The Sunday Mail
Film Review
Tinashe Kusema
So much to unpack, yet so little time!
That was my biggest takeaway from Marvel’s latest offering “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3” (GOG Vol 3), the last instalment in what has been the Disney studio’s surprisingly best trilogy.
It has brought us one of the best sub-plot stories of the entire franchise and Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as a whole.
While we do expect to see Chris Pratt’s Star Lord potentially popping up here and there during the course of the MCU’s Phase Five and Six, sadly, the same cannot be said of the rest of the Guardians’ crew.
Yes, Dave Bautista (Drax), Zoe Saldana (Gamora) and Pom Klementieff (Mantis) have all expressed their desires to move on from Marvel, with their reasons being the desire to pursue other projects and their gripe with how Disney and Marvel handled their whole James Gunn debacle
I will not bore you with the particulars of Gunn’s “cancel culture” episode, suffice to say the renowned filmmaker got fired over some old tweets, only to be rehired.
The main assignment on his return was that he would get creative control of the third and final Guardians of the Galaxy movie, something most will argue is one of the key reasons behind the film’s success.
“GOG Vol 3” picks up soon after the events of “Avengers: Endgame” and the film’s holiday special last year, as the gang seems to have settled down at new headquarters on the planet Knowhere.
Four movies after its introduction, I still find “Knowhere” to be a funny name for a planet.
Anyway, the Guardians are soon confronted, or should I say attacked, by Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), who has been sent by the Sovereign to avenge what they deem as disrespect.
One of the members of the Guardians of the Galaxy gets mortally injured in the ensuing battle with Warlock, forcing the rest of the gang members to look into history as they try to save a friend.
The said member is Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). We get to know a little about his tragic history through flashback scenes.
Apparently, Rocket was once an ordinary raccoon that got kidnapped by insane scientists known as the High Evolutionary.
His goal was to eradicate violence from the universe and move, planet by planet, kidnapping creatures and experimenting on them so as to create hybrids for his utopia planet “Counter- Earth”.
Most of the creatures died during the mutation period, with Rocket being the only successful and surprisingly intelligent creature to undergo the process.
That was before he found out the High Revolutionary’s methods and ambition, after which Rocket escaped.
Rocket’s injury sets the two on a collision course.
The film stays true to the general theme and tone of the GOG movies.
The performances are right up there with any of the GOG movies, with the only difference being that almost the entire cast shows a lot of character development.
There are no egotistical and selfish criminals we met in the first movie, back in 2014.
Family is a huge running theme throughout the movie. It says a lot that a character as damaged and tragic as Karen Gillian’s Nebula understands the concept.
It is all about the little nuances when it comes to Nebula as she forms the nucleus of the group during this third and final instalment.
Unlike the rest of the crew that got blipped during Thanos’ snap, Nebula and Rocket had an extra five years to bond over their shared loss.
The result of this is that Rocket’s injury hits Nebula the hardest, and Gillian really sells it.
Kudos to everyone involved here.
Will Coulter’s main role in the movie is to provide comic relief, and the 30-year-old English actor turns out to be an odd yet inspired bit of casting. Warlock is released from his creation pod way too early, while Coulter spends most of his limited but memorable screen time acting like a toddler.
It is all too entertaining!
Another inspired bit of casting is Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary.
This is one of the villains that does not need layers of depth or great motives to stand out.
The guy was just insane, or evil for the sake of evil.
He is obsessed with eradicating violence from the universe. However, he does not hesitate to employ violence to achieve his goal. He is the kind of character that will destroy an entire planet and not lose sleep over it.
Iwuji leans into the character well.
