Since I rewatched these movies for my Guardians marathon, I thought I’d do something a little different with how I review them. On top of that, many things have been said about them before, good and bad, so at this point it would just feel redundant. But, with these movies, I want to look at them based on the perspective of the Guardians themselves. So as good as the writing is for Tony in Endgame, or how underused Gorr is in Love and Thunder, I won’t be talking about those today. The general plot for the movies are that the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy must band together to defeat the Mad Titan, Thanos, and stop him from wiping out half of all life. After that, they bring Thor with them across their travels in the galaxy. The writing on these characters in Infinity War and Endgame is very mixed. Almost literally, too. Half the Guardians are well written, and their trajectory is still stable. But the other half lost it’s integrity. It’s ironic how you can divvy that up, given Thanos’s ultimate goal. Even James Gunn has spoken out about how some characters were written in those movies, especially that of Star-Lord. He was serving as a punchline for all the jokes for most of the film, and then makes a mistake that’s still in character, but that became the only thing he was remembered for. And for a few good years, too. It got annoying after a while that he, Drax, and Mantis were serving as the punchline for jokes about how they’re not smart, and they don’t care about stopping Thanos, or whatever else. At the very least, when it comes to Endgame, the ones in that movie make sense, and are on track with how they should be. It probably helps that it’s only Rocket and Nebula, but they still act how they should, and all their major plot beats still hit the right chords. And in Love and Thunder, the Guardians are just kind of there. There’s not much to them, outside of maybe one scene that has a bit of emotion to it. They were plastered all over the marketing, just to leave 30 minutes into the film, with a combined total of 15 minutes on screen. But, regardless of how they’re handled in these movies, they’re still an integral part of the story, and one that will play into Vol. 3 a whole lot.