Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise has now been going for almost a decade, long enough for its star Chris Pratt to have fully grown into his hunky action-lead image and leave behind the puppyish comedy turn from TV’s Parks and Recreation that got him hired in the first place. With Pratt’s lovable hero Quill addicted to 70s/80s hits on his vintage Walkman, the franchise has also gone on long enough to reportedly trigger a massive global sales upturn in audio cassettes, although it’s an iPod we see in this film. And it’s been with us long enough for writer-director James Gunn to experience a complete cancelling-uncancelling cycle, fired and then forgiven for offensive tweets.
Now Guardians of the Galaxy has reached the threequel stage: overlong, yes, and finally reaching for an importance and emotional closure (perhaps inspired by Gunn’s own emotional corporate redemption) that it doesn’t quite encompass, while leaving the GOTG brand open for a next-gen reboot. But it’s still spectacular, spirited and often funny. We find the Guardians in a state of emotional disarray, with Quill pining for Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who was killed in Avengers: Infinity War but now exists as a time-travelled alt-self split from Quill and the group; she has no memory of their previous relationship and is now working with the Ravagers, led by Stakar Ogord (Sylvester Stallone).
A mysterious golden figure, Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) swoops in and unsuccessfully attempts to kidnap Rocket (Bradley Cooper), leaving him seriously injured and on life-support. Quill and the Guardians are astonished to discover that their raccoon pal actually has a vitally important data chip implanted into him, with a “kill switch” preventing remedial surgery. Rocket is actually a piece of IP, a bioform invented by the sinister High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) who had once been using him as part of his plan to develop a new post-earthling master race on Counter-Earth, or maybe a new planet entirely. Rocket turns out to be a genius whose vision the HE needs, working with his high priestess, Ayesha, in which role Elizabeth Debicki is very funny but very underused.
Now the whole group, including Groot (Vin Diesel), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Nebula (Karen Gillan), must journey to confront the High Evolutionary, for no initial reason other than to save Rocket’s life – but it soon becomes clear, inevitably, that what is at stake is the future of that galaxy that they’re there to guard. The scene stealer turns out to be the good-natured, beefy Drax, with Bautista showing us his comedy chops; it’s his character, apparently so violent and unsentimental, who heartwarmingly turns out to be a favourite with little kids – an idea going back to Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai.
The narrative importance of this (apparently) final movie episode is signalled partly by its hefty length – 20 minutes longer than Vol 2 and 28 minutes longer than Vol 1 – but the sense of an ending is, perhaps inevitably, undermined by the suspicion that the movie’s constituent characters are each simply going to be reshuffled into the Marvel Cinematic Universe at some stage in the future. Well, Gunn always brought energy and fun to his Guardians, and it’ll be sad to see them go.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is released on 4 May in Australia and 5 May in the US and UK.
