Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

Quill Life

Guardians Of
The Galaxy Vol. 3
Directed by James Gunn
United States/Canada/New Zealand  
2023 Marvel
UK cinema release print

Warning: There’s a spoiler in here in terms of regular character's mortality rate... you might want to steer clear if you don’t want to know.

Okay... the gang’s all here, again, for the third ‘stand alone’ installment of Marvel’s cosmic adventurers, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. Well, I say ‘stand alone’ but, honestly, unless you’ve seen both Avengers Infinity War and Avengers End Game, you’re going to be totally lost on stuff like the relationship between Chris Pratt’s Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill character and Zoe Saldana’s Gamora. Quick recap for those who missed it... after half the Guardians were temporarily lost to the Thanos blip, before which Gamora was killed by her adopted father, a version of her character from an earlier timeline was split off into the current ‘real’ timeline but before a time when she gelled with the group and became Quill’s girlfriend.

Joining Pratt and Saldana are the regulars like Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, the brilliant Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Vin Diesel as Groot, Sean Gunn as Kraglin and, of course, the illustrious Karen Gillan as Gamora’s sister Nebula. Sylvester Stallone also returns in this one... and Will Pouter shows up as the long teased Adam Warlock character. They’ve also expanded the role of Cosmo... who everybody must realise (and it’s made even more implicit here) is the Marvel version of Laika, the first dog in space. She has a lot of good scenes in this one and I really enjoyed her character here.

And the whole film is... pretty good, actually.

My track record with the Guardians Of The Galaxy films is not so great. I kinda liked the first movie but, honestly, the second one was truly awful. I only properly warmed to them when they were absolutely great in Avengers Infinity War but, well, yeah, the less said about their Christmas special last year the better. I do have a review of that one but didn’t manage to get it up before the end of the 2022 Christmas season so, I’m holding that one for December this year. This one though is... pretty good. Not as good as thier Infinity War appearances but, of the three cinema released movies with their collective name in the title, I’d have to say this is easily the best one.

This one has a dark heart too, with an opening which leaves the Guardians in a tragic state of imbalance and going on a quest to try and save the life of Rocket, who is left in a coma. While he’s in that coma we get regular flashbacks to how he got from being a simple racoon from Earth to what he is now (think space vivisectionists). The film is full of the usual action, good dialogue and... yeah okay, the usual unfortunate needle dropped songs which show a certain taste on behalf of the production team that certainly doesn’t gel with my own, alas.

The stakes are high but, they’re not the usual ‘universe is in peril’ kind of stakes we usually see thrown at these characters. Instead, each of their missions as they occur are arrived at due to their personal jeopardy. They are all there for their friends in a way, due to Rocket’s back story, he couldn’t be. That being said, although the trailers teased Star Lord’s seemingly lifeless body being carried by Mantis (something which actually occurs pretty early on in the film’s running time), this film has none of the regular characters dying, despite the marketing saying this is the Guardian’s last outing... which I didn’t expect. I mean, they trailer teased it so it looks like we’d lose Peter Quill at some point... so I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be one the cards at all. But I was also expecting at least three of the other characters to die but, no, they’re all alive and well at the end and the actors are easily able to drop in en masse or individually in any future Marvel movies, should the wage packet be sufficiently convincing. Indeed the last of the post-credits scenes already stated that a certain character will definitely be returning at some point. so, yeah, there’s that.

All in all then, a short review for a movie with the only real problem* that, at two and a half hours, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 seems like it might have benefited from having a much leaner edit. But it’s just fine as it is and my favourite character here, by a country mile, was Cosmo (aka Laika) the Russian space dog. And, yes, for those who want to know, Howard The Duck gets another cameo in this one. 

* Actually, having slept on this review, I realise there is another BIG continuity problem with the film. Peter Quill left Earth with a boy and clearly hasn't kept up with Eath culture, as evidenced by him askeing Spider-Man if Footloose is still the greatest movie ever, in Avengers Infinity War. How come, then, he can throw an insult which includes a reference to Robocop, a film made long after he'd departed from Earth culture? Makes no sense! Bad writing.