'Guardians of the Galaxy' has satisfying closure

In retrospect, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" feels like the true capstone to the Marvel Cinematic Universe up through "Infinity War," because it finally addresses the last loose plot threads left untied after Thanos (and Bruce Banner and Tony Stark) snapped their fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.

Thanos' brief mid-credits appearance at the end of the first "Avengers" film in 2012 obscures the fact that his first full, substantive role was in the first "Guardians of the Galaxy" film in 2014.

This also makes Thanos the first of writer-director James Gunn's series of "bad dads" in the MCU, alongside Star-Lord's adoptive Ravager father Yondu in the first "Guardians" film.

While Yondu earned an unlikely redemption in 2017's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," in part due to the charms and acting strengths of Michael Rooker, that film also introduced Ego the Living Planet as Star-Lord's biological father, a dad bad enough to make Yondu seem nurturing.

So it makes sense that the third "Guardians" film not only addresses the effect that Thanos' terrible parenting had on his two adopted daughters, Nebula and Gamora, but also provides a backstory for Rocket Raccoon at last, revealing his "bad dad" to be the High Evolutionary.

Gunn applies a spin to each of his "bad dads" in the superhero genre (as seen with DC's "Peacemaker," and that hero's evil white supremacist father, on HBO Max), so what Gunn does with the High Evolutionary is compelling.

The gruff, affectionate Yondu's bark ultimately proved far worse than his bite, while Ego came across as a wannabe-cool divorced dad who lavishes his kid with showy but shallow displays of affection to cover for how coldly he dispensed with his kid's mom.

While Thanos was a merciless taskmaster, on par with Joe Jackson toward Janet and LaToya, the High Evolutionary's experiments to forcibly advance the evolution of ordinary animals, as Rocket once was, are twisted in ways that it takes a gifted student raised by academic disciplinarians to appreciate.

The High Evolutionary repeatedly claims he wants to create a perfect society, which he admits will require creating beings capable of genuinely independent invention, rather than mere memorization.

And yet, when a young Rocket Raccoon identifies the fatal flaw in the High Evolutionary's own experiments, which even the genius scientist had spotted, it drives the man insane with outrage. His lab animal was never meant to exceed him, just as some real-life parents envy or resent the children whom they've raised to succeed, when those kids grow up to surpass their elders.

Gunn poaches "Peacemaker" supporting cast member Chukwudi Iwuji for the role of the High Evolutionary. Iwuji's performance is outstanding, projecting the furiously fragile entitlement of a man who has taken for granted that he's the smartest person in any room he enters, only to lose his mind when confronted by the reality that his wunderkind spark has long since evaporated.

When the High Evolutionary demands to know how Rocket could have come up with the solution that fixed the next stage of his experiments, his hysterical voice and convulsive crawling on the floor reminded me of an abusive, alcoholic father who's both proud and devastated by the realization that his child has managed to become a better person than him.

An unexpected, lighthearted counterbalance to this portrayal is seeing Drax the Destroyer, whose MCU backstory established him from the outset as mourning the loss of his wife and daughter (killed by Thanos, of course), as a gentle, empathetic good dad.

Indeed, the most uplifting aspect of this wrap to the "Guardians" saga is seeing our flawed heroes, who have been emotionally frozen by nursing lingering wounds for so long, finally start to heal.

This is the type of film where even minor supporting characters like Kraglin and Cosmo the Spacedog get their own arcs, but what's refreshing is that Star-Lord's heartbreak over Gamora - who was killed by Thanos after she and Star-Lord fell in love, but then a past version of her was brought back into the present, from before she and Star-Lord ever met, because that's how romance goes in superhero stories - isn't resolved with a tidy "true love conquers all" cliché.

(What Star-Lord and the previous version of Gamora once had is treated as real, and worth grieving over, but the current version of Gamora is also treated as her own person, not obligated to repeat the decisions of her alternate timeline counterpart, and even an overgrown manchild like Star-Lord ultimately recognizes and respects that.)

Credit is due to the underrated Zoë Saldaña for managing to make this film's Gamora feel like a different person from the Gamora of the previous two "Guardians" films, to Bradley Cooper's voice-acting for absolutely selling Rocket Raccoon's cumbersome and potentially ridiculous origin story, and especially to Karen Gillan for her amazing job of taking us through Nebula's transformational journey.

Over the course of her misadventures with the Guardians, the Avengers, and Tony Stark and Thor in particular, Nebula has gone from a vengeful and remorseless killing machine to someone capable of caring wholeheartedly for others.

The third and final "Guardians" film completes that arc by allowing Nebula to laugh and cry, the latter out of both sorrow and joy, without sacrificing the fascinatingly sharklike alien quality that Gillan has always brought to the character.

Unfortunately, just as Gunn missed an opportunity with Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser in the first "Guardians" film, so too will fans of Adam Warlock from Marvel Comics be disappointed by Will Poulter's MCU version of the character, who essentially serves as a more handsome, less literal, but equally naive substitute for Drax.

Gunn pal Nathan Fillion puts in an amusing cameo as a corporate outer-space henchman, the biological aesthetic of the Orgosphere setting is as delightfully creepy and creative as a mashup of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element," and the hallway combat sequence set to the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is what the kids would call "fire."

If you're a true MCU fan, you should know the drill by now; the mid-credits scene is the epilogue giving us a glimpse of the Guardians' closing status quo, and the post-credits scene is a mildly amusing gag, albeit one featuring Star-Lord and the one character who's been most overdue for a return since his first brief appearance in these films.

See you, space cowboys ...