When the first Guardian of the Galaxy film burst chaotically and gleefully onto movie screens in 2014, it became immediately apparent that Marvel had a sense of humour, after all.
Of course, fighting dastardly evil villain’s from here on Earth and in realms both galactic and multiversal is a deadly serious job so it makes that by and large, the wisecracking and jocular jesting was kept to a dramatically sparse minimum.
But here in a film full of misfits and oddballs with hearts of gold and integrity to match, we got not only some fairly intense narrative punch but a storyline and characters who were as apt to quip and throw around witty bon mots as they were to take the fight to great evil.
It was refreshing change of pace that proved you could be a superhero and still make a difference in the universe and while it was still somewhat present in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), that film stumbled and fell a little bit, not really sticking the landing at all, and the brand felt a little tarnished by a film that wasn’t as adept as melding the serious and the silly.
Thankfully, on the final outing of this configuration of the Guardians, balance has been restored and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (GotG3) bounces back with force and fury and a gleeful sense of riotous abandon that still manages to wear its heart very much on its quirkly intense sleeve.
Functioning as a farewell of sorts, that seems like it’s going to be far more heart-shatteringly mortal than anyone was expecting – there are goodbyes, and there are GOODBYES soaked in tears and blood, and honestly there are times when it looks like the latter is going to win out (it doesn’t help that at one point one character of malevolent intent says “Everyone you love will be destroyed”) – GotG3 manages to make you laugh and feel all the feels, sometimes in the space of one incredibly meaningful and hilariously frenetic scene.
The plot revolves around a race to keep — SPOILER ALERT!!! — Rocket (Bradley Cooper) alive after he is injured when a mysteriously powerful golden being Adam warlock (Will Poulter) arrives in the Guardians’ HQ known as Knowhere, arrives to kidnap him and take him back, it emerges later, to Dr. Herbert Wyndham / The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji ) who is best described as deranged genius out to prove he can perfect and make life better (he’s the Big Bad of the piece and he is as sociopathically cruel as you’d expect; interestingly however he plays second fiddle for the most part to what’s happening to the Guardians themselves).
This encounter, which involves everyone on the team – Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) who enjoy an amusingly fractious friendship, Nebula (Karen Gillan), Groot (Vin Diesel), Cosmo the Spacedog (Maria Bakalova) and Kraglin Obfoneri (Sean Gunn) – fighting back against what appears to be an unstoppable foe, sets the scene for a desperate race across the galaxy to find a passcode which will allow Rocket, who as has been established previously was experimented on to turn him from an ordinary raccoon into a brilliantly sentient, more highly-evolved form of one, to be saved by conventional medical means.
The clock is ticking and ferociously so which lends a frantic emotionality to a story which is so intensely emotional at times, especially as we take some incredibly moving trips back to Rocket’s early days as a mutilated test subject of the High Evolutionary whose only friends are Teefs the Walrus (Asim Chaudry), Floor the Rabbit (Mikaela Hoover) and Rocket’s great love Lylla the Otter (Laura Barton), that as you gasping for breath and dabbing your teary eyes as much as you are laughing out loud.
It’s a breathtakingly audacious blend of the intensely sad and the quirkily, hilariously weird and it works an absolute treat, delivering up a film that knocks it out of the park in terms of character bonding and devotion to family while having a bundle of fun with all the attendant amiable fractiousness and dysfunctional silliness (case in point is Cosmo begging Kragline to rescind his designation of her as a “bad dog” to affectingly comedic effect).
It does this so well that in one scene when the High Evolutionary has decided to cold-bloodedly destroy his current version of the perfect world known as Counter-Earth – it’s far from perfect but he’s too far gone to see that – we are simultaneously horrified by death on a horrifyingly huge scale while amused by the efforts of the Guardians to try and save each other when it turns out some of them don’t need saving at all.
They might seem like two utterly incongruous elements that couldn’t possibly belong in the same film, let the one scene, but they work well together, exemplifying how meaningfully clever the writing and directing of James Gunn and why, whatever the tonal missteps of the second instalment, the final entry in the trilogy nails it to perfection in each and every scene.
Of course, the music has always been a valuable player in all the Guardians films, and GotG3 is no exception, serving up a fantastically good selection of tracks from the likes of Radiohead, Heart, Earth, Wind & Fire and the Beastie Boys, and most memorably Florence and the Machine whose “Dog Days” track, all buoyant celebration and ecstatic musical romping, makes for one of the finest Guardians‘ film scene accompaniment since ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” added some euphorically upbeat zest to the start of GotG2.
The damn near perfect marriage of thrilling plot, vibrantly affecting character moments, larger than life sci-fi oddities and brilliantly funny hilarity that works visually and in the snappily witty dialogue, GotG3 is an inspired romp across the stars that proves the good guys do finish first, that love, family and connection might just be the powerful things in the galaxy and that it is possible to feel a world within your soul and still laugh up a storm at the wackiness of it all.
As goodbyes go, it’s almost impossible to beat, proving once again that Marvel can crack a smile and that saving the galaxy can be as daffy as it is patently heartfelt and muscularly emotional.
And another clip for your previewing pleasure …