His face came off?!? It's a mask...
Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2023
#13 : Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3
This is how you say goodbye. For years, we’ve been awaiting James Gunn’s final farewell to the intergalactic A-holes he transformed into household names a decade ago – and it was worth every second. Tonally, Guardians 3 is a brilliant balancing act: it’s deeper, darker, sadder than any of the previous outings of Star Lord and friends, containing some of the most upsetting material in the MCU; and yet, it’s still the colourful, cosmic Guardians we know and love, off on one last adventure together to save Rocket Raccoon. For a while now, it’s been clear that the misanthropic rodent was the character Gunn most connected with – and here he becomes the narrative drive, hovering between life and death as the circumstances of his creation are unearthed. Beyond the incredibly emotional performances and killer needle-drops (from the ‘Creep’ opening, to the ‘Dog Days Are Over’ finale), Guardians 3 also boasts the best action of Gunn’s career in the ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn’ corridor fight. Any chance of an encore?
From 2014 to 2019, Marvel went on quite the run and produced a fine set of films, many of which I enjoyed greatly (I even went to an actual cinema to watch Infinity War and Endgame). Amongst these, they also produced Guardians Of The Galaxy Volumes 1 and 2, both of which are perfectly watchable but also perfectly forgettable (particularly the second one) so I really wasn't convinced that anyone was crying out for Volume 3. It got good reviews though, so I I obviously succumbed (even before I was made to watch it by Empire).
And you know what? I liked it. It's got considerably more depth and emotion to it than I think anyone was expecting from a raccoon's life story - although I guess there's an argument that Rocket isn't just your average raccoon. It's all very complicated (probably unnecessarily so) and populated with a huge cast of characters but that kinda comes with the territory and is demanded by a certain type of fan - I'm just going to gloss over any sense of detail here because you've probably either already watched it or you're just never going to watch it.
I can't say I really watch Marvel films for the acting on display - everyone does an adequate job without necessarily standing out but I do think Bradley Cooper deserves a shout-out for his work as Rocket here. I'm also going to call out Karen Gillan, not specifically for this film but it does complete quite an interesting character arc that she's certainly portrayed well across multiple films.
The action is pretty much what you'd expect - you're either going to love it or not (I thought it was well done) and nothing I'm going to say will affect that. Which is probably pretty true for Marvel films as a whole - it probably won't surprise you to hear that The Guardian doesn't have this on their list. However, I would say that if you're generally a fan but avoided this because you didn't like the first two or Marvel's recent output, then maybe it's worth giving this a try - it's available to stream on Disney+ or to rent in all the usual places.
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