Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, strong language, suggestive/drug references and thematic elements

Score: 5 out of 5

It's difficult to deny that, right now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a bit of a funk. Some of it is due to the COVID-19 pandemic having scrambled a lot of plans, disrupted production on the films, and forced the franchise to take a two-year break from theaters and thus interrupt the constant flow of new films that fans had grown accustomed to, with only TV side-projects like WandaVision and Loki on Disney+ to tide them over. Another part of it, however, is that, after the big, smashing finale that was Avengers: Endgame, there's been kind of a feeling of "what now?" in the air. The big supervillain who had been hyped up for years had been confronted and defeated in a truly epic throwdown, and it was gonna be hard to recapture that high. It was the same problem that superhero comics and pulp novels faced in the late '40s when their writers could no longer just have their heroes fight a rogues' gallery of despicable Nazi scumbags (man, did ODESSA become a lifesaver for them), or beefcake action flicks in the '90s once the fall of the USSR did the same for their once-inexhaustible supply of despicable communist scumbags.

Marvel tried, but their solution, going cosmic and embracing the multiverse, aliens, and other worlds, turned the series into a convoluted mess that required viewers to pay attention to continuity in a way that made each new installment feel like homework. This had always been a complaint about the MCU, but up through and including Spider-Man: No Way Home it was a problem that I always thought was overblown, with the films mostly standing up on their own outside of the big, heavily-advertised event crossovers. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, however, was a film where you had to have watched WandaVision if you wanted to know what the hell was going on, and while I (and many others) did watch WandaVision and thus more or less liked it as a sequel to that show, I noticed that it was a lot more dense and reliant on MCU lore than past films had been. Thor: Love and Thunder, meanwhile, fell prey to another perennial MCU problem that I once thought was exaggerated by the franchise's critics, an overreliance on lighthearted humor to the point where it softened and cheapened what should have felt like very high stakes within the story. I didn't even see Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but going by the fact that it's one of the few MCU films that both critics and audiences outright rejected, I wasn't missing much, especially given the complaints made about it.

But then we come to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I hesitate to even call these superhero movies, seeing them more as throwbacks to old-fashioned space opera in the vein of Star Wars and Flash Gordon with more of a self-aware sense of humor. Only rarely do they cross over with the rest of the MCU, instead seeming to exist in their own little corner of the galaxy far away from the goings-on with Earth, the multiverse, and the quantum realm. Moreover, in a series whose writers and directors are infamously treated as cogs in a broader machine where one could argue that the real creative visionary is the series' producer Kevin Feige, it's generally acknowledged that these films are the product of one singular creative voice, that of writer/director James Gunn, whose success with the Guardians films has gotten him put in charge of rebooting Warner Bros.' floundering DC Extended Universe. And most importantly, they have always been among the best movies in the MCU, and arguably did as much as Joss Whedon's work did to set the witty, humorous tone that became one of the series' trademarks. I'm convinced that, years from now when pop culture looks back on the "golden age" of the MCU, they're gonna rank the Guardians trilogy up there with Black Panther, Endgame, and the entirety of "Phase One" from Iron Man through The Avengers as the films that defined the franchise.

And I did say "trilogy" back there. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 not only feels like Gunn's swan song with the series before he packs his bags and heads to Warner Bros., it is one of the MCU's finest hours, up there with all the films I just mentioned as one of the best in the entire franchise. It is a reminder of why I fell in love with this series to begin with, pairing a fun, planet-hopping adventure filled with stunning locales with a shockingly dark story anchored by one of the most evil monsters of a villain this franchise has ever had. Both Gunn and the whole cast were on top of their game, the action was exciting and spectacular, it pushed the limits of the PG-13 rating almost to the breaking point (parents, consider that your warning), and beneath its already meaty story lays some even deeper subtext about eugenics, animal cruelty, and how we treat marginalized people and those we otherwise see as "beneath" us. I can barely come up with any real things to complain about, and once the climax rolled up I was ready to literally start cheering in the theater. This movie truly feels like the end of an era for the MCU no less than Endgame was, an absolute home run that they're gonna be very hard-pressed to top and proof that the franchise hasn't completely lost its touch.

We start in the space colony of Knowhere at the headquarters of the Guardians of the Galaxy, at this point comprised of the returning characters Peter "Star-Lord" Quill, Drax the Destroyer, Mantis, Rocket, Groot, and Nebula and two new members, the reformed space pirate Kraglin and the intelligent, telekinetic Soviet space dog Cosmo. We waste no time before they get attacked by Adam Warlock, a superhuman who's been sent to capture Rocket by the High Evolutionary, a mad scientist cut from the same cloth as Dr. Moreau who, as it turns out, was the one who made Rocket into the intelligent animal he is today, and wants his creation back in order to study his brain. While the Guardians drive off Adam, Rocket gets grievously wounded in the crossfire, and what's more, some of the cybernetic implants in his body (specifically a "kill switch" that the High Evolutionary put in him) prevent them from tending to his wounds. With Rocket laid up in the medbay, the Guardians, teaming up with a new version of Gamora who leads a band of space pirates, set out to learn how to turn off the kill switch so they can heal him, which puts them on a direct collision course with the High Evolutionary himself.

There is no nuance when it comes to the High Evolutionary. He's not a well-intentioned extremist, out for vengeance, driven by ideology, a pawn of a greater villain, or an eldritch god or monster who's above human ideas of good and evil. No, he's simply an evil sack of shit who wields godlike power over anybody he perceives as his lesser (which is to say, nearly everyone he meets) in order to feed his own ego. There's no justification for his actions, especially once the film starts showing, in vivid detail via flashbacks, exactly what he did to Rocket all those years ago. We see that he's settled entire planets with his creations, only to slaughter them all with the press of a button when he decides that one of his "experiments" has failed -- and the planet we get to see is designed to resemble 1980s America and wound up including its vices like the crack epidemic and the hollowed-out inner cities, just in case you missed the subtext about this country's policy towards the disadvantaged from the Reagan years onward. And he makes it absolutely personal for Rocket. Every single thing about this character, from Chukwudi Iwuji's amazing performance as an absolutely unhinged egomaniac to his laundry list of crimes against animals, science, nature, basic decency, and every god you can think of, is designed to get you to eagerly anticipate the moment when the Guardians as a whole, and Rocket in particular, come in and righteously whoop this bastard's ass.

And while he may spend most of the movie bedridden, if there's any one hero who's central to the plot here, it's Rocket. Bradley Cooper gets a lot to chomp on in the flashbacks that show us his backstory, where it felt like Gunn had spent a lot of time watching The Secret of NIMH as he wrote this film, showing Rocket's upbringing in a world of hazardous experiments and body horror where he had only a few anchors to hold onto. It is a gripping story that, while it tries to maintain a light touch and avoid getting too grim, will ultimately make you cry at the star-crossed romance between a raccoon and an otter, just as the first film managed to convince you that an intelligent raccoon could be an action hero. It is a downright heartbreaking story, and it's here where Cooper becomes this film's other great MVP, a role that could not have worked if it didn't have an outstanding performance to back it up. This is up there with Multiverse of Madness as one of the few MCU movies where, if I had kids younger than ten or so, I would hesitate to bring them to the theater simply because of how dark certain scenes get. But for the very same reason, it is one of the most intensely rewarding films in the series, and one that I wouldn't hesitate to bring kids to if I knew they were emotionally mature enough to handle it, especially once it gets to its triumphant climax.

Rocket, of course, is not the sole focus here, as the present-day storyline has the other Guardians do all the heavy lifting. All of them are back in full form, each having evolved over the years along with their roles in the team. One of the biggest stories goes to Peter and Gamora, who had been a couple in the past only for Gamora to now have no memory of her time with the Guardians thanks to some wonky time-travel shenanigans in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. It plays out like a broken relationship where, even though Gamora is still fundamentally the same person who fell in love with Peter, Peter's baggage with the "old" Gamora he loved complicates everything. Nebula, too, has to once again reconcile with her half-sister now that Gamora has no memory of having done so in the past, resetting their relationship on Gamora's end back to one of mutual hostility even though Nebula has started to move on from her traumatic past. The empath Mantis is increasingly sick of being the one who has to manage everyone's feelings, Drax learns how to better handle his emotions, and Groot... is still Groot. The returning cast was once more as great as ever, and their interactions felt real, like a group of people who all had history with each other for better or worse in a way that calls back to the prior films but isn't completely dependent on you having seen them in order to understand what the hell is going on. Kraglin and Cosmo, respectively played by Sean Gunn (James' brother) and voiced by Maria Bakalova, also had a fun subplot back on Knowhere while the rest of the Guardians were off on their adventure, while Will Poulter was underused but memorable as Adam Warlock, the High Evolutionary's recurring manchild henchman who pursues the Guardians and eventually comes to question his own purpose. It felt like he was here mainly to set him up for future movies, but the film used him well enough that I was able to forgive it.

Last but not least, we come to James Gunn, up there with Joss Whedon as probably one of the most important creative visionaries the MCU ever had. The set design, from the gritty, bustling cyberpunk city of Knowhere to a biological space station made of grotesque living tissue to an alien version of classic Amblin/Spielberg suburbia, was always distinctive and unique, feeling lived-in and grounded in a way that belied Gunn's old-fashioned love of practical effects. His B-movie roots, meanwhile, come to play in the grotesque horrors we see inflicted on humans, animals, and aliens alike, from medical experiments to a man getting graphically fried by Adam's heat vision in a scene I'm honestly surprised didn't get this movie an R rating. The action scenes were spectacular and weighty, especially a hallway battle between the Guardians and a horde of the High Evolutionary's goons during the third act that I've seen compared to Zack Snyder, of all filmmakers. The humor, a trademark of both Gunn's films and the MCU, is definitely there, but Gunn remembers the difference between comedy and levity, and uses jokes less to create a good-time atmosphere and more to keep the movie from getting grim while pumping the viewer up for the heroes' ultimate triumph. By the climax, I knew exactly where this movie was going to go, and I was ready to start pumping my fist in the air for it.

The Bottom Line

I wanna see this movie again. That's something I haven't said about a Marvel Cinematic Universe film in too long, but it's the truth. It's the capstone to a trilogy of three of the best films in the entire franchise, and I'm excited to see what Gunn does next.