Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

It’s six years since the Guardians of the Galaxy had their last for­mal out­ing (there was a 40-minute hol­i­day spe­cial that aired on Dis­ney+ in Novem­ber 2022, but to para­phrase a pop­u­lar meme, I ain’t watch­ing all that) and quite a lot has changed since then. The gang teamed up with the Avengers to save the world. James Gunn was fired by Dis­ney, hired by DC, rehired by Dis­ney, and even­tu­al­ly announced as co-CEO of rival DC Stu­dios, tasked with shak­ing up their floun­der­ing film division.

Before get­ting around to direct­ing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Gunn revamped The Sui­cide Squad, helmed a spin-off John Cena tele­vi­sion series, and def­i­nite­ly Did Not Fire Super­man. He’s been busy, in short, and giv­en how under­whelm­ing Marvel’s most recent efforts have proven to be, even the stu­dio seem to have their doubts.

But the Guardians have always been a group of cos­mic under­dogs, a found fam­i­ly forged from mis­fits and mis­cre­ants, led by Peter ​‘Star Lord’ Quill (Chris Pratt, hop­ing for a sec­ond cin­e­ma smash after his hefty Super Mario pay­day) and com­prised of Drax the Destroy­er (Dave Bautista), Rock­et Rac­coon (Bradley Coop­er), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Man­tis (Pom Kle­men­ti­eff). They’re joined now by their pre­vi­ous foe Neb­u­la (Karen Gillian) and new mem­bers Kraglin Obfonteri (Sean Gunn) and Cos­mo the Space Dog (Maria Bakalo­va), and while they’ve set up shop on the float­ing head known as Knowhere, Quill is still pin­ing after his dead girl­friend Gamo­ra (Zoe Sal­daña) who sac­ri­ficed her­self dur­ing the events of Avengers: End Game. Her alter­nate-time­line coun­ter­part is still alive and well, but has no inter­est in the Guardians, which fur­ther strains Peter’s rela­tion­ship with his crew.

Yet when anoth­er old foe resur­faces, in the form of Ayesha (Eliz­a­beth Debic­ki repris­ing her role from Vol 2) and her ​‘son’ Adam (Will Pout­ler) the gang are forced to con­front the har­row­ing past of Rock­et Rac­coon, their wise­crack­ing weapons expert who nev­er talks about how he became a sen­tient, cyber­net­ic crit­ter. The trail leads back to the High Evo­lu­tion­ary (Chuk­wu­di Iwu­ji), a mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal inven­tor who seeks to cre­ate a utopia, and holds the key to Rocket’s past, where he was a failed exper­i­ment in a lab­o­ra­to­ry along­side an otter named Lyl­la (Lin­da Cardelli­ni) a wal­rus named Teefs (Asim Chaudhry) and a rab­bit named Floor (Mikaela Hoover).

The flash­backs to a baby Rock­et becom­ing self-aware are all very Secret of NIMH, but the film does man­age to make its emo­tion­al beats count, as it is revealed Quill and Rock­et have in com­mon a bone-deep lone­li­ness that comes as a result of repeat­ed­ly los­ing those clos­est to them. For all his puerile instincts, Gunn is able to cre­ate stakes in this film that feel real and mean­ing­ful – per­haps because of the care that has gone into flesh­ing out this group of char­ac­ters over the course of three films (and all their sup­ple­men­tary appearances).

In fact, this entry is also the first time in a while that a Mar­vel film hasn’t felt like a cog in a big­ger machine that only exists to set up future events. Its plot­line is con­tained for the most part (except for the sec­ond post-cred­its scene) and if it feels like a good­bye, that’s because it is, at least for some of the cast. While Gunn departs to head up DC’s Super­man reboot, Bautista and Sal­daña have also revealed they’re putting down the grey and green body paint respec­tive­ly to pur­sue oth­er roles. What’s refresh­ing here is that Gunn doesn’t opt to go for the easy route, tug­ging on our heart­strings via big emo­tion­al death scenes for the depart­ing squad mem­bers. Instead the char­ac­ters learn that they’re still a fam­i­ly, even when they need to spend some time apart and fig­ure out who they are as indi­vid­ual people.

The pop music used in Vol 3 – while more mod­ern than the 70s hits which dom­i­nat­ed the first two films – all stems from the Zune music play­er which Quill was gift­ed at the end of the pre­vi­ous film. As the Zune was dis­con­tin­ued in 2012, all the songs which we hear are from before then, from the acoustic ver­sion of Radiohead’s Creep which opens the film to Flo­rence and the Machine’s Dog Days Are Over, which clos­es it. This is a rel­a­tive­ly minor point, but speaks to a cre­ative cohe­sion which has been some­what lack­ing in Mar­vel films, increas­ing­ly grey and sludgy in visu­als and dom­i­nat­ed by dia­logue which feels like it was writ­ten by com­mit­tee. Vol 3 is refresh­ing in this regard, the clear prod­uct of a film­mak­er with a dis­tinct vision (whether you like it or not is a dif­fer­ent matter).

Less pos­i­tive: the film’s 2.5‑hour run­time is decid­ed­ly notice­able, and the High Evo­lu­tion­ary is bare­ly dis­tin­guish­able from any of the oth­er Big Bads we’ve seen before. Chuk­wu­di Iwu­ji is a fine actor, but there isn’t much that sep­a­rates his char­ac­ter from Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quan­tu­ma­nia, or Lee Pace’s Ronan the Accuser. Con­verse­ly, Will Poul­ter is a stand­out as Adam, the born-yes­ter­day not-so-bad­die who is just find­ing his feet as a celes­tial being. He’s utter­ly charm­ing as the naïve, pompous War­lock, and it’s a pity we don’t see more of him (though bless him for paint­ing him­self gold for such lim­it­ed screen­time). The con­vo­lut­ed sto­ry­line would have been bet­ter served by reduc­ing the head­count, but pre­sum­ably, Poul­ter will be back some­where down the line.

Gunn is now poised to bring his quip­py, retro-futur­is­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties to DC, and it could be the shot in the arm their limp­ing cin­e­mat­ic stu­dio deserves, a much-need­ed dose of com­ic relief for a stu­dio that veers dis­as­trous­ly grim­dark. As for Mar­vel, it’s farewell to the studio’s most win­some col­lec­tive (at least with their cur­rent line-up) but is Vol 3 a pleas­ant step in the right direc­tion after a few mis­fires or a wor­ry­ing omen that the studio’s glo­ry days are firm­ly in the rearview?