the holiday special.*

Mantis is a character I never got around to reviewing after her debut in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I’ve never disliked her, but I haven’t been thrilled with how the MCU has depicted her. However, she takes center stage in the recent holiday special, and some of the developments there suggest she might play a more prominent role in the upcoming Vol. 3 as well.

We first meet Mantis in the company of Ego, for whom she appears to be a live-in servant. She’s able to use her empathic abilities to calm his restless mind and help him sleep, and she generally does whatever else is asked of her. She is very devoted to her master, but when the Guardians come to Ego’s world, it’s clear that something is troubling her.

That might have a little something to do with the big reveal of Vol. 2: the discovery that Ego is in fact a megalomaniac obsessed with his own propagation. Because even though she serves him, Mantis herself is sweet and fairly gentle. When Ego throws himself wholeheartedly into villainy, she aligns with the Guardians to help take him down.

In both her initial introduction as Ego’s servant and her later appearances as a Guardian in the larger MCU, Mantis hasn’t been served particularly well. She’s constantly mocked and insulted by Drax, and even though the joke is supposed to be on Drax for his bluntness and warped perception of her, it feels extra mean-spirited because Mantis rarely dishes it out in return. She’s poorly socialized, since she’s spent the brunt of her life with only Ego for company, but she’s kind and generally means well in her interactions with others. As such, Drax’s treatment of her feels a little like sneering at a kitten for how “ugly” it is.

By the time the holiday special rolls around, Mantis has gained a little more of an edge. “Sweet” is still her default setting, but she naively delights in some of the same twisted things that Drax does on their Christmas trip to Earth. Neither of them have any issue with kidnapping Kevin Bacon to give him as a gift to Peter, and she demonstrates how flexible her morals can be when she uses her empathic powers to compel someone to give her and Drax money.

Despite all that, her overall intentions are still good, and she goes overboard largely because of the secret she’s been keeping—she, like Peter, is a child of Ego. She wants to tell him she’s his sister, but she knows how painful the whole encounter with Ego was for him and doesn’t want her mere presence to cause him any more pain. So she overcompensates by kidnapping Kevin Bacon. Could happen to the best of us, right?

On a side note, I suppose the bit about her and Drax both being disappointed and disgusted when they learn that Kevin Bacon, rather than being Earth’s greatest hero, is actually an actor, is just for laughs. But I wonder if Mantis getting physically nauseated by the thought of actors has anything to do with her powers. If she’s so plugged into other people’s emotions, how does it feel for her when she sees people who convincingly fake emotions they’re not actually feeling? Is it like empathic vertigo for her, hence the nausea? That would be more interesting to me than if it was simply, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Mantis starts dry-heaving when she finds out Kevin Bacon is a movie star?”