Marvel Studios
The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was a high top tier movie after I first saw it, and at that point, also easily topped the Marvel movies released to date. The sequel didn’t quite hit me as hard as the first — initially I found the comedy a bit lesser and a little more wooly, although I still liked it. But after watching Lindsay Ellis’ YouTube commentary video ‘The Complex Feels of Guardians of the Galaxy v.2’ it helped me pick up more personal topics that connected enough with me that a re-watch of it leaped up in the rankings — although I know that opinions always differ. I do ponder if a re-watch of the third movie might affect my ranking as well.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes from writer/director James Gunn, who wrote the last two (and co-wrote the first) and directed them all. As is his wont, he has added plenty of cameos from his friends and family both old (Nathan Fillion and Mikaela Hoover, who have worked with Gunn since 2008) and new (Daniela Melchior who was in Gunn’s superior version of The Suicide Squad), and naturally his brother Sean Gunn in his recurring role as Ravager Kraglin, and new wife Jennifer Holland in a small but visible role. It’s sort of like the less annoying version of what Adam Sandler does when he casts his friends and family in his movies.
But it’s also a very packed movie — and not all characters quite get their full due. This movie introduces a new character and antagonist Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a well-known Marvel comic book hero, but although he keeps showing up over and over, the movie doesn’t quite pull off his arc successfully. There’s also a much more visible villain called The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji, who was also in Gunn’s show Peacemaker) that is a truly compelling, despicable character.
The ‘Guardians’ movies have in general been able to balance heart, action, and comedy pretty well, although the balance has been different in each movie. The first had more comedy, the second more heart and action, and the third even more tilted toward heart — and in some ways, pain and trauma. Trauma has always been a major part of this series, as all of the characters (Groot aside) have experienced major trauma in their past that they haven’t really fully dealt with.
The movie continues off from the fun streaming-only Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special with the gang running a small colony of folks in the giant Knowhere head. Peter is drunk constantly, still grieving the loss of Gamora, which isn’t helped by her alternative timeline version unwilling to even talk to him. Instead she’s off doing her own thing. The movie (unlike the last two) begins with a more somber musical song, and continues the diegetic ‘it’s happening in the scene’ music where people listen to and often sing along with the soundtrack.
That really sets the stage for a movie that’s a lot darker and heavier than the two that came before. When Adam Warlock, a gold-skinned super being, shows up suddenly and nearly kills Rocket, the team is on a new mission to track down the only way to save him, which involves tracking down his creator, the terrible High Evolutionary.
As Rocket lies unconscious, we get what I like to call ‘narratively coherent flashbacks’ that are in the exact chronological order that tells us Rocket’s traumatic, sad backstory that doesn’t really make sense as a dream he’s having, so let’s just assume it’s the movie just showing it to us instead. We see his backstory as a baby raccoon experimented on cruelly to ‘uplift’ and make intelligent, and his first friends, three other uplifted animals — a walrus (Asim Chaudhry), a rabbit (Mikaela Hoover), and most importantly, an otter named Lylla (Linda Cardellini).
Marvel Studios
These segments are designed in a lab to make you feel pain and perhaps cry in a theater, although it didn’t quite do it for me. Maybe a re-watch would, now that I see where it’s all going, but at times it felt like overly engineered to be emotionally affecting. The performances (voice and live) are consistently well done, and it’s great to see Bradley Cooper really giving this character his all in a fully fledged way.
Overall this movie is mostly about Rocket and explicitly tells us this a few times. The adventures of the gang on a mission to save him get into some amusing, visually imaginative sequences — the VFX and production design in this movie isn’t remotely an afterthought, unlike some of the recent MCU offerings.
The script has a few too many of the ‘bickering comedically followed by a heavy moment’ bits, but at least those scenes are consistently funny. This isn’t as funny as either of the last two, but the action may be the best of the trilogy. There are some scenes in particular near the end that are absolutely delightfully done.
This movie really embraces the PG-13 way and gets a little gruesome at times with its imagery — I’d be cautious with younger kids for this one. But Groot remains adorable even grown up more, and the incredibly large cast is all pulling their A-games here. Drax and Mantis continue to be a great comedic pairing, and Pom Klementieff really shines here as empathy personified. Perhaps Drax gets a bit less to do from an arc perspective, but he has some well handled moments too.
Nebula thankfully gets a major part here, because Karen Gillan is too good to waste her in a smaller part. This is a very heavy animal focused movie. With anti-experimentation themes and a lot of caring about ‘lesser life forms’, pet owners are likely to be more affected than others.
Chris Pratt does his best work here since Parks and Recreation, perhaps ever — certainly better than how he’s under-served in Thor: Love and Thunder. His arc about grief and dealing with his losses is a compelling one. And Chukwudi Iwuji is appropriately demented as the villain here who naturally thinks he’s in the right about everything. In the end, some characters are served better than others — the arc of Adam Warlock feels a little rushed in the end, although he has some pretty funny moments.
I think that in general I’ll be curious how I see this movie after seeing it again, knowing now how it all ends. Although it’s the least of the ‘Guardians’ movies, it’s certainly way above the rest of the post-Endgame movies, even the Spider-Man one — gives me hope that what James Gunn does for the DC movies will be more like this and less like the Super movie he did, which didn’t really work for me. I don’t know if this is a farewell to these characters, but if it is, it’s a fitting goodbye to the most screwed up comic book heroes in the modern era.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has a run time of 2 hours 30 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, strong language, suggestive/drug references and thematic elements.
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