‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Review: The End of a Trilogy That Would Have Worked Better Outside the MCU (No Spoilers)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will forever hold a special place in the MCU roster, and even the history of comic-book films as a whole. Writer-director James Gunn certainly holds it in a dear place given everything that went down in the summer of 2018, and forward. But now, three years after its initially-intended release, the film has opened in theaters worldwide and it is… good. But it could have been great. No spoilers ahead.
There are a few things that keep Vol. 3 from greatness, and we’ll definitely get into those, but let’s not kid ourselves. This is finally a nice change of pace for the entire genre, after getting momentum-killer films like Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Adam, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods almost in a row (with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s permission, a film that looks like Chinatown when compared to what came out around it), and with Spider-Verse and The Flash mere weeks away from release, we could finally be rounding the curve. And yet, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has a very weird place in that conversation.
(L-R): Karen Gillan as Nebula, Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, and Dave Bautista as Drax in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo by Jessica Miglio. © 2023 MARVEL.
The fact that the script for this movie was finished way back in 2018, when Avengers: Endgame hadn’t even come out, means that there’s no point in saying that Marvel has learned from their mistakes in the past few years, when most of their mistakes are at the script level and this one was completed before those even appeared. At the same time, it is also definitive proof that Marvel needs to commit to completing scripts before filming, because the movies that come out of that are always the more cohesive, and their visual effects, because they are not changed last-minute, work so much better. That being said, though, the film still suffers from a few problems in Marvel’s recent track record. But we’ll get to that.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 picks up right after the events of last November’s Holiday Special (if you have to refresh your memory, make sure to read our recap here), and makes use of a pivotal reveal made in the 40-minute Special Presentation, at least whenever it finds it convenient — Star-Lord and Mantis are half-siblings. And much like other things set up in the opening scenes of the film, this is quickly forgotten once the main mission of the film kicks in. Now, because the marketing did not reveal what the actual plot of the film is, I will do my best here to tip-toe around it, though it seems evident to everyone who has been keeping some level of attention to the promos that this story will revolve around Rocket and his origins.
(L-R): Sean Gunn as Kraglin, Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Dave Bautista as Drax, and Pom Klementieff as Mantis in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
The entire Guardians of the Galaxy crew join forces in a mission that will have them explore the cruel experiments that were performed on their teammate back when he was an infant by the main antagonist of the film, Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary. Now, what makes him a memorable villain is that, much like Ego, he has a close connection to one of the members of the group and we, as the audience backing our heroes, will rally against anyone trying to harm them. What makes him forgettable is pretty much everything else — he is menacing, but he is not, by any means, the central focus of the film.
That is also one of the main problems Gunn’s script has — there are way too many people involved, and an overabundance storylines to pay attention to, which made for an off-setting first hour that is too diluted. While Gunn may insist that Rocket is the actual protagonist of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the actual film argues that there is no real protagonist. This is also a problem that his 2021 DC venture The Suicide Squad suffered from — there is absolutely no question that Gunn wrote those two scripts back-to-back, as The Suicide Squad seems like the first half of Vol. 3 expanded into a feature film. Critics and audiences responded very well to it, so if you are among those, you will probably get a kick out of the Guardians threequel.
(L-R): Miriam Shor as Recorder Vim, Chukwudi Iwuji as The High Evolutionary, and Nico Santos as Recorder Theel in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo by Jessica Miglio. © 2023 MARVEL.
However, things start to become much more focused in the second half of the film, particularly, when Gunn starts to play with our emotions. That is, by far, the brightest side of the film, the director’s ability to make us care for the characters and their fates, which elevates the previous two films as well. As teased in the trailers, there are quite a few tears to be shed regarding Rocket and his past, but that is also the case for the present-time storylines. There are stressful moments in the film that will have you on the edge of your seat, and there are stress-relief moments that work very well.
With all of that being said, though, there are still a few issues that came up during my first viewing (and that, as usual, could either go away or get worse with subsequent watches). Gunn’s sense of humor is all over this movie, though it’s probably the least I’ve laughed in all three of them. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe showed that the jokes didn’t land as well as they did in the past. There is also an overabundance of songs in the film — I am aware that this is the whole thing with these particular movies, but the truth is that the moments where the actual score is playing are the ones that work the best (that Guardians of the Galaxy theme is quite powerful, and not exploited nearly enough). The first movie is still the one that kept the balance of soundtrack vs. score the best; Vol. 3 sometimes has two or three songs playing back-to-back, and they undercut some of the dramatic beats of the story.
Zoe Saldana as Gamora in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo by Jessica Miglio. © 2023 MARVEL.
But there are two big issues with the film, which 1,000 words in I have yet to address. The first is actually not Gunn’s fault, but Marvel’s. Gamora is in the movie, as we know from the trailers, but it seems clear that she is completely out of place because of the way the last two Avengers movies went. Her inclusion in the film was completely necessary to tie up some of the character arcs, namely Star-Lord’s, but the fact is that she goes on a similar journey to the one she had in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because she was pulled from that timeline, instead of having her own arc that would have completed the trilogy. This is where the cracks of the MCU start to appear — the last two Avengers movies worked so well because of the inclusion of the Guardians, namely Gamora and Nebula, but the price they had to pay for that was to diminish the impact of Guardians Vol. 3 and failing to deliver a fully satisfying end of a trilogy that, at the end of the day, mostly suffered from having to tie into the larger MCU.
Another issue comes from the editing bay. Now, this is a far cry from the messy job in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder, but the film struggled in many of its transitions. The placing of the flashbacks to Rocket’s past inside the final cut was also questionable at times, and the overall pacing of the film could have benefitted from another pair of hands, or at least more time spent on the editing bay. This is also a problem for big-budget films, as they have to lock the edit months in advance so they don’t spend money on VFX shots that they are ultimately going to cut, and it usually results in a poorly-stiched-together film. Greg D’Auria, who worked on a couple of Fast & Furious films, as well as episodes of Peacemaker and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, co-edited along with Fred Raskin, who edited the previous two films, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, among others.
(L-R): Dave Bautista as Drax and Pom Klementieff as Mantis in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo by Jessica Miglio. © 2023 MARVEL.
James Gunn’s direction also had its highs and lows. He works very well with his crew, that much is clear, and the performances they are able to give because of that, particularly Karen Gillan as Nebula, Zoe Saldaña as Gamora, and Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, are stellar. But the first fight of the film was very oddly framed, and he kept using a weird lens throughout the film that threw me out of it (I am looking forward to rewatching it and studying this more in-depth, it might have also been because of the theater I was in). The third act has an all-timer MCU action sequence, one that is worth the ticket price alone, but it is later followed up by one of the MCU’s classic cut-away scenes where we know someone kicked another character in the face because we hear it, and we see the characters reacting to it, not because we see the actual punch.
All in all, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 works for the most part, even if there are some elements of it that could have been improved. But that is also the case for any movie. As someone who liked Vol. 2 more than most people, I will probably like this one less than most, though I can’t yet compare the two. If you’ve been worried about Marvel’s recent output and think this will be more Quantumania than Shang-Chi or No Way Home, worry not. You are going to have a great time. But make sure to bring a tissue!
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently playing in theaters worldwide.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
