GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 3 - A Review

These are not the vibes of a happy family.
(To be fair though, what family likes wearing matching outfits?)

Rating: ⭐⭐ 1/2

What's the best way to say goodbye to family? There's not really a right way. There are plenty of wrong ways. Finales are difficult and stressful. And maybe that's how we ended up here. Maybe the pressure was too great.  For even though Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 has been marketed as a farewell to our plucky space defenders, it doesn't feel like anything is ending. Not substantially, anyways. Sure, writer/director James Gunn is heading off to run DC and make a Superman movie. And Dave Bautista has publicly declared that he has outgrown Drax. So the lineup may change, but the brand will probably carry on. That shouldn't be surprising. The MCU is a paradox, as obsessed with goodbyes as they are expanding their roster and keeping every option on the table. As a result Vol. 3 is like a conversation with a relative who doesn't know how to hang up: You were happy to chat, but there are no more topics to cover and the platitudes are starting to grate. And in this allegory, they've kept you on the line for two and a half hours.

Let's stick with the family phone call analogy, because Vol. 3 has some very straightforward information to deliver, but drags it all out for too long, with semi-interesting asides and lots of side characters who - while colorful and interesting in their own right - have no bearing on the original story. As you drift along, overwhelmed but confident you know where it's all going to end, you may start to feel like this family is bad for each other. The impression left is that if they weren't constantly lobbing affirmations at each other, they'd be throwing fists. And that's why they called you.

When the film opens, our heroes are in a gloomy way (confusing considering the merriment on display in last year's superb Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special... Maybe they're one of those fake it through Christmas families). They've settled into their new headquarters, but no one seems all that happy and team leader(?) Quill (the omnipresent Chris Pratt) is drunk and sad, seemingly spiraling due to the loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) back in Avengers: Infinity War. (I thought we were past this. There's still a Gamora running in the same circles... So maybe they'll figure it out. Whatever.) But that nonsense takes a back seat to some new nonsense almost immediately. A solid-gold super named Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) attacks Rocket (the technologically advanced humanoid raccoon-in-denial voiced by Bradley Cooper), critically injuring him before being driven away by the rest of the team. Something in Rocket's experimental upgrades prevents him from being fixed with space medicine, leading the team on a quest across the stars to the mad scientist who made him this way.

And that setup really does carry through the whole film. Our found family bickers and blunders from planet to planet looking for info and keys and living god complex the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Owuji, who you may recognize from Gunn's last superhero project, the HBO series Peacemaker). The H.E. is another in a long line of cruel and unfeeling genius villains, but he brings enough menace and clarity of vision to the table to stand out: he's just going to keep tinkering with life until he can produce the perfect world. He may have to destroy billions of lives in the process, but man's got goals. (He's also the one who sent the shiny Will Poulter to retrieve Rocket, a key ingredient to his scheme.) In flashbacks, we finally get the backstory Rocket has been reluctant to share for all these years, as he is taken as a cub and experimented on by the High Evolutionary. He is caged with three other experiments (an otter, a rabbit, and a walrus) who form a tight and obviously doomed familial friendship. These segments are the most effective in the film. Upsetting and manipulative, and the less I say about it the better (except this: the PG-13 rating is stretched thin here; keep tabs on your young ones and the more sensitive in your group, because these scenes are brutal) but at least it makes you feel something. Curious for a story that is so determined to deliver a feeling of closure.

But closure is messy. And closure means letting go. And that really is the key issue here. This group has so much trauma in its past that they're desperate to avoid change, afraid to let anyone go. They'd almost rather destroy themselves than do something different. Which is sweet and sad and intermittently compelling. But it also feels inadvertently (and glaringly) like a parable about Marvel. And/or James Gunn. They've gone too far down a familiar trail, hesitant to forge a new path. So it ends up trudging towards a finish line that feels more like a mirage. Exhausting us and its characters along the way.

Is this the last we'll see of the Guardians? Probably not. But maybe it's the last time we'll see them together like this. And that's fine. The characters still work, they just need to strike out on their own. Nebula (Karen Gillan) especially has had such an incredible arc, going from sidekick villain to group matriarch, and she deserves a break. Bradley Cooper and Sean Gunn (who also plays the underutilized Kraglin) have given such soul to Rocket that honestly at this point he could slide into the Tony Stark role that's still vacant in the MCU without much effort. I don't know if any of the actors from this series are going to be reprising their roles again, but like last year's similarly messy Thor: Love and Thunder, they're all left in a place where they could do something exciting and new. It might just come down to whether Disney is willing to let them.