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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Movie Review

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a 2023 superhero film directed by James Gunn and starring Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper and Dave Bautista among others. It’s a terrific sequel.

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“Open the fucking door“

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Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Starlord must rally his team to defend the universe and protect Rocket, who is in a critical medical condition. This movie was so strong that it ended up being the only Marvel movie worth seeing in years. They haven’t released a film so powerful in a very long time. The first movie is my favorite MCU flick, and had the second one been stronger, the Guardians franchise would have easily been one of the greatest trilogies out there.

Unlike the previous two films, this third entry in the series is significantly darker for better and for worse. I missed the fun factor, but at least the humor was still there in many sequences in the second half in particular. The darker tone to Rocket’s origin story clashed with the more fun and silly escapades of the rest of the Guardians crew, but for the most part Gunn managed to pull this movie off surprisingly well. He was born to direct this particular franchise and his work on this movie was superb as he imbued it with so much heart and infectious energy.

I had a big issue with Chris Pratt’s acting in recent years as he seemed to have had enough of Starlord. Thankfully, he returned to his energetic self in the second half of this movie where he was both suave and very funny. His relationship with Gamora is wonderfully explored and it was quite moving as he tried to make her remember their past relationship.

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Drax and Mantis were both hilarious. They are the most magnetic duo from this team and I will certainly miss them. The two saying goodbye to each other in the end was quite sad. Mantis was both cute and funny while being inherently very likable here. Drax stole the show in terms of the humor as Bautista’s straight face while delivering ridiculous lines of dialogue never ceased to amuse me. His deadpan delivery is so on-point.

Nebula is also quite amusing at times and I loved her dynamic with everybody else from the team. Groot is more badass than cute in this installment, which was a nice change in pace. But let’s talk about Rocket, who is one of my favorites. His brutally tragic animal experimentation origin story has been hinted on before, but in this third entry it is finally fully explored, and the results are devastating. The animal cruelty on display here made the movie immensely difficult to watch at times, but this will undeniably prove to be a great message film for younger audiences that will hopefully inspire them to treat animals better.

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Rocket is so humanized in this movie that it was quite heartbreaking to watch. Him losing his friends in the backstory was so touching and his eventual realization of his origins was powerful as he saw the cute little raccoons embrace him in that adorable, heartfelt moment. High Evolutionary was a surprisingly solid villain. He did seem too similar in his goals to Thanos, but at least he was a menacing presence throughout. The actor playing him was very memorable. As for Adam Warlock, he was mostly underdeveloped and forgettable. He was teased a lot before this movie, but he ended up being only okay.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 features a plethora of terrific adventurous moments. That animal experiment planet was quite interesting and it seemed as if it came straight from ‘Sweet Tooth’. The world building is phenomenal and we get to see a couple of very cool places, making for such an epic space opera movie that trumps any Star Wars film in imagination alone. The visual effects are a huge improvement from all the previous Marvel movies in recent years as the film is bright and colorful while being highly immersive and incredibly realistic in creature designs and facial expressions. Rocket himself looked absolutely amazing.

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As is the case with most MCU movies, this one juggles too many things on its plate. It is a very long movie at two and a half hours, and although extremely entertaining throughout, it still felt somewhat chaotic and tonally jumbled. The dialogue and the humor are excellent, but even though the story is deeply emotional, two almost deaths/fake deaths in the span of one movie really bothered me. I wished that they had the balls to actually kill one of the main characters, but of course they couldn’t do it. Still, I did feel sad when the team broke up in the end and this trilogy, thus, felt surprisingly and admirably definite in its conclusion. It has its flaws, but this flick is easily in my top five Marvel movies to date.