Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review: Says Goodbye To A Miracle That Probably Doesn’t Exist Anymore. When the Guardians of the Galaxy first debuted in 2014, they were a band of relatively obscure heroes who served as an entertaining bouquet between the snappy spectacles of Iron Man and friends.
Writerand director James Gunn had done some scary horror movies, one hyper-violent, indie comic book adaptation, and two Scooby Doos. And leading man Chris Pratt was primarily known as the goofball off of Parks and Recreation. But here’s the thing about being an outlier: You have nothing to prove. And Guardians of the Galaxy taught every future comic book movie how funny and dorky but still deeply honest you are with your heroes.
While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a farewell to the franchise, it’s really a reminder that he’s always represented some of the best Marvel has ever seen. What Gunn has done here isn’t even rocket (raccoon) science – he has just crafted very well, textured characters into a story told with care and commitment.
And it’s a story told in a world that feels separate and almost entirely self-contained, something safely away from the overarching narrative of the MCU. Volume 3 includes Marvel’s first F-bomb (landed with perfect timing) and a heist on a beefy satellite with the Guardians lounging around in a primary-colored, 2001: A Space Odyssey-style space suit.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review:
Gunn, who also wrote the film’s script, has repeatedly stated that the finale to his trilogy will focus on one member of this space crew — the Bradley Cooper-voiced, eternally cranky Rocket Raccoon. This is certainly true in a sense. Here, much of the action revolves around the Guardians’ quest to uncover the rocket’s true origins, which are experiments conducted by galactic eugenicist The High Evolutionary.
We get a lot of flashbacks about baby Rocket – look at Grug, your business empire is about to collapse – and the real family he finds among his naive, gravely afflicted fellow experiments, played by Linda Cardellini, Aseem Chowdhry and Mikaela Hoover. It is, as you might be able to guess, sob-inducingly moving.
However – and this is frustratingly rare in comic book films – Volume 3 is fully invested in not only how its main characters have evolved so far, but how they might evolve. No one has been sidelined. Nothing gets wasted. It is, on top of its main plot, a break-up movie about the hollow feeling of bumping into an ex and realizing they’ve moved on.
In this case though, Star-Lord (Pratt, reminding us that he can be downright charming when the role demands it) has to deal with the fact that his ex, Zoe Saldana’s Gamora, is actually an alternate- The universe is the version that has no memory of him.
Volume 3 is also about realizing the friend who is the butt of every joke is a complex individual whose life still has value and meaning. It’s also, in the end, about the pressure of being covered in gold and being perfectly shredded — Will Poulter’s Adam Warlock, made perfect man, actually turns out to be the pouty kid to Elizabeth Debicki’s fickle mother Ayesha. Has gone.
It doesn’t matter who these characters are, whether they’re aliens, psionic dogs (the Maria Bakalova-voiced Cosmo) or grown men who haven’t moved on emotionally since the eighties. The Guardians movies have always been about the fact that many of us are like putty – shaped not by where we came from but by where we are and where we might end up. Volume 3 should thrill audiences about his new position for Gunn as co-head of DC Studios. As for Marvel – well, that would be their loss.
Watch trailer of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3’s cast:
The film features voices primarily by Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper.