'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' Review

After the long wait for the much-anticipated sequel, it's clear that James Gunn's heart is now with a different superhero franchise.

In a franchise full of production woes and meddling studio executives the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise has been a breath of fresh air, with the second installment not only being one of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but also one of the few films not constrained to the ongoing “Infinity Saga” and the most able to tell it’s own, self-contained story. MCU head honcho Kevin Feige has assured fans that the case is the same for this film: “I think he gets all the slack. As much slack as there is to give, is given”. But how much slack can be given within the constraints of a now-32 film ongoing narrative?

Since the release of their second film, the Guardians themselves have appeared in three other films, two in the Avengers series and, more recently, in the middling Thor: Love and Thunder. James Gunn has since expressed some displeasure with the way his characters have been portrayed when not written expressly by him, for example going as far as to say that Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) would never have punched Thanos in Infinity War and doomed the entire universe. But now that the characters are back in his fold for one last (we’ll see) ride, it’s clear that even he doesn’t know what to do with them in a post-Endgame world.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, originally planned as the first film to follow Avengers: Endgame, begins with the most subdued- and frankly the best- opening sequence of James Gunn’s career, following a mellow Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) as he takes a one-take stroll through the Guardians’ new headquarters of Knowhere (with a needle drop so perfect for the scene that I refuse to spoil it here). At the end of his ambling, he encounters Star-Lord a.k.a. Peter Quill alone and drunk, devastated by the loss of his beloved Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The entire opening seemingly sets the tone for a darker, more emotionally real film than we’ve ever seen from an MCU movie, but as Thanos would say, “reality is often disappointing”.

The action quickly shifts into gear with a surprise attack from a mysterious being, soon revealed to be Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), who was teased at the end of the last film. In the comics, Warlock is one of the most powerful figures in the universe, and plays a crucial role in the original Infinity War storyline. However, in this film he is completely sidelined and wasted, used as nothing but literal cannon fodder played off for cheap slapstick gags: his inclusion in this film feels like an afterthought.

But Warlock’s attack sets the plot in motion after he critically injures Rocket in an attempt to kidnap him for the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who has had a crucial role in the hero’s initial origin. So it’s up to the Guardians to find a way to save their friend (the phrase “save our friend” is uttered at least five or six times throughout the course of this film) by embarking on another zany space adventure and…it all kind of falls apart from there. The only character to embark on any sort of interesting arc is Rocket, the heart and soul of the entire trilogy, but his role in the film is mostly relegated to flashbacks. Quill attempts to reconnect with the alternate-universe Gamora who was introduced in Endgame (an already convoluted twist that definitely was out of Gunn’s control) despite the fact that this Gamora has absolutely no romantic interest in him, but this plot really never goes anywhere meaningful. Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) prove to be as entertaining as they were in the Holiday Special, but it becomes abundantly clear Gunn had no idea what to do with their characters, despite the fact that he includes a sequence in the film where they literally have to prove that they’re essential to the team. Many watching this will find themselves relating the most with Nebula (Karen Gillan), who constantly makes her frustrations with the frequent incompetence of her team known.

So what exactly happened here? James Gunn certainly is not a bad director, the camerawork is up to his usual exceptional level (Gunn, like fellow superhero auteur Zack Snyder, fully storyboards most of his films) and the VFX looks (mostly) astounding, especially when compared to the disaster of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Despite its flaws, it’s the only movie in Phase 4 (aside from maybe No Way Home) with anything close to an emotionally compelling story; it just has too much to juggle to really focus on it.

Which leads me to my final point: crossovers, despite all the fun to be had in large-scale character interactions, can be semi-disastrous for individual storytelling in a shared narrative. About two months ago, famous X-Men comic writer Chris Claremont, who is pretty much responsible for making those characters as popular as they are today, spoke during an X-Men 60th Anniversary Call and said that cross-over events were the “Biggest. Mistake. We. Ever. Made.” He cited that this complicated everything, requiring “2-3 issues to set it up, 2-3 issues to wind it down, and it became harder to do individual issues, and stories between them.” He went on to say that late Marvel founding father Stan Lee taught him that comics were “single stories,” and that even doing two or three-part stories, such as Lee’s famous “Coming of Galactus” storyline, required a story good enough to justify it. The Infinity War storyline is as good as any to adapt, but it’s also clear that some of the decisions from the Avengers two-parter, such as the five year gap introduced in Endgame, has only made subsequent storytelling more complicated, and James Gunn even admitted that in a recent interview with Rolling Stone:

There’s this worldwide, universe-wide event that happened. And in truth, everybody would be stark raving mad at this point. So it’s hard to write stories in the wake of that. Which is why the “Guardians” movies have been easier, because they’re set outside of that a little bit.

While the director’s statement certainly rings true across the board for the lackluster Phase 4, is Gunn forgetting that the “Snap” was a universal event that affected every corner of the galaxy? It is doubtful he has forgotten, but more likely that he is willfully ignoring it in an attempt to make something that less resembles a theme park and more like a piece of cinema. And honestly, I commend him for that, it’s just a problem bigger than the single film itself. Here’s hoping that Gunn’s upcoming Superman: Legacy will be able to tell a great story free from the baggage of dozens of films before it.

RATING: 2.5/5 stars

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

- Gunn mentioned in his interview to Rolling Stone that the decision to have Thor join the Guardians at the end of Endgame was not one he agreed with: “They chose to have that ending in editing. And I didn’t think it was gonna be in there. Endgame came out right after I decided to do Guardians again. So I didn’t have much say in what was in Endgame, and then it came out and then I was like, ‘What the f*** am I gonna do?'" Honestly, after seeing this movie and the latest Thor, maybe it would’ve been better for both franchises if they had combined for an installment…

- In an interview after the release of Vol. 2 Gunn said that Vol. 3 would set up “the next 10 to 20 years of the MCU”. It’s worth noting that these comments were made before Disney’s acquisition of Fox, so it definitely seems like there was a very different plan for the MCU that did not involve the Fantastic Four or the X-Men…

- Will the MCU ever go cosmic again after this? From the lineup of movies we have currently to look forward to (or dread) it seems like they will stay primarily Earth-bound (except for The Marvels) which seems disappointing to me. The opening up of space opens up limitless possibilities that hopefully a film like Fantastic Four will take advantage of in the future.

To read more reviews from Samuel Morales, check out his Letterboxd profile.