The Spoiler-Filled Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 Review
In her spoiler-free review from two weeks ago, Kathryn Chinetti gave Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 a 3 out of 5. I agree with many of her points, but I found them to be less objectionable than she did, and — spoiler — my rating will be much higher when I give it below. In this review I will be going full-on with spoilers, so be warned. After the break, when I explain why I think this movie may be the best of the James Gunn trilogy, there will be spoilers.
With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, James Gunn has made the most James Gunn movie he has yet crafted for Marvel Studios. In the previous two entries, it was clear that each movie was a Marvel movie made by Gunn. In this finale to his trilogy, he has made a James Gunn movie that happens to be a Marvel movie. It has Gunn’s trademark humor, albeit less of it than in each previous movie. It has Gunn’s trademark type of darkness, and much more than in any previous Guardians film.
What is that Gunn-specific darkness? It is darkness that drives characters toward a (somewhat) brighter future and is necessary for some great (or even slight) character development. It is Peacemaker’s terrible father and the death of his brother, which (spoiler) leads to the title character of the series coming to some level of resolution about who he is. It is the government corruption, torture of an alien intelligence, and eventual betrayal in The Suicide Squad that leads to (spoiler) the remaining squad members functioning as a real team and saving the Earth.
To be clear, Kat was right about how much Gunn leans into the darkness in Guardians Vol. 3, and the particularly disturbing type of darkness — animal cruelty. I had to think about it for a while before I realized that Gunn doesn’t ever really show us the kind of forced surgical torture that we know is happening to Rocket. The closest he comes to that is an extreme close-up of a bloody scalpel from Rocket’s perspective during one of the many flashbacks to Rocket’s early, terrible, history. In the other two scenes in which that torture is displayed, it is either just for a second (and again, mostly Rocket’s reaction to the pain) or shown as a small hologram recording of one of the sessions, mainly used to show Nebula’s and Peter’s horrified reaction.
What makes it seem like there are more scenes of that abuse is that we get a constant reminder of what Rocket and his cage mates Toofs, Floor and Lylla have all gone through, just by seeing the state they are in and the conditions they are kept in. Every second of those scenes, even when they are building up a wonderful friendship, is colored with the darkness of what has been done to all of them.
Don’t get me wrong — that kind of violence is something many people won’t be at all able to take. I can, without really trying, think of a couple of handfuls of friends and relatives who would absolutely leave the theater if they somehow went into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 unaware of the animal abuse. And that is a perfectly valid reaction. I can’t stand torture porn gore because it is so obviously extreme gore just for the sake of showing torture. It is, in my mind, the modern equivalent of the medieval crowds excitingly cheering on as someone is drawn and quartered. No thanks.
But enough about the animal abuse. Let’s talk about how Gunn uses that and many other story elements to drive nearly all the characters to incredibly satisfying growth arcs. Dave Bautista’s Drax gets to become a dad again, even if a surrogate dad to dozens of artificially created superbeings. Pom Klementieff’s Mantis comes to the realization that her entire life has been in service to someone else — even Drax — and decides to leave to find herself. Karen Gillan’s Nebula, Zoe Saldana’s Gamora and even Bradley Cooper’s Rocket have less affecting resolutions, but they still get to have them. And Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill gets to have the most affecting one of all — coming to the realization that both his Gamora is truly gone, and that he has been running from the pain of the death of his mother since he was 8 years old.
This performance is the best thing I’ve ever seen Chris Pratt do. It makes me believe he is an actual actor, not just another hunky Marvel Chris. Everyone in the cast does a stellar job, particularly Cooper, Klementieff and Bautista. I found the bickering relationship between Drax and Mantis in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special painful to watch. In this movie, the two actors make that seem much more like an antagonistic loving relationship than ever before. And Cooper’s portrayal of Rocket’s pain and fury comes through in his voice work more clearly than it ever has.
But hats off to Chikudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. It’s been said before by many others, but Iwudi plays his character as the most bluntly evil villain in all MCU history. Loki? An adopted kid with horrible self-esteem issues. Thanos? A deluded, megalomaniacal environmentalist with a terrible solution to a real problem. High Evolutionary? Someone with a god complex who thinks animal abuse and eugenics are the solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Imagine if Hitler and Mengele were one person and had nearly god-like super-science abilities. Also, full credit to Gunn for writing such an unapologetically evil villain.
The only thing that brings Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 down a bit for me is the almost wasted use of Will Poulter as Adam Warlock. Ryan George said it with way more humor in his recent Pitch Meeting YouTube video, but it seems like someone pointed out to Gunn that in Vol. 2 he strongly teased that Adam Warlock would be a character in Vol. 3, after the script was mostly written without him. Warlock is basically a comedic foil and clearly an afterthought. His character arc from antagonist to eventual member of the Guardians is so thin as to be a joke against the amazing character arcs of the primary cast. But I’ve been a big fan of Warlock since he was called Him in his first appearance in The Fantastic Four comics, and I loved what Roy Thomas and then Jim Starlin did with his character later on. So, I may be biased.
It is definitely not for everyone, but I still think Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the best of the trilogy so far, and probably the best MCU movie since Avengers: Endgame. I give Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Marvel Studios; PG-13; 2 hrs, 30 mins) a 4.5 out of 5.
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