Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 Review
The MCU returns to its former prowess, with a fun, funny and emotionally powerful installment of our favorite wacky outer space heroes.
The Guardians gang are back! Quill (Chris Pratt) is devastated by his loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and the rest of the team are trying to hold it together. When Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) throws Rocket (Bradley Cooper) into a coma, however, the team has to travel across the Galaxy to track down a piece of code to save the deadly racoon - in the process, discovering the horrors perpetrated on the animal, by the nefarious High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji).
The beauty of James Gunn’s work with Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 (hereafter, GOTG3), is that he never shies away from the painful, tortuous and emotional. Sure, the movie may be overstuffed. Sure, some of Rocket’s old friends will give you nightmares by virtue of their likeness to Toy Story characters that traumatized you as a kid. But ultimately, Gunn succeeds where so many directors of the past few MCU films have failed, by engaging honestly and authentically with the material.
There’s witty quips all around here, and Chris Pratt is mercifully back in the Star Lord box that he seems to have drifted from as a side character in recent adventures. But the star of the show is Rocket Racoon, and the character (and voice actor Bradley Cooper) do a fantastic job of grounding the film and tugging on the heart strings.
Visually, the film continues the trend of the GOTG films - expansive and panoramic space sequences, coupled with gorgeous set design, crazy characters, and every colour imaginable. The music is also, as always with this franchise, on point; a hodgepodge of classic bangers.
All that said, the film is undoubtedly jam packed and does run long. It’s tough, at this stage of the MCU, to feel fresh and exciting again. At some point during this film, those familiar thoughts of ‘Oh, I know what’s going to happen now’ pop up. The movie plays by the rules, despite its claims of breaking them, and that remains the ultimate stumbling block in this cinematic universe.
