‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Is an Awkward Franchise Finale

The salad days may be over. With the arrival of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (in theaters May 5), yet another mini-franchise within the broader Avengers universe has reached its reported end, leaving precious little left of what was once a mighty empire. 

James Gunn’s film has been advertised as an ending, anyway, the wrap-up to an often winning adventure saga about a ragtag band of space marauders trying, in their messy way, to do good. The film feels more like a digression than a finale, though, a journey into one character’s origin that then hastily, just before the credits roll, tries to manage a sense of broader completion. 

As has become the sorry hallmark of post-Endgame Marvel, Vol. 3 is cluttered and overeager. The film—like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania before it—pedals furiously (and often fruitlessly) to whip up a spirit of clever invention that once seemed so effortless. At the same time, the film shoves the audience through the emotional wringer; half of Vol. 3 is an outright drama, heavy with themes of loss and terror. It’s an odd, lumbering patchwork of a film, occasionally fascinating but otherwise bloated and aimless. 

Perhaps some of that discordancy is owed to Gunn’s torn allegiances. He’s decamped to the D.C. corner of the superhero marketplace, where perhaps he is freer to explore his outre curiosities. (As evidenced, perhaps, by his recent Suicide Squad film.) In Vol. 3, Gunn seems to be reaching for that same allowance but within more rigid confines: the most interesting parts of the film are, for a Marvel movie, shockingly grim and grotesque, a nightmarish and pitiable vision of a spacebound Dr. Moreau’s horrible work. Gunn struggles to balance that horror with a flagship Disney brand’s signature whimsy and sentiment.

The introduction of a new character, Will Poulter’s Adam Warlock, also demands too much of Gunn’s attention. Gunn’s Guardians series may not continue on in its current form, but Marvel still intends to use this final film as a springboard for tentpoles to come. Thus there is Warlock, perfunctorily crammed into the action and distracting the film from its true focus. Gunn’s past Guardians movies did not have to march in quite the same studio lockstep, but Vol. 3 has stumbled into being in more desperate times. The days of digressive experimentation are gone; franchise-sustaining synergy is now the prime directive. 

Or maybe this is exactly the film Gunn would have made in any circumstance, and he’s just lost his touch. Whatever the reason, Vol. 3 is a pale imitator of its predecessors, sloppily plotted and mawkishly concerned with legacy. While sketchily fleshing out (quite literally) a new villain’s ecosystem, the film attempts to give its stalwart heroes their due: Chris Pratt’s half-human captain Peter Quill, the semi-reincarnated Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), lovable oaf Drax (Dave Bautista), empath waif Mantis (Pom Klementieff), stern cyborg Nebula (Karen Gillan). Each has a charming moment or two, but their development is hurried, tacked onto the film in an attempt at grandly summative closure. 

This film really belongs to Rocket (Bradley Cooper), the sentient raccoon creature who has always been good for a tough-guy wisecrack but here gets perhaps the most gothically tragic backstory of any Marvel movie character to date. He is not just a victim of mad-scientist experimentation, but born of it. In flashback scenes, we see how Rocket began at the hands of a megalomaniac called the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who traverses the galaxy on a quest to build a perfect civilization. What he has mostly created are dreadful human-animal-mechanical hybrids—squishing, clanking, miserable monsters who are, in the film’s richest moments, made deeply sympathetic testaments to human cruelty.