Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the third and final Guardians of the Galaxy movie, the 32nd movie in and the 42nd entry overall for the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which sees Marvel's breakout family try to save Rocket Raccoon's life after a crippling encounter with Adam Warlock. Now with a 48-hour deadline to save their friend's life, the Guardians must defeat Rocket's creator High Evolutionary, who wants to create the perfect society through genocidal trial and error. 

The best things about Guardians of the Galaxy have been and always will be the characters, and the greatest hook of the movies are the strong emotional cores each one is built around. Vol. 3 is no different - Rocket's emotional backstory is a focal point of the movie and Star-Lord's grief around Gamora's death/parallel timeline resurrection are prevalent. The auxiliary players in the movie are all fun as well (I particularly enjoyed Nebula and Mantis in this one), although an ever-growing ensemble means some of them are unfortunately left in the background. 

However, the plucky group of outsiders, the old music, the relentless quips - they're not as fresh as they once were. While it's more so a musing on the state of action movies in general, James Gunn revolutionized action movies in 2014 with the aforementioned qualities. Even Black Adam joined in on the fun by introducing the slave from 2600 B.C. with the Rolling Stones! With ten comic book movies coming out a year that all try to emulate Guardians' style, many of which are from the MCU itself, Vol. 3 can't help but feel like a riff on what was once original. 

You see, I relate Vol. 3 to an apple dumpling - there is a sweet and solid core and a crusty outer layer. You can enjoy the outer layer, but you're eating it for the savory core. When the dumpling is good, they complement each other. When it's not as good, you have to push through to get to the stuff you like. Vol. 3 is more so a "push through" dumpling. It grabs you with a fantastic and terrifying look at Rocket's origin and gives you material for an emotionally explosive movie, only to drown those two out with unrelenting quips in the first act. 

Maybe it's just me, but if I were to be given 48 hours to live I wouldn't want my friends to spend half of that time arguing and making terrible jokes. I'd want that to be the moment they grew up, worked together, and got things done with a vengeance. Vol. 3 needed more kinetic pacing to truly earn the deadline it imposes, every banal joke in the first hour giving it the feeling of a car that keeps stalling out. The jokes add extra length, too - the movie isn't two and a half hours because they needed that time to properly fulfill every character's arc, it's two and a half hours because the editors are waiting for the jokes to finish. 

While it's not a tonal issue per se, it is an issue of a gripping adventure collapsing under the weight of far too many jokes. While not every emotional beat is undercut by them (An argument between Peter and Gamora ends without a quip in sight), the movie still isn't structured for so much improv and riffing. I also had the words of my high school drama teacher ringing in my ears throughout the movie: "Screaming your lines don't make them any funnier." A lot of the “comedy” in this movie isn't so much well placed inflections as it is just screaming, and while the Guardians have made bank out of being a dysfunctional family since 2014, you might have thought that they learned to communicate somewhat peacefully in those nine years. 

I also have the same feeling towards the main villain of the film, High Evolutionary. While every superb flashback to Rocket's backstory painted him as one of the MCU's best villains to date, he too devolves into rote screaming as the movie advances, becoming yet another unmemorable villain for the Guardians to face. He's not a scary villain - he's just one who does awful things. There's a difference between being genuinely scared of what a villain will do and disliking a villain because they were cruel to animals, and Mr. Evolutionary is distinctly the latter. 

The movie also develops a very dangerous double-edged sword with its dual emotional core: On one hand, Rocket Raccoon versus the High Evolutionary is set up as the emotional endgame that the audience wants to see, and on the other are the sentiments about Peter Quill refusing to let go of those he's lost (His mom, Yondu, Gamora). These two cores cannot coexist peacefully, or at least not in the way that this film resolves them. Rocket having to face High Evolutionary undercuts not only the 48-hour deadline but also a potentially powerful moment for Peter, and effectively stunts the movie by being its best and worst idea. There's a lot of great stuff in Vol. 3, but much of it is either in the wrong order or given too little or too much time to go down smoothly. 

Every character gets the payoff for the specific issue they struggle with in the movie - For example, Cosmo the Spacedog has an arc where she tries to get Kraglin to call her a "good dog," and Kraglin himself has to master the whistling arrow from Yondu. However, most of those moments immediately stick out as the go-to growth moment. It all feels somewhat cheesy and certainly pales in comparison to this year's Dungeons and Dragons movie, where the ensemble's unique abilities were routinely utilized in extremely clever and exciting ways while still having pay-offs. I also found it really weird that they tried to give Drax a pay-off for his lost daughter considering the last time they gave a damn about that aspect of his personality was nine years ago and a major plot point of Vol. 3 is how stupid Drax is (If anything, it completes the snowball arc of him not understanding metaphors in the first movie to being full-on comedic relief in every subsequent appearance). 

When all is said and done, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 isn't exactly the yearly slam-dunk I've come to expect from the MCU post-Endgame. If anything, it's a worrying sign that the MCU is slowly going from a yearly franchise-best (No Way Home) to a yearly "pretty good" (Wakanda Forever) to a yearly "not bad" (Vol. 3). Maybe by the time we get to Deadpool 3 in 2024, we'll just be happy if it's watchable. Or maybe they're just lowering our expectations so we won't be too hurt when Fantastic Four is once again awful. Who knows? 

But at least, at the moment, Vol. 3 is still a very solid time at the movies. It's the first MCU flick since Avengers: Infinity War where the CGI was unquestionably great, has an excellent and highly emotional story for Rocket Raccoon, and also uses the MCU's first f-bomb (Yes, this is a PG-13 movie). It's the type of Marvel movie that's more focused on telling a story than setting up an Avengers movie, and I appreciate that. Even if it does mean there's too many jokes and the finale gets too big. 

Overall, I give Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 a 7/10. "Third time's the charm doesn't mean much when they hit it right out of the gate." 

The mid-credit scene is the MCU's best, ever.