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

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

The MCU seems to truly be on the decline. Sure, it’s still the biggest film franchise in the game and chances are that’s gonna continue to be the case at least for the immediate future, but it seems clear now to me, and others, that its prime is over. It’s hard to think of a world where Marvel Studios isn’t churning out three enormous blockbusters every year. They’ve already planned out the exact release dates of their films for the next three years – will this continue forever? Who knows. Anyways, MCU films have definitely had way less impact post-pandemic than they once did; they’re just not hitting like they used to. Pretty much everything in Phase Four (Black Widow through Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) didn’t seem to make any huge dent in the cultural zeitgeist, save for Spider-Man: No Way Home. And now, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 is being essentially hailed as the movie that is helping to save the MCU after recent letdowns with audiences and critics such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. People are raving about this film, with some people saying it’s even up there with their favorite Marvel movies period, and yeah, it’s pretty good. I don’t know if it left as much of an impact on me as it seemed to do for other people, but definitely more so than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or even the Black Panther sequel. I do sorta see why everyone is going so crazy about this one, but if anything, it honestly makes me miss when I would walk away from new Marvel films having genuinely loved them. 

After a second installment in the Guardians series that hit all the right notes, it was time for a third film that could deliver essentially the same package (solid comedy, an interesting story, fun action/sci-fi sequences, and some sort of emotional punch) but wrapped just a little differently; something new altogether would be intriguing no doubt, but in 2023 the MCU seems slightly unclear of what direction it wants to go in. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 does, yes, center around the story of Rocket the Raccoon, delving into the origins of his character and what made him the way he is. Long story short, Rocket is the result of anthropomorphism experimentation done on animals by the company Orgocorp, who operate under the purpose of trying to build the perfect society. Unfortunately, not every animal experimented on by the company makes it out alive, and when Rocket nearly dies himself at the start of the film, his memories of his lost friends come back to him. The rest of the movie intertwines Rocket’s flashbacks with the rest of the Guardians who have to save Rocket’s life and thus defeat Orgocorp, the only people who have the power to disable his inner kill switch. It is the flashback scenes that are earning this movie its reputation of being sad, perhaps even too sad; countless people have reported being brought to tears by this film. If you’re someone who is very sensitive towards animal-related sad things (if you think Marley & Me is the most depressing movie of all time or feel like the ASPCA commercials are too disturbingly sad to be shown on television) then chances are you’re gonna think the third Guardians film is decently upsetting. This is not to say that I don’t find animal cruelty sad, because I do, but this movie just didn’t have me in tears like it seemed to for a lot of others. That being said, the emotional aspects of this film don’t feel forced, rather they do feel like a natural aspect of the story being told, and some of the shots of the animals and even human children locked in cages are jarring. 

I wish it felt like we actually spent more time with the Guardians themselves in this movie. The first two films almost have a “hangout” feel to them as you spend time with these characters and get to know them, but that element is sort of lost here. There are a bunch of random subplots that aren’t explored or even explained nearly enough in my opinion. Peter Quill is a bumbling alcoholic now? But only in like one scene? Admittedly, it took me a minute to remember everything that had happened the last time we saw these characters in Infinity War and Endgame, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s forgotten some of the complicated lore over these past few years; this movie does not do any favors for audience members who don’t remember the exact situation that the Guardians were left in at the end of those two Avengers films. I did remember that Gamora’s memory was wiped and she became estranged from the rest of the crew because of this, but now she’s back in Vol. 3 so that she can be unreasonably unlikeable and be part of an underbaked “patching it back together” subplot with Quill. Most of the other characters were fun to see again; I forgot how much I like Mantis and Drax, and even Nebula was way cooler than I remembered. The scenes of the Guardians adventuring together are nice though, and one scene in particular soundtracked by “In the Meantime” I particularly loved; it had just the right amount of science fiction coolness and somewhat existential wonder to make it a standout scene for me. Speaking of the soundtrack, it seems like the cohesion of the first two films’ soundtracks was more or less thrown out the window in favor of a more random-feeling playlist of rock tracks, ranging from The Flaming Lips to Faith No More to Bruce Springsteen to Florence + the Machine (shoutout to “San Fransisco” by the Mowgli’s, a soundtrack highlight I’m glad this movie put me onto). At times it does feel like James Gunn simply chose songs he was enjoying that day and threw them into the film, but almost all of the soundtrack is pretty good so I’m not even complaining. 

This movie is weird because it’s 150 minutes long but there’s so much stuff that I wish had been focused on more. I really enjoyed Rocket’s story and I’m honestly glad that was the core of the film, because I love when secondary characters become more fleshed out, but I honestly wish more time had been saved for some of the more “mundane” aspects, and maybe I’m alone in that. There’s a scene where the Guardians land on a planet and suddenly find themselves in a suburbia filled with timid animalistic humans who look like they were halfway through an Animorphs transition, and then they proceed to chill in one of their houses for a few minutes while sorting out details. I loved this small part of the film and if I had it my way, at least 30 minutes of the film would’ve seen the Guardians just milling about and making jokes in this suburban society. I sometimes find myself having this experience while watching genre films, imagining a movie where the action was excluded and instead the focus was simply on the interactions between characters in this world that had been built. I already feel like I need to see Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 again, because I kind of forget what 150 minutes all went towards. There was honestly way too much time spent with the somehow simultaneously boring and over-the-top villain, but I don’t feel like I can even remember two-and-a-half hours worth of plot points. That’s the thing about a lot of these Marvel movies, the “climax” starts at about minute 90 and doesn’t end for about another hour, allowing for like four different scenes that could be their own climaxes to occur, thus faking out the viewer (or at least this is my experience). Every scene in the last hour or so of the movie feels so grand and explosive that, surely, this must be the final battle, but no. There also needed to be way more Will Poulter, oh my God! Talk about an underused actor. There’s one specific shot of gold-faced Will Poulter triumphantly carrying a frozen-faced Chris Pratt through as they fly through space together that was easily the most bizarre and hilarious of the whole film; that type of energy was what needed to be coursing through this movie’s veins the entire runtime. 

I’ve pointed out my various complaints of this film over the course of my review but the truth is that I had a good time watching this. It’s true, this is one of the most genuinely fun MCU films in a while, and visually it looks way better than some of the company’s other more recent output. I definitely prefer the first two Guardians films over Vol. 3, but that doesn’t stop me from giving it like a B or maybe even a B+ as a grade. I would rather watch three more of these movies than (*checks the MCU release schedule for the next few years*) Thunderbolts or another (??) Fantastic Four attempt, although who knows, maybe those movies will be awesome and my words here will be rendered obsolete.