"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" Fails to Save Marvel from Itself
In which I also rant about the tragic state of the MCU.
It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has lately been in something in something of a rut, and by rut I mean never-ending parade of soulless media products meant to satisfy Bob Iger and his uber-rich media kings. (Speaking of uber-rich media kings: have you seen Succession?1) The MCU has struggled mightily to find a guiding principle for itself ever since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which concluded the “Infinity Saga” series of films that began with 2008’s Iron Man. The thing that marked that eleven-year period was propulsiveness: the sense that all these characters and storylines were actually building towards something. This is something that the MCU of recent years has noticeably lacked. Who cares about Black Widow, a prequel for a dead character that nobody asked for? Who cares about Spider-Man: No Way Home, a non-film intended to extract dollars directly out of our brain’s numbing nostalgia centers?2 Who, for the love of all things holy, cares about a fourth goddamn Thor movie? (And don’t get me started on fucking Quantumania.)
If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you’ll know that I’ve been on the Marvel hate-train for a little while now. But as someone who grew up with this franchise from a young age, I’ve been holding out hope, no more so than for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the conclusion to an MCU sub-franchise that always felt like it played by its own rules. The Guardians films, written and directed by James Gunn, were always outliers to other Marvel superhero stories in that they told stories not about superpowered gods with godly issues, but about broken characters finding solace in each other. There was the occasional planet-colliding mayhem, yes, but what was great about these weirdo space operas was that their interest in action never superseded their interest in character. You could feel the emotions behind all the CGI combat.
The most shocking thing about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a truly terrible movie, is that all of this is still more or less true. The characters are still their charming selves, with the smarmy Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) leading his ragtag group comprised of Rocket Raccoon (a CGI creation voiced by Bradley Cooper), the sweet-at-heart Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), angsty half-robot Nebula (Karen Gillan), superpowered empath Mantis (Pom Klementieff), and kindly tree-thing Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel). Zoe Saldaña’s Gamora also returns from previous entries, though in a state of amnesia after having died and been reborn in an alternate timeline. (Yes, that sentence is stupid and confusing. Did I mention that this is the thirty-second movie in the MCU?) The narrative, which uses Rocket’s backstory as a catalyst for a tale of redemption and found families, is thematically appropriate for the misfit toy-obsessed Guardians films. The action is punchy, the acting quippy, and most importantly, there are actual stakes.
Yet for all that, Guardians Vol. 3 often feels as shallow and ham-fisted as a bad Hallmark movie. You wouldn’t know it from the film’s impressive opening sequence, however, which shimmers. We watch as Rocket wanders around the Guardians HQ, passing by the various members of the team setting up their new home while listening to Radiohead’s acoustic version of “Creep”—one of many suitably moody needle drops throughout the film. He soon finds Quill passed out in a bout of drunken sadness at having lost his love-to-be Gamora, which segues into a beautifully morose opening title card in which the Guardians carry a passed-out Quill over Thom Yorke’s soaring vocals. It’s a non-action set piece that captures everything the Guardians films do at their best: sad, broken characters bumbling around each other in genuinely sympathetic ways.
All the emotion of this staging sequence flies out the window in the next scene. The energy-blasting superhuman character Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) appears from the sky and flies in on the Guardians HQ on a mission to capture Rocket. The Guardians fight him off, but Rocket is left critically injured, leading to the revelation that the key to saving Rocket’s life lies with The High Evolutionary (an exceptionally unhinged Chukwudi Iwuji), a scientist with a god-complex intent on creating a society of perfect creatures. His cruel methods involve animal experimentation and torture, and as it turns out, Rocket was one of his first subjects. The rest of Guardians Vol. 3 plays out by alternating between flashbacks of Rocket’s traumatic past with The High Evolutionary and the Guardians’ present attempts to save him.
None of this setup necessarily implies bad writing, and in fact much of it is fantastically expressive, particularly the digital animation of Rocket as a sad-eyed young raccoon. Yet Guardians Vol. 3 quickly descends into a bumbling mess of clichés and bad dialogue, with a script intent on extracting tears from your eyes with guilt-tripping tactics typically reserved for movies about dead dogs. This sin is felt particularly in the flashbacks to Rocket’s past, where we witness him bonding with a number of other animal friends who have been similarly deformed by The High Evolutionary. They’re meant to engender Toy Story levels of misfit sympathy, yet the sappiness of their dialogue (the phrase “It’s good to have friends!” is a motif repeated unironically throughout the film) keeps them from feeling like anything other than manipulative creations.
The present-tense story with the Guardians doesn’t fare much better. Their quest to save Rocket from The High Evolutionary isn’t tied to their characterization in any meaningful way. The question of Peter’s romance with Gamora is hinted at occasionally, but is never developed, proving that any possibility for narrative growth died with the Guardians Vol. 2. The relationship between Drax and Mantis is an endearing one, but ends up similarly purposeless. And as for Nebula: What was her function in this story again?
All of this utterly baffles me. It doesn’t make sense! Gunn has a proven track record for writing and directing the Guardians franchise with wit and verve, yet fails here to bring an ounce of that same charisma to the final film in the trilogy. At least his technical talents remain untouched. His capacity for virtuosic action set pieces (made in conjunction with director of photography Henry Braham) and willingness to explore strange sci-fi otherworlds (the vibrant production design by Beth Mickle feels decidedly un-MCU) are on full display here, as in one sequence where the Guardians, in spacesuits that encompass each color in the rainbow, descend on a planetoid that appears to have been constructed entirely out of human flesh. It’s weird and tactile, and it helps make an otherwise intolerable experience at least mildly compelling.
What happened? Was Gunn just too swept up in saccharine sympathy that he forgot to make a functional film? The film has such an overabundance of characters and plot points that they end up abandoned and purposeless, much like the Guardians themselves. This is especially the case with Adam Warlock, an important character in the comics who can’t find any reason to exist here beyond relishing in his gold-skinned makeup and pushing the plot forward. Gamora’s character is similarly adrift, left wobbly in an alternate-timeline amnesiac story that lacks potent emotion. (We do get a fun Sly Stallone cameo out this mess, though. His ragtag machismo feels oddly appropriate for this series.)
So, yes, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an abject failure, but what fascinates me is that its failures are not the same as other MCU travesties. Despite this film’s numerous flaws, Guardians Vol. 3 has a veritable soul—it has a raison d’être that can almost never be applied to films like Love and Thunder or No Way Home. The characters in Gunn’s films exist with purpose and care, a fact that you can see most plainly the film’s performances. They ring with a surprising emotionality: When Peter Quill cries out desperately for his dying friend, when Rocket screams in anguish at a horrific loss, when The High Evolutionary takes becomes filled with rage at the threat someone poses to his empire—in each and every instance, you feel it, because the actors themselves feel it too. They lend the film a veritable soul.
When Gunn was briefly fired from Disney after the resurfacing of some offensive tweets, each member of the Guardians cast came to his defense, threatening to leave the film unless he was reinstated. It was strong sign in favor of Gunn’s competency, but more importatly, it showed how much these actors cared for this oddball franchise. For these reasons, I find it hard to be as cynical here as with other MCU films. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 fails to achieve even an inkling of the artistic success of its predecessors, but that’s not something to blame on Marvel, on Disney, on all the other corporate nonsense that typically bogs down our multiplexes. For better or worse, this is the movie James Gunn wanted to make. It pains me to say this, but that might even be something to celebrate.
Since this post is going out on Tuesday, I’ll probably have my Succession recap out by Thursday (for those that happen to care).
I am contractually obligated to admit that I am in the minority with this opinion. I am also contractually obligated to remind you that this movie still sucks.