It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film in the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with... Genevieve Kosky. I'm Keith Phipps. Our absent co-host, Scott Tobias, packed up his noon and went to space. But we're sure he'll come back whenever that thing's battery runs out. I mean, how's he can even recharge it out there? James Gunn has spent the latest activist film career

bouncing back and forth between Marvel and DC derived projects, in each case putting groups

of oddball, emotionally damaged superheroes on the screen. For now, he's committed long-term

to DC as the creative head and co-CEO of DC Studios. His 10-year plan for DC,

with a massive slate of interrelated movies and shows on the way, means he isn't going to have

much time for Marvel. So he's saying goodbye to his Marvel Cinematic Universe characters, the Guardians

of the Galaxy, with a trilogy caper that functions both as a send-off for his iteration of the Guardian team

and a staging point for movies written and directed by someone else.

In Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, the usual batch of space-dwelling bozos, including

expat-Earthling Peter Quill, Big Dumb Comic Relief Drax the Destroyer, small dumb comic relief

Mantis, Alien Tree Comic Relief Grute, extremely angry and small dumb comic relief mantis, alien tree comic relief Groot,

extremely angry and serious comic relief Nebula, and the rest are all cranky over losing

their teammate Gomorrah to complicated multi-MCU movie shenanigans that have her still in their

lives, but without access to any of the history that brought them together.

But nobody is crankier than Rocket, the bipedal-talking raccoon with the mysterious past

that's been teased at over the last several Guardians movies or Marvel Team Up stories.

That past is finally revealed in Volume 3, when Adam Warlock, a dopey new character played by Will Poulter,

turns up to grab Rocket and haul

him back to their mutual creator, the high evolutionary. In this iteration, which is much

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