Guardians of the Galaxy Review

Warning up top this review is going to contain so many spoilers so if you would like to avoid that, please stop reading now. You will not get another warning. The third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy was a beautiful, wonderful, incredible masterpiece cementing its place as the MCU’s best trilogy.

First things first James Gunn’s decision to focus on Rocket and his history was a brilliant one. It's something that fans have been asking for since the first movie was released and he is definitely the general public’s favorite Guardian. So to see his development through flashbacks and confront his trauma was an impeccable writing choice. It was also a heartbreaking one. Most of the story centers around trying to save Rocket’s life after he is severely injured by Adam Warlock. We get to see his past with the High Evolutionary as he is dying. Baby Rocket is adorable and as soon as they make a little plushie I will be buying one. We also see why Rocket’s friends are so important to him, and why in the first Guardians movie he was reluctant to have friends in the first place. The ending where he goes back for all the animals was a great moment and shows that Rocket has accepted what he is and allowed himself to say goodbye to what he was. Him becoming the new leader of the team was also an awesome choice and I hope we get to see more of that in the future.

Now let's get to the obvious decisions that are going to be construed as flaws to a lot of the internet. The adaptations of High Evolutionary and Adam Warlock. Now I’m going to say right now that as an adaptation the portrayal of High Evolutionary was shaky at best. It was more like we were seeing a vague essence of the character. And of course he had to be nerfed for the Guardians to have any chance. Same with Adam Warlock. Both of their power sets and abilities had to be scaled down to about a 10th of the reality otherwise the film would have been about 30 seconds long. That said because the story was well written it was easy to overlook the deviations from the comics. That is something that I really love about James Gunn, and makes me excited for his DCEU. He is a man that clearly has a love, respect and understanding for the comics. But he also has an understanding of narrative storytelling and he understands that those two things can not always fit together perfectly without some adjustment. The way that he makes adjustments still respects the source material while telling his own story. He’s a brilliant storyteller and the core’s of Adam Warlock and High Evolutionary were accurate and I am sure that we will be seeing more of both of them as the MCU continues.

Next of course we have to talk about Quill and Gamora. He spends a lot of time trying to convince her to be the version of Gamora that he loved and at the end has to reconcile with the fact that she is really gone. And he isn’t going to get her back. This timeline’s version of Gamora also starts to soften towards the end of the movie but it seems that her found family is with the ravagers. I don’t think that we will see them back together anytime soon. I also want to say that I know Chris Pratt is the worst Hollywood Chris, but in all his scenes with or about Gamora the man gave a beautiful heart wrenching performance. That said when he was about to die I was unequivocally more okay with that then the idea of Rocket dying.

Lastly I want to talk about another relationship dynamic that got a lot of screen time and I ended up loving a lot. Nebula, Drax and Mantis. Mantis and Drax have always kind of had this friendship but to see both him and Mantis break down Nebula’s walls a little bit was great. She finally got a little more character development and her and Drax formed this little team, I loved it. Mantis going off on her own is also awesome, she found out that she has more power then she originally thought. She is also a nerfed version of her comic book counterpart so hopefully we will get to see her grow out of that a little bit.

Overall I think the film was awesome, it is the best movie of phase 5 thus far. And it is easily the MCU’s best trilogy…like by a lot…it's not even close really. Guardians of the Galaxy has the most solidly developed character and relationship dynamics. The most coherent story, the best soundtrack, and it manages to interrelate to the rest of the MCU without making it required viewing. It's rating as a Marvel movie is 10/10, its rating as a film outside of being a comic book movie is 8/10. Truly a wonderful film, highly recommend.