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How much pathos can you wring out of a CGI raccoon? This is the central question of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. James Gunn returned for a third hurrah with the Guardians, and also a last hurrah. He’s off running DC now, and I assume we won’t get another movie with this group, based both on that and the way this film ends. At the very least, I imagine they will be on the backburner. First, though, like several MCU entrants before them, the Guardians got a third film in their own series.
In the grand scheme of third films in the MCU, Vol. 3 does well by itself. I enjoyed it. It’s overstuffed, but it doesn’t feel overstuffed. They did enough to make it feel fresh, and it had the Guardians feel. Some of that feels almost rote at this point, sure. Some of the needle drops felt perfunctory. And yet, I kind of wanted that perfunctory stuff. Otherwise, is it really a Guardians film from James Gunn?
Wisely, the film tied the villain to one of the main characters again, this time Rocket, whose back story we get in grim, unsparing detail. Well, to the extent detail can be grim and unsparing when it involves a bunch of talking CGI animals. That’s the thing about an overstuffed, swirling, comic book action movie. There were, like, maybe 100 children stuffed into cages and it could only sort of register with me because of how much these things churn and the comic book, superhero nature of it all. I’m not saying that, say, Rocket’s back story didn’t resonate. I’m just saying Gunn is only capable of so much dramatic heft in the midst of everything else.
The everything else has its hits and misses. You cannot pull on the thread of the villain’s main goal. Why would this “perfect species” madman just be like, “OK, let’s create animal people?” That’s what Dr. Moreau would do, but it genuinely makes no sense in terms of internal logic. It’s all about the image of humanistic animals living in suburbia. Gunn is definitely dedicated to weird imagery, for better or worse.
All in all, though, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a worthy, satisfactory send off to the series, and to Gunn’s work in the MCU. Sometimes, it’s better to get out while the getting is good. After all, there’s only so much pathos you can get out of a talking raccoon, and I think Gunn squeezed out every last drop of it.
