Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 [2023]

After several disappointing, or at least relatively messy entries in Marvel's post-Endgame era, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 is an interesting movie. It promises to close off the Guardians of the Galaxy movie series -- a move that seemed final, considering the departure of at least several key people attached to this sub-franchise, namely James Gunn (director), Zoe Saldana (Gamora) and Dave Bautista (Drax). Add that to how the Infinity War/Endgame duology arguably explored a lot and also caused a fair bit of havoc among the Guardian storylines as well, particularly with the second Gamora, and this movie had a lot to deal with. In addition, we've got the introduction of not one, but two prominent antagonists, as well as the exploration of Rocket Raccoon's backstory, catapulting him into basically being the main character of this movie. 

Oh, and the movie still has to offer the typical MCU fare of comedy and action scenes. That's a tall order!

And I tried writing a review for this movie several times, before realizing that short of breaking down every single character, I really don't have that much to say about this movie compared to a lot of the previous entries. I do really think that the tone of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 was what Thor: Love and Thunder tried to do and arguably failed. Where Love and Thunder tried to be all serious with Gorr and turn into irreverent comedy whenever our heroes are around, GOTG 3 is an interesting beast in that it's as wacky as the GOTG material... but the places where it really explores the dark backstories of the villains, we actually get to see our heroes nut up and get utterly pissed, and... in addition to just funnier jokes overall, I do really think that the High Evolutionary's brand of jackassery was really personal, and that was what made him work where a lot of the MCU's post-Thanos villains never had. 

And here's the thing -- the movie explores Rocket Raccoon's backstory as he lapses in and out of a coma after an initial action scene, and we get to see Rocket's growth from a kidnapped laboratory animal into a tortured but hopeful soul, befriending his fellow experimental animals -- the otter Lylla, the rabbit Floor and the walrus Teefs. He's created by the brilliant perfectionist and geneticist, the High Evolutionary, who keeps talking about creating and building a paradise, and Rocket simply just... is happy to help out, eventually finding the one key that allows the High Evolutionary's 'evolution gas' to succeed. And while the High Evolutionary initially looked manic but ultimately well-meaning, things go a bit dark when he ends up selecting Rocket for dissection and the rest of his family for incineration. The High Evolutionary shows nothing but contempt at Rocket and the rest of his 'abominable' batch, despite the fact that, for all his bluster, it was Rocket's genuine ingenuity and innovativeness that fixed what the High Evolutionary couldn't do.

Also, yeah. There's a lot of scenes of torture that the movie only really gets away with because it's CGI animals, but there's definitely a point to be made about this movie being a pretty damn great 'animal cruelty' movie on top of everything. 

In the process of the escape, the High Evolutionary kills Rocket's friends (two die in a crossfire) and that's not to mention the sheer callous amounts of lab animals and uplifted sentient animals that High Evolutionary racks up in his wake. And what a jackass he was at doing it, talking about perfectionism and how he wants to create an 'utopia' while treating his other creations like trash and even blowing up an entire planet just because it has 'imperfections'.

And I guess these two are easily the strongest part of the movie. The High Evolutionary exudes a sense of menace and fanaticism, as well as a personal enmity to one of our heroes (and by proxy, the rest of his buddies) in a way that Gorr and Kang didn't have. The scripting and acting of the High Evolutionary as someone who pretends to be sophisticated, but, in Peter's words, just full of hot air disguised as some over-the-top grand plan... it's a great combination. 

And then we also learn about Rocket's own backstory, which dovetails nicely with everything we've seen him been through throughout the two GOTG movies and the two Avengers movies he's been in, and, again, it's remarkably consistent with how much he tries to drive people away. It's the crux of his conflict with Star-Lord and Drax in the first movie, and it's why he bonded with Yondu in GOTG 2 and Thor in Endgame. 

The movie highlights that Rocket is 'the main character all along, he just never knew it', which... is admittedly a bold statement. However, Rocket is the closest thing that the Guardians movies had to a second protagonist, with Gamora probably being the closest contestant to the role -- though we'll cover her later. It's actually a very natural progression as Rocket goes through his flashback and his near-death experience, and later on just very unabashedly accepts Star-Lord and Groot's hug, and then goes on to confront his tormentor and realizing that he could be better than what High Evolutionary made him.

And then the fact that Rocket managed to beat the High Evolutionary's gravity powers with the gravity boots he made as a lark at the beginning of the movie? That's an understated bit of delicious irony, I feel. And for all of High Evolutionary's talk about originality and whatnot, his big plan is to basically make 'Counter-Earth', a fake version of Earth... meaning that just like the new batches of forcibly-evolved life-forms, for all his bluster, High Evolutionary is just still copying and doing 'rote memorization'. 

The rest of the cast are limited to basically having a character trait that feels naturally explored, and the movie explores most of them by the end of it. Star-Lord and the 'time paradox' Gamora probably get the most prominent scenes, with Star-Lord projecting a lot about his inadequacies as a leader and losing the Gamora that was the 'love of his life' during the events of Infinity War. It is admittedly very unfair to the new Gamora, who never met Star-Lord prior to her time-travel, and by the end of this movie, with some help from Mantis, Peter realizes that he still has some shit to unpack and ends up taking a sabbatical from the Guardians to go to Earth and resolve his unresolved business with his grandfather. There's some nice moments with Mantis (who acts as a nagging but well-meaning sister) and Rocket (who Peter is extremely protective of).

Gamora II's character arc is... it's really kind of sad (but very bold) that the original Gamora is just dead at the climax of Infinity War. It was a death that was played up more for shock value than anything, and while Gamora and Thanos had some great acting in that scene, it's something that kind of felt like it was a bit undercooked, particularly if you're a Gamora fan. 

Of course, we have a brand-new doppelganger from an alternate timeline. Standard comic book stuff, and I absolutely appreciate that the movie doesn't end with Star-Lord and Gamora II getting back together again, because I really do feel like that's a rather old-fashioned mentality of Star-Lord 'winning' back his girlfriend. Gamora II goes through a character arc of realizing that the Guardians are good people after all and becomes less of a jackass throughout the movie. She ends up parting with Star-Lord with respect, but ends up finding her place with the Ravagers. Nice little callback for Stakar Ogord and most of his crew, for sure! It's a neat way to tie off this loose end, especially since Gamora's actress is one of the ones that are confirmed to be done with her involvement with the MCU. I honestly must say that I didn't really care about Gamora all that much throughout this movie, but she did get ample screentime to send her off. 

And then we have the secondary characters -- Drax, Mantis, Nebula, and Groot. Groot basically Groots around the movie with a new buff design, which is nice because I wasn't a fan of the spindly twerp in Endgame. Groot provides some of the movie's more spectacular effects, like Kaiju Groot, or the scene where he unfurls like a dozen guns (that shows up a lot in the trailer), or the tree-wings, or scuttling around as a head... he also speaks, at the end, "I love you guys", which... had to be explained as the audience being 'close enough' to Groot to understand him. Okay, sure.

Drax is an interesting character because despite his major relevance and rivalry with Thanos in the comics, the vast reduction of that rivalry and the 'built to be a weapon' thing had reduced Drax to being mostly either a brute or the butt of 'can't understand metaphors' jokes. And since the 'brute' is never going to be the one that defeats the bad guy, Drax is saddled with being one of the guys that usually gets taken out first in a fight. This movie kind of tries to build up on what Drax had in the first two Guardians movies and Christmas Special, highlighting how Drax, despite his gruff, bloodthirsty nature, is first and foremost a 'dad'. We get an honestly rather heartbreaking scene when Drax sounded absolutely hurt when he realized what a burden Nebula and even Mantis view him. At the end of the movie, Drax ends up staying behind in Knowhere to protect the children, and... it's not as satisfying as some of the other Guardians, but it's an okay end to this character's story. 

Mantis gets a lot more development here, and again, a lot of it has to do with her rising from being 'the weird feelings girl'. She gets a lot of fun scenes and lines as usual ("VIOLENT RAGE!"), and most of her conflict comes from her fight with Nebula, where Nebula gets pissed off when Mantis fucks up one too many times, and really downplays Mantis's usefulness to the team. And I don't know, Mantis causing VIOLENT RAGE and 'you're a kitty cat!' on random soldiers seems useful as shit. But Mantis's true strength is how much she understands people -- she spends most of the movie trying to get Peter to open up about his problems, she is the most defensive and sympathetic with Drax, and later on her big moment is to understand that the Abilisks sent to attack them are just afraid. Mantis also leaves the team at the end of the movie, to 'discover herself', realizing that she's just been following leader after leader -- first Ego, then the Guardians, and somehow this is a very natural development for her character that I didn't see coming.

And Nebula... Nebula's weird. She basically ends up as the de facto responsible adult in the team since Peter's drunk and Rocket's in a coma for most of the movie, and her frustration is palpable. Her story is a bit harder to pinpoint, but it really is nice to see her being integrated seamlessly into the family unit, even if it's as a long-suffering big sister. Having spent most of the offscreen Endgame timeskip with Rocket, I do love just how protective Nebula is of Rocket, and how she even cries at the news that Rocket is fine. There's a nice bit of message about families, too, with Nebula never really discarding Gamora, but also reminding her and putting her in place because she's not willing to give up one family for another. At the end, Nebula basically becomes the governor of Knowhere, which... I really do think that she's probably the one most suited to continue hanging out with Rocket and Groot with the Guardians, but seeing her in a non-combative role after spending her entire MCU career as a weapon pointed at others is nice. 

I didn't really realize it, too, but I do really like that the movie also deconstructs the idea of a 'yolo' team, with the lack of communication between the characters leading to members of their team mistakenly taking risks that they shouldn't -- like Nebula, Drax and Mantis entering the High Evolutionary's ship; Rocket never informing people about the chip in him; Peter being drunk when Adam attacked, Drax and Mantis leaving their post without telling anyone... again, pretty fun stuff, and I do like that the movie does kind of end with all the characters getting something nice to show and 'redeem' themselves. 

And then we have the side-characters! This review is already longer than I intended it to be, but Kraglin and Cosmo, the honourary Guardians, do get a bit to show for themselves. Kraglin goes through a mini-arc of being pissed off at being useless and being unable to use Yondu's arrow, until the climax where Yondu's ghost speaks to him and he finally graduates to being useful. (Driving Knowhere, the head of a goddamn Celestial, to attack the High Evolutionary's ship is also cool). Cosmo gets a bit of a running gag about being angry with Kraglin for the 'bad dog' remark, but otherwise basically fills a similar niche as Groot, being a fun character with a one-note personality and a unique design. Oh, the two of them get to kill one of the two most prominent Hellspawn monsters, which is nice. 

And Adam Warlock... yeah. Promotional material made him up to be super-relevant until the trailers started to switch to the High Evolutionary, and Adam Warlock is a bizarre character to include now that he's no longer connected to Thanos. It is kind of interesting that the movie makes the Sovereign (and Adam, by extension) into being a creation of the High Evolutionary, which is a weird retcon that seems just possible enough considering how minor they are. Adam Warlock himself is basically a big manchild baby who is given Superman powers, and that fight with the Guardians in the beginning of the movie is amazing. 

However, Adam's mother, Ayesha, gets killed almost offhandedly when the High Evolutionary blew up Counter-Earth, and it's kind of a shame, honestly, that Adam's just confused or knocked out for most of the third act. He's just this weird wild card that's fighting everyone until our heroes rescue him, he sees the camaraderie among them, and decides to fly out in the climax to rescue Star-Lord from freezing to death in space. And... I dunno. With Adam and Rocket both having very similar backstories, I really thought that there would be more, but Adam barely interacts with the heroes and he's easily the weakest part of the movie in my opinion. I don't think he's quite as shoehorned in as, oh, America Chavez was, but I would definitely think that the movie would be a much tighter-paced affair without him. There were certainly ways to make him feel more relevant -- either by making him work more closely with High Evolutionary, or to have his redemption tied more to talking with Rocket or someone... but as it is, Adam feels as disjointed as Mantis originally was in GOTG 2. 

Anyway, the movie itself is a rather visual delight. There are a lot of great action scenes, like the Guardians-vs-Adam scene, the depictions of Counter-Earth exploding, Nebula's new super-tech arm, Star-Lord and Groot attacking the scientists, the nasty giant flesh space station of Orgocorp, the hallway battle against hideous giant monsters, Knowhere arriving from the hell out of nowhere, the showcases of High Evolutionary creating big gravity explosions... and, of course, the jokes land and are done rather well. The movie's ending does drag on a bit too long with the dance numbers, but if there's an MCU property that gets a free pass for dance numbers, it's Guardians of the Galaxy. 

And where do we go from here? Well, the movie does provide a 'retirement' exit for Star-Lord (on Earth), Gamora (with the Ravagers), Mantis (off on her own), Drax and Nebula (both in Knowhere), while leaving the door open for them to return. The credits does insist that Star-Lord, at least, will show up down the line, though I suppose it's mostly an actor-contract thing. I do appreciate that their stories were at least wrapped up beforehand, though! And then we get Rocket ascending to the leader of a brand-new Guardians team, which is a pretty organic way to do the 'turning of the guard' thing that I didn't necessarily think any of the Avengers movie really got right. It's also a nice movie that doesn't rely too much on a cheap death to 'close out' the franchise, which I was actually somewhat surprised about. 

Anyway, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would, though admittedly a huge factor is due to the already pre-established universe and continuity behind them. It's not a perfect ending, but as a movie that tells the story of Rocket and still manages to deliver satisfying stories for most of the cast, it's a fun one to watch! 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
  
• 
  The first post-credits scene shows Rocket Raccoon leading the brand-new incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy, saving a village from a stampede of alien beasts -- revealing that the new lineup consists of Groot (in an even larger form), Kraglin, Cosmo, Adam Warlock and one of the rescued kids, Phyla.
• The final post-credits scene has Peter Quill hang out with Jason and complain about their neighbour, while reading about a newspaper about Kevin Bacon's alien abduction, which happened in the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special. 
• Past Movies Continuity:
• Rocket's backstory is alluded to briefly in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie when he mentions being experimented on to Peter, and later flips out at Drax and saying that 'everyone's lost people', and how the Nova Corps are able to identify him as Subject 89P13. In addition, he has always been extremely violent at anyone identifying him as a 'raccoon'. 
• The Sovereign race, Stakar's group of Ravagers, as well as the Abilisks, return from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. Adam Warlock was 'activated' in the post-credits scene of that movie as well. 
• Peter and Mantis being revealed to be siblings, as well as the aforementioned Kevin Bacon incident, happened in the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special. The Zarg-nut joke between Drax and Mantis also originated there. 
• The events surrounding Gamora's death, as well as Star-Lord's often-mocked 'fuck-up' with Thanos, happened in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
• Recurring background character Howard the Duck, the Broker from Guardians of the Galaxy, and the rockstar from Christmas Special, are seen playing cards with Cosmo and Kraglin. 
• Knowhere is finally identified as the 'head of a god' -- I don't remember if the term Celestial is used, but Knowhere is basically the same type of being as the Celestials from Eternals. 
• Thor's short tenure among the Guardians, seen in Thor: Love and Thunder, is noted in the credits where he has a cameo. Star-Lord also paraphrases Thor's line about how the 'galaxy needs its guardians'. 
• Rocket plays 'Come and Get Your Love' in the post-credits scene as the New Guardians charge into battle, which references the now-iconic introduction of Star-Lord in the first Guardians movie. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: As with most Guardians movies, everyone's 'superhero codenames' are their real names. Special case goes to High Evolutionary, who becomes an alien and loses his human alter-ego (like Drax); and Rocket Raccoon, who finally and epically adds the 'Raccoon' part of his comic-book counterpart. Previously, he has only been called as 'Rocket' in-universe.
• Favourite Action Scene: Undoubtedly the original fight with Adam Warlock, spanning across Knowhere and showing off the powers of the existing lineup of the Guardians well. Again, I especially appreciate the choreography here and how much they really built up Adam Warlock as essentially a Superman/Vision/Ikaris-type superhuman. Love the new showcases for Nebula and Groot's "power-ups", too. 
• The hallway battle with the full roster of the Guardians fighting against the mutant animals is very cool, too!
• Funniest Line: "I will train it in the ways of the Sovereign... I will train it not to do that." The joke with Peter seriously considering hitting it off with Nebula is also hilarious. 
• Discounting pre-Disney+ TV shows, this movie features the MCU's first uncensored f-bomb... when Peter tells Nebula to "open the fucking door" to the car. Not even in an emotionally intense moment, just for a gag!
• Phyla is the MCU's adaptation of Phyla-Vell, the daughter of the Kree Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) in the comics. 
• Lylla, Teefs and Floor are a reference to Rocket Raccoon's supporting cast from the comics -- Lylla, Wal Rus and Blackjack O'Hare. Out of the three, though, only Lylla really has anything to do with her comic counterpart, with Teefs and Floor having minimal resemblance to their counterparts other than their animal species. 
• The Guardians' blue-and-red colour scheme is taken from the uniforms given to the Guardians in the original run that inspired these characters, right down to the insignias.
• The Guardians flew Knowhere into the middle of the battle similar to the climax of one of the Abnett/Lanning comics that inspired the film's version of the Guardians. 
• Groot's "kaiju" form resembles how Groot looks in the comics before the MCU essentially revised his appearance, which is a much more monstrous tree-monster -- particularly with the jagged 'crown'.
• Stakar's space helmet and the aura around it very much resembles his 'Starhawk' getup from the comics. 
• The High Evolutionary corrects Rocket's accent from British English to American English, which is probably a reference to how outside of the MCU, Rocket is often shown to have a thick Cockney accent. 
• 'Jason' is the name of Peter's father in the comics. Since the movie version changed this to Ego, Jason got shuffled into being Peter's grandfather instead.