The Movie About the Talking Tree and the Space Raccoon Who Wears People Clothes Is Going to Destroy Me Emotionally, I Just Know It
One of my earliest and most vivid movie memories revolves around Rocky IV. I’d gone to see the third sequel to Rocky with my dad and my older sister. I was particularly excited during a set-piece where Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed, the “Dancing Destroyer”, decked out in red, white and blue, boogies to a live performance of “Living in America” from an animated James Brown shortly before fighting evil Russian superman Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren).
What excitement! What razzle dazzle! What fun! What spectacular silliness! My eight year old self couldn’t wait to see good triumph over evil when the American fighter inevitably destroyed his Soviet foe in the ring, proving the superiority of capitalism and the free market in the process.
That, alas, is not how things turned out. Not at all. In a scene that scarred me deeply at the time and that I still have not gotten over, Ivan Drago doesn’t just beat Apollo Creed: he beats him to death with his fists.
Because that child-traumatizing kill occurred in a boxing ring within the context of a legal sporting match it’s one hundred percent legal.
I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. Then again I was eight years old so there was a lot I did not understand about the world. I was so upset that I started crying and had to go to the lobby to regain my composure.
My older sister, who was only a year and a half ahead of me in age but in a whole different realm of maturity came out and assured me that what we were watching was just a movie, that all of the characters were fake and no one had actually died.
I knew all that, of course, but it did not keep me from being so emotionally invested in the fate of a supporting character in a silly piece of anti-Soviet propaganda that his death reduced me to desperate sobbing.
As you might imagine, I was a bit of a softie growing up. I was cynical and bitter and filled with incoherent rage but it also didn’t take much to make me cry.
That’s even more true of me as an adult. My eight year old Declan knows that there are certain books that invariably make me cry. These books generally involve children getting older, death and any manner of milestones.
Let’s just say that I cannot read The Giving Tree without weeping uncontrollably. That’s true of many other children’s books as well, some of them deservedly obscure.
My son knows that his mother and myself are easily touched and that it doesn’t take much to have us weeping tears of joy or tears of sadness.
I’m a predictably soft touch for kid’s films as well. No manner how many times I’ve seen or heard particularly emotional and moving songs from Encanto and Moana on Youtube, I still get choked up at the exact same lyrics.
I had a hunch that I would not be able to handle the Pixar children’s film Inside Out. I worried that it would hit too close to home and resonate too closely with my own struggles.
I was right! That movie fucking destroyed me. It’s so sad! And so good! And contains so much profound truth! If you ask me, it might actually be TOO sad and TOO good and contain TOO MUCH profound truth.
Man, I could barely handle the emotional crucible of watching that brightly colored animated movie for children.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that when I first saw the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 I knew that unless it was an absolute abomination that there was a roughly one hundred percent chance that I will be bawling a like a newborn baby robbed of mother’s milk at the end of that big-budget comic book adaptation of a series of comic books about a talking raccoon who wears people clothes and a tree that only utters three words at a time but has a way of making those words count.
I am the kind of guy who cries at the end of superhero movies. And cartoons. And certain songs featured on the final season of the Muppet Babies reboot.
My brain is hard-wired that way. Just by watching that trailer I could tell that the film would be emotional and moving. I could tell that it would yank mercilessly at the heartstrings of a mass audience that has grown up with these characters but that it would specifically target me and my fragile, intense emotions.
Not cool, James Gunn! Some of us are going through things and can’t emotionally handle movies about badass raccoons and tree monsters from outer space confronting their mortality.
I’m not sure if I will see Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 with Declan. He loves movies and comic books and superheroes and we’ve been going to the movies a lot as of late although he is a stickler for seeing movies in their proper order and he has not seen the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies yet.
But he knows all too well that daddy is probably going to cry a lot during Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and there’s absolutely nothing with that.
Check out my newest literary endeavor, The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 2: The New Batch” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?
Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, the Happy Place’s next book, a 600 page magnum opus about American films about American films illustrated by the great Felipe Sobreiro over at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Check out my new Substack at https://nathanrabin.substack.com/
And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace