Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 150 mins
UK Distributor: Marvel Studios
WHO’S IN GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3?
Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Elizabeth Debicki, Maria Bakalova, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Rosenbaum, Daniela Melchior, Nico Santos, Asim Chaudhry, Callie Brand
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
James Gunn (director, writer), Kevin Feige (producer), John Murphy (composer), Henry Braham (cinematographer), Greg D’Auria and Fred Raskin (editors)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
The Guardians of the Galaxy head on their most important mission yet…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3?
Before crossing the threshold to steer DC toward a brighter and more hopeful future, James Gunn is taking care of some unfinished business over at Marvel, namely giving his beloved Guardians of the Galaxy teammates the send-off that they deserve. Thank goodness he is, too, especially when for a little while it seemed like Gunn’s (temporary) firing from the project meant that the third and final adventure with Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot et al would go to a fellow filmmaker who, try as they might, would never have understood them as much as Gunn.
Since debuting them in 2014, and then later with the first sequel in 2017, Gunn has all too well understood the assignment of displaying the irreverent, sometimes borderline twisted, weirdness of a group that consists of a human, a talking raccoon, and a tree with only three words in its vocabulary. However, he then went the extra mile and actually made you care about them, with deeply emotional backstories involving abuse, regret and grief, tying into themes about family that actually will have you choking up about said raccoon and tree.
Now, as he unites these characters one final time in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Gunn leans harder into what we love about these characters than ever before, delivering a mostly satisfying adventure that could not be more fitting for a bunch of intergalactic a-holes.
The film picks up with the Guardians – consisting, as ever, of Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) – at their new HQ on the celestial skull Knowhere, where Quill is still depressed over the loss of his love Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) at the hands of Thanos. Suddenly, the group is attacked by the powerful golden-skinned being Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), who has been sent by a being known as The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), leaving Rocket in a critical state where he can’t be easily healed due to past experimentations on his body. To save Rocket’s life, Quill leads the rest of the Guardians on a mission that sees them confront The High Evolutionary, and his nefarious history with Rocket and other animal experiments, which may prove to be their most challenging outing yet – especially when they’re joined by an alternate version of Gamora (who, if you’ll remember from Avengers: Endgame, came from a different timeline), now a Ravager with no history with Quill or the other Guardians.
Like a lot of Marvel films and shows as of late, you can definitely spot many of the tropes that have begun to divide some viewers, from moments of comedy that clash with the darker tone, to big action set-pieces that are dominated by CG effects. Here, though, all of that feels oddly appropriate, because that is exactly the kind of identity that Gunn originally brought to the Guardians of the Galaxy when he first came on board (and one could argue that Marvel afterwards borrowed perhaps more than they should have from Gunn’s then-unique take on the superhero formula), and these characters would feel a little naked without those established elements. Plus, it helps that a lot of the humour in this movie is actually funny, and that the effects are genuinely very good (the level of photo-realistic textures on Rocket and other animals in this corner of the MCU never ceases to amaze me).
The film is also, much more than any of the previous movies, unafraid to go to some truly dark places, particularly with Rocket and the extremely tragic flashbacks that we see of his horrific origins (no joke: animal-lovers should perhaps think twice before going to see this). While Gunn isn’t as free to go all the way with the comic-book violence as he was on DC’s The Suicide Squad, he does push things to their absolute limit with some gnarly moments of decapitation and dismemberment that rank among some of the most shockingly violent moments in the MCU’s history. He also has a doozy of a villain, with Chukwudi Iwuji going gloriously over-the-top as a bad guy who you really, truly want to see get exactly what’s coming to them, especially when you see how far he is willing to go to put his legitimately diabolical plot into motion.
More often than not, it makes for thrilling and surprisingly mature entertainment, as we get to see Star-Lord and company grapple with a number of things that really show their growth as characters from these bunch of dick-ish outlaws to a surrogate family who will go well and truly beyond to protect one another, even when it appears they’re at each other’s throats. These are people who clearly have each other’s best interests at heart, albeit with a tinge of selfishness that is just part of their overall character, which is what I believe has made them so popular with audiences, since their good intentions ultimately outweigh the bad ones, and they know enough to distinguish right from wrong that they go to all sorts of strange places just to help each other, and the rest of the galaxy, out. More than ever, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is about these intergalactic outcasts truly embracing that familial bond they share with each other, and this movie gives them exactly the kind of conclusion that feels just right for each and every one of them, without betraying their overall identity or multi-movie arcs.
It isn’t a perfect movie – parts of it feel tonally uneven, and characters like Adam Warlock, played with an endearing earnestness by Will Poulter, often get lost in the mix, to where you even forget that they’re also in this movie – but as far as giving the Guardians of the Galaxy (and, by extension, James Gunn) a fitting farewell, it works very well as an emotional and engaging send-off fit for this bunch of a-holes.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an emotional and largely satisfying send-off for writer-director James Gunn and his irreverent on-screen team, diving deeper than ever before into some touching familial themes and underlying tragedy with these characters, all while engaging in some shocking but always entertaining comic-book violence.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is now showing in cinemas nationwide
