Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review

Disclaimer: This movie review is a loose transcription from our podcast where we do all our movie reviews – link is at the bottom of this page to listen in!

Nayan:

Hello everyone, I’m Nayan and I’m joined here by James and we just got out of the screening for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3.  It’s the final one from James Gunn. and it’s the final film where we will see the core members together. So James what did you think of the film?

James:  

There’s been lots of chatter about Marvel lately in terms of how the quality is trending downwards, so all eyes were set on this film in regards to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, because you know you got James Gunn and the other two Guardians movies have been great. So I’m not going to say that this is Marvel back on form or anything like that. I think there are real flaws with this movie. But what the movie does right is exactly what we need right now from Marvel. In terms of the bad, it’s not much but I thought the tone was a bit uneven in terms of, jumping between songs and emotional moments, and then it was almost kind of jarring, and the way those songs intro I thought was kind of it’s kind of forced, it didn’t feel as seamless as what you would expect from a Guardians film. I think it just feels a little bit anticlimactic, you know, just the way on how the events the film kind of wrap up and we’re this franchise goes I think it’s just yeah, I felt like didn’t close everything off completely.  But what I loved about the movie, is the emotion, we haven’t had much emotion that much in MCU movies or they don’t really nail it and the emotion comes from the characters, and the work done on characters here I think is great. I mean, everyone knows that this is Rocket’s film, he’s kind of the main focus for this film. But you know, James Gunn still manages to find a way to squeeze character out of you know, a majority of the Guardians here and actually push forward some growth all those characters and just a wholesome kind of way. The movie it’s super emotional, Everything with Rocket is almost hard to watch and very depressing. The villain I think is one of the most evil kinds of villains we’ve seen in the MCU so far. It’s just an extremely erratic performance with that one. But yeah, overall, I really did enjoy this movie. It’s not the highest in terms of post Endgame stuff, but it’s definitely up there. I’d say it’s probably my favorite since No Way Home. James Gunn closes out the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, you know, in a really high fashion. I thought it was yeah, that was brilliant.

Nayan:  

You took the words out of my mouth. The trailers made it may look like it’s gonna be fantastic. But it didn’t quite hit reached the expectation that I had for this film, I don’t really feel felt the same way but it didn’t quite reach the expectations of what I thought the movie was going to be.The trailers showed a very different kind of plot. I was very surprised at how the movie was actually laid out. It’s very very emotional and like, all the stuff with Rocket is emotional, visually, I think it’s probably one of the better ones since No Way Home. It’s pretty much like what you expect from a Guardians movie from the production design and the different-looking alien was fantastic and each character/alien had a unique look to it. Even some of the camera movement as well. There was like, a scene where the camera tilts and zooms on the main villain. I agree with you in regards to what you said about the soundtrack and the time after songs. I feel a majority of the songs didn’t quite fit the tone and came randomly out of nowhere as well. I thought the performances by everyone were really good, they know their roles so well and each character so well and they managed to take it to the next level and further developed as well which we saw done really well with Nebula and Drax.

James:

Yeah, I thought Karen Gillan did a really good job here as Nebula, she gets far more spotlight than I thought it did and Karen Gillan definitely makes the most of that screen time and her scenes are really emotional as well, that’s just what I love about this movie. There’s so much emotion and James Gunn knows when to slow down and allow for the characters to breathe and to grow and stuff like that and having this I guess, screenplay being you know, built around, you know, facing your trauma and then like not running from the dark parts of your life in just going straight forward and having the characters and just having those themes flow through the characters is just a brilliant way to really evoke emotion and really, just actually allow us to feel in a Marvel movie.

Nayan:  Should we get to our scores?

James:  

Oh, yes. I haven’t thought about let’s go do you know your score? Can you go first?

Nayan: 

Can I go first? I will go first. I think it’s the weakest out of the Guardians films right now. I still think Guardians 1 is the best one. But why a lot but then like, two and three is like so close to each other. And I’m sure when I actually think about this film it might even overtake Vol.2 so for now I think it’s lower than the first two. So my score is 7.8.

James: In terms of where I put it with the Guardians trilogy, I mean, I do have to see this again, I’m seeing an IMAX on Friday. So that should give me a bit of perspective on it. But right now, you’re right. I don’t think it can be the first one. It’s definitely the most emotional Guardians. Yeah. But in terms of you know, the craftsmanship and you know, filmmaking quality. I will go with 7.9