Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 2023

I’m honestly pretty happy with the way this blog is going again this year. Less than a month into the year and I’m already 4 movies back in the game with 2 more MCU films to go to finish catching up, plus plenty of DC and other movies that have been released along the way. But since I’ve been sticking to my MCU catch up, I figured I’d go with the one that didn’t require any further homework as I’ve seen all the preceding movies that the Guardians have been in, but have not watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier which feels like it should be required viewing to help fill out the gaps for both Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. Whether or not I actually do the homework is yet to be decided. But anyway, I was excited to finally get around to finishing this Guardians trilogy, and with James Gunn having left to head DC, it’s likely the final end for the Guardians as a whole though at least some of the characters may still return. I feel like I saw nothing but warnings about this film if you happen to be an animal lover so I assumed it involved the fate of Rocket’s friends in his flashback scenes, it was still a sad moment but it helped that I was prepared. It did a lot of work to give a sense of finality to these characters and it worked well to flesh out Rocket’s overall journey.

The main crux of the story for this film is basically completing the story arc for Rocket, giving flashbacks to his past as he finally confronts it and moves towards the future. While he spends much of the first half of the movie out of commission with a mortal wound and cybernetic enhancements that disallow medical attention without the proprietary passkey, the movie intersperses several flashbacks of how he was created by the High Evolutionary and made friends with other cybernetically enhanced Earth animals. The flashbacks are touching despite the violent outcome, we get to see that he really did start out as an Earth raccoon which pays off well at the end of the movie when he finally embraces his backstory with the declaration that his name is Rocket Raccoon after multiple movies where he denies that he’s a racoon. The progression with the flashbacks work well with his initial surgery to making friends with the animals that look like they were created by Cid from Toy Story. The High Evolutionary himself was also a rather well done villain. The slow revelation from someone who seemingly wants to create a utopia for altruistic reasons that gradually descend into his narcissistic aim for his own credit for creating the utopia rather than the well-being of the creatures that live in it. He views his creations as objects and experiments rather than actual sentient life and he’s obsessed with 89P13 because he’s been the only creation that has had the ability to think creatively to invent and learn beyond what he has been taught. Something that’s shown early on when Rocket is able to understand a solution to a problem that the High Evolutionary has been having with his genetic experiments.

But there is more to this movie than just Rocket’s journey, though that is a heavy focus. There’s also the sub thread between Quill and Gamora. To refresh everyone’s memories, Gamora was killed in Infinity War and a version of Gamora from before she had met any of the Guardians was brought back into their timeline in Endgame, but because of that gap in personality, she has no interest in working with Peter or the Guardians and Peter has sunk into depression and alcohol while this Gamora has turned to become a part of the Ravagers, something that Quill doesn’t find out until roughly a third of the way into this movie. It’s honestly the weakest part of the movie as Peter is frustratingly hung up on trying to bring out the old Gamora from this current Gamora and she is much more like the child of Thanos. Her arc isn’t as bad as she does slowly and expectedly soften over the course of the movie, but it was rather annoying that Peter was practically blind to the fact that he can’t force the change in her personality, it had to come naturally. And in the end, she doesn’t stay with any of the Guardians, instead she returns to the Ravagers where she is met with a similar familial welcome that the old Gamora would have received from the Guardians.

There’s also the relationship between Mantis and Drax which are the source of most of the comedy elements in the movie. They have very much a sibling rivalry relationship which works well as they continuously snipe at each other and get frustrated even though they spend most of the movie working together. Drax also has a great moment to shine near the end of the movie when they are on the High Evolutionary’s ship along with his new batch of Utopia-bound children who speak a language that isn’t connected with their universal translators. And as Mantis and Nebula are trying unsuccessfully to communicate with the children, Drax is the one who reminds us that he was a father to a young daughter before he became the Destroyer to avenger her death. He is not just able to calm the children by being a silly dad figure, but he can speak their language. Nebula also has a brief moment of growth and compassion as she reveals a moment of weakness when she learns that Rocket has survived and starts crying with relief.

This movie trilogy has always had an underlying message of found family and that continues in a hard way with this movie. We get to see it through Quill’s relentless pursuit of a way to save Rocket’s life, and through the flashbacks with Rocket and his first found family with Lylla, Teef, and Floor. And when it ends, we get to see the growth about how sometimes you have to grow beyond what you’ve become comfortable with as Mantis decides to find herself, Peter returns to his biological Grandfather, and they let Gamora go back to her Ravager found family. And Rocket takes back the name Raccoon, but also ends the movie as the new leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy. And as always, Groot is Groot. Despite only having one line, he still manages to have character and at the end of the movie, this new version of Gamora has her own growth and connection and is able to understand him, plus we as the audience are let into his language as we are also able to understand his final spoken line in the film “I love you guys”. There’s also a slight secondary element of second chances Adam Warlock is the initial antagonist who ends up as a super powered child-like being, he’s initially working for the Sovereign from the second movie who were also created by the High Evolutionary, but he has his own growth as he sees the differences between how he’s treated by his “mother” and how he’s treated in the end by the Guardians who save him rather than just let him die. This definitely had its difficult moments to watch, but it also felt like a satisfying end to the story of these characters. I do hope that it’s not the end of Rocket, Groot, Nebula, and Mantis though if it is, I think they left behind a great legacy. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.