When the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” film was released in 2014, it felt like a breath of fresh air among superhero blockbusters at the time. In the wake of the early Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Dark Knight Trilogy’s success, superhero films were taking themselves way too seriously. Even movies that leaned more into comedy like the Iron Man films or “The Avengers” still got serious when the stakes got high enough. So when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out and held a dance-off in the middle of its big climactic battle before gracefully resolving some of the main character’s childhood trauma, it felt refreshing to see a superhero film that could both not take itself too seriously and still nail the emotional moments.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” feels like it should work just as well as the first two. All the pieces are there: the pop soundtrack that has now extended into 90s/00s songs, the goofy humor, and the sincerity with which it treats its dramatic moments. The film isn’t doing anything radically different from its predecessors, and yet it isn’t nearly as successful as those first two. The film’s style has grown stale. Thanks to years of the larger franchise taking some of the best aspects of the Guardians movies and applying them (with diminishing returns) to other properties — like the dreadful Taika Waititi-led Thor films — the Guardians films no longer feel as fresh as they once did.
This subseries within the MCU has always worked in the past because it feels detached from the main series. Yes, there are connections to Thanos and infinity stones, but for the most part, you can go into these films with no knowledge of any other Marvel property and follow what’s happening. They feel self-contained, and that is partly why the films work better than most of Marvel’s output. The “Guardians” series never feels like it’s having to juggle too much to keep up with the rest of the franchise. It can simply focus on the story at hand.
“Vol. 3,” does not have that luxury. There hasn’t been a Guardians film in six years, but the characters have appeared in a number of other films since then — most notably “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” where major character moments happen that this sequel now has to deal with. All the legwork that the first two “Guardians” films did in building Peter (Chris Pratt) and Gamora’s (Zoe Saldana) relationship was tossed out the window by someone other than James Gunn, who is now left to pick up the pieces and retread similar story beats hit in previous films.
On top of that, “Vol. 3” struggles under the weight of having to tie up all the loose ends of this series, needing to give closure to each member of its ever-growing ensemble, and rushing to give a big climax to each of their storylines. This leads to a maddening moment at the end of the film where Peter, who has been shoved to the side to redo his romance with the new Gamora for most of the runtime, gets a big heroic moment of sacrifice when the group is trying to save kidnapped children and animals from the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Ijudi). He appears to freeze to death in space before immediately being saved by Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a character that the audience hardly cares about because he’s barely been in the film. There really was no way to make this moment work. As it is in the film, the moment feels cheap and derivative of a sequence earlier when Rocket (Bradley Cooper) also almost dies before being saved at the last second. But, if Gunn really had wanted to take a risk and kill Peter off, the moment wouldn’t have held much weight because Peter had been an afterthought for the last two and a half hours.
Tonally, “Vol. 3” can’t find the right balance between the serious and humorous in the same way the previous two installments did. Despite some genuinely heartwrenching moments from Rocket’s backstory, the rest of the film can’t match the same highs, so those overwhelmingly dramatic moments feel detached from everything else. Specifically, there is a moment of violence during one flashback — where all of Rocket’s friends are murdered and he tears the High Evolutionary’s face off — that is so much more grim and brutal than anything else in the Marvel franchise that it seems like it belongs in a completely different series. I almost wish the entire film had been like that if only to get something completely different than what we’re used to with the MCU. Instead, it clashes with the generally lighter tone of the rest of the film.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” is able to stick out among the rest of the cut-and-paste Marvel assembly line. Gunn’s filmmaking style, though it does have some limitations (the action sequence direction in this is particularly weak), is at least unique enough to feel like this subseries of films is still worth seeing. But the final part of this trilogy remains a mess, with clashing tones, character beats that feel unearned, and an inability to deal with storylines given to it by other non-Guardians films. It’s a disappointing end to a series that has typically been able to overcome the creative box that the Marvel franchise puts its films in.
