As I had said in my review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, while this series of movies may be a lot of silly fun, that movie was also surprisingly deep in its reference to trauma. Director James Gunn’s ability to blend silliness, violence and dark character history became that much more clear in Peacemaker, the HBO series about a neo-fascist jerkwad that became more and more meaningful as the story went on.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 starts from another dark place with ominous musical cues. It seems as though it’s going to look at Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) drinking himself into depression over losing Gamora (Zoe Saldana) who is still alive, but as the alternate-history Gamora who was still loyal to Thanos and joined the Ravagers after he died. But the focus is really on the life and history of Rocket (Bradley Cooper) who gets hunted by Warlock (Will Poulter), a bioengineered superman in service to The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji from Peacemaker). It turns out the Evolutionary is the one who “uplifted” Rocket from Earth raccoon stock, but did so with torture and implants, along with a bunch of other animals who were turned into misfit toys. Put in a coma by Warlock, Rocket remembers how he made deep friendships in the animal pens and also attracted the attention of his master when he figured out a genetic flaw in his newer creations. Once the Evolutionary integrates Rocket’s idea and improves his creations, he tells Rocket that he doesn’t need him and the other experiments on his new world, and plans to harvest his brain the next day. This of course, leads to tragedy, but Rocket escapes.
In the present, the Guardians realize there’s a code in Rocket’s cyberware that will kill him if they try using medical tech to heal his wounds, and so trace the code to the bio-fortress where the Evolutionary has his main genetic engineering business. This gets the Ravagers involved, which brings Gamora temporarily back into the team, even though she doesn’t care for Peter, and a certain amount of this movie is Peter coming to terms with that fact. In the process of saving Rocket, the Guardians find out just how ruthless and amoral The High Evolutionary is, and what the stakes for defeating him are.
Though there are quite a few scenes where it looks like someone is going to bite it, it is a spoiler to say that this movie is a happy ending for all of the main characters. But there is also a sad finality, as some of them decide to move on. Over the last couple of movies (including the hilarious Disney Plus ‘holiday special‘) the Guardians set up a real community in the “Knowhere” base, and the project has become a lot bigger than just five characters. It continues on. The characters continue on, but James Gunn has made it clear that this is his last Guardians movie and last project for Marvel Studios, after they jacked him around and fired him over politically incorrect social media posts he made back when social media was barely a thing. Now after Peacemaker, Gunn’s been given free rein to handle DC Comics’ movie line, and now social media is trying to cancel him because he decided to kill the Zack Snyder shared universe that wasn’t going anywhere to begin with and was probably going to be killed by DC anyway. While some of these fans don’t like Gunn’s quirks (like casting his wife and his brother a lot) he actually manages to combine the good humor and heart that are in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and were lacking in the DC Extended Universe with the violent action and dark themes that are lacking in the MCU and maybe a little too common in the DCEU.
So while some of the Snyder fans may bitch (and if there were that many of them, DC might not have done what it did), I’m looking forward to seeing what James Gunn will do with those comics characters, like maybe returning Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor or casting Dave Bautista as Solomon Grundy.