Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – Snapshot
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 is a VFX masterpiece and the last in a trilogy that tells a human-level tale of relatable characters bickering, teasing, and having fun. But it is burdened with being part of a comic-book corporate enterprise. Enjoy, if you can! (3.5*)
Where to Watch:
Stream: Disney+
Rent: Prime/Google/YouTube/Fandango ($4)/Apple ($6)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – The Oscar Buzz
Oscar Nominations (1) / Oscar Wins (0) :
Visual Effects (Ceretti/Wajsbrot/Williams/Bialek)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 received a single, well deserved, nomination for Visual Effects. (To reduce the number of words, I’m abbreviating this movie to GOTGV3.) Different from the other four nominees, in this one, the CGI world becomes almost the entire movie. The implementation of green-screen technology in addition to state of the art motion capture makes GOTGV3 one of the most complex and expensive CGI movies ever made. Almost 1300 people are credited with just the Visual Effects and the reported budget is north of $250 million, some of which went into salaries, but a huge amount of that is clearly to pay for all the CGI. Two of the individuals nominated for Visual Effects have past nominations for earlier GOTG films, Doctor Strange, The Avengers, and Iron Man 3. They also worked on the VFX for several of the Spider-Man films, Gravity, Cloud Atlas, and The Batman.
I suspect a great deal of the credit for maintaining the integrity of the three Guardians of the Galaxy (GOTG) films comes from them being written and directed by just one person, James Gunn. Although he doesn’t have any Oscar nomination history, he has managed to assemble a cast and crew that includes several other Oscar nominees. In addition to the Visual Effects people discussed above: Julianna Makovsky, Costume Designer, was previously nominated for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Seabiscuit, and Pleasantville. Bradley Cooper, who did the motion-capture acting and voices the raccoon character, Rocket, has five acting nominations for Maestro, A Star is Born, American Sniper, American Hustle, and Silver Linings Playbook. Maria Bakalova, who actually got down on her hands and knees to act the motion capture for Cosmo, a dog and one of the new GOTG team members, received an Oscar nomination for her role trying to seduce Rudy Giuliani in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. (Although his role only has a few rather unimportant lines, Oscar nominee Sylvester Stallone has a small part.)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – Related Movies
Direct Ancestors:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (17)/Guardians of the Galaxy (14) (Direction/Screenplay/Film Editing/Costumes/Makeup&Hair/Sound/Visual Effects/Guardians Cast: Pratt/Cooper/Saldana/Batista/Klementieff/Gillan/Diesel)
Other James Gunn Films:
Suicide Squad (21) (Direction/Script/Cinematography/Film Editing/Production Design/Costumes/Musical Score/Sound/Visual Effects/Klementieff)
Other Influences
Maestro (23)/A Star is Born (18)/American Sniper (14)/American Hustle (13)/Silver Linings Playbook (12) (Cooper)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (23) (Klementieff)
Borat Subsequently Moviefilm (20) (Bakalova)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (19) (Cinematography)
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (19) (Film Editing)
Doctor Strange (16)/Avengers (12)/Iron Man 3 (13)/Mary Poppins Returns (18)/The Batman (22)/Spider-Man: No Way Home (21) (Visual Effects)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (01)/Seabiscuit (03)/Pleasantville (98) (Costumes)
Obviously, GOTGV3, as the third movie in an MCU trilogy, is heavily influenced not just by the previous two movies, but by the entire history of the MCU. Filmmaker James Gunn has managed to retain significant numbers of the original cast and crew from the first movie released more than a decade ago. He also assembled much of the same crew for The Suicide Squad, one of the entries in the Dell Comics Extended Universe (the DCEU), which comes from a different comic book empire. But the sharing of crew members shows that the world of CGI movies is indeed incestuous.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – What Others Think
Although Godzilla Minus One is still the audience favorite of this year’s nominees, GOTGV3 tied with Oppenheimer for second place among the 24 general interest movies. Audience reviews headlined with “Best Marvel film this year”, “One of the Best MCU Trilogies”, and “Just Incredible”.
Professional critics, naturally, don’t think as highly about super-hero movies and ended up putting GOTGV3 in the bottom quarter, or 19th out of 24 general interest films. James Berardinelli (ReelViews) wrote “this is the least enjoyable of James Gunn’s trilogy” and concludes “This isn’t a bad movie but by no means is it worthy of booking an opening night appointment.” Maya Phillips (New York Times) disliked it so much she had to write “this dour, visually off-putting two-and-a-half-hour ASPCA nightmare of a film may only be for completionist fans.” She found the camerawork “too voyeuristic” and, overall, “this Guardians is certainly less fun than the others…”. Brian Tallerico (RogerEbert) found that “GOTGV3 is most appealing when it defines a “product over art” aesthetic by being clunky and weird” and that the structure of the film “sometimes drains the film of momentum.”
GOTGV3 makes the small list of this year’s movies where the critics and the audience ratings diverge the most. With such a difference, it isn’t surprising that the overall average rating places the movie smack dab in the middle of all this year’s offerings.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – Special Mention
The MCU Franchise and the GOTG – GOTGV3 is the 32nd film in what is commonly known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the largest movie franchise ever. It is also the third entry in the trilogy of films telling the adventures of a subset of the MCU characters known as the Guardians of the Galaxy. Although I have mixed feelings about the other MCU films primarily because of the overwhelming number of characters and difficult-to-understand plot lines, I have a generally favorable reaction to the GOTG movies. I found all three of them to be entertaining, with relatable characters, outstanding special effects, great use of vintage musical tracks, and dialog full of innuendos, sarcasm, and humor. But, importantly, all of those cinematic elements are used to tell a story that clearly exists on an outrageous science-fiction setting but with a human level scale.
There is suggestive evidence, though, that the comic book super-hero juggernaut is coming down to earth. Although GOTGV3 took in more than $846 Million in box office receipts – and is Disney’s only 2023 movie to earn a profit – this is the fourth MCU film to earn less than its predecessor. While there is a downturn in general in people watching movies in theaters, it was believed that visual spectacles, like this one, might buck the trend. As people invest more and more in their own home movie setups, movie theaters may not be able to count on these movies to sustain them.
But the MCU inflicted one of its own most severe death blows. When Thanos snapped his finger in Avengers: Infinity War and half of the super heroes instantly died, it wasn’t clear at all how things could move on – at a minimum, the storylines would have to change dramatically. Over the last few years, we start to see how they are going to do that and, for me at least, it isn’t very satisfying. In Infinity Wars, one of the Guardians, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is “sacrificed” by Thanos and, supposedly is gone forever. But she returns in this one with the same name, face, and abilities. She comes from a different universe – remember, we now have the multiverse so there are, supposedly, an infinite number of Gamoras (or for that matter, you’s and I’s). And while the multiverse and multiple Spider-Men have been used to further a story line in those recent movies, the concept reduces the value of our characters. What is the point of a character dying off, if, in the next movie, you can bring the character back but simply from a different universe? (Not to mention the question of how exactly does that work?) Death sort of becomes meaningless and so too does the definition of a character and that character’s life and meaning.
Gamora aside, the great strength of the GOTG trilogy was how sympathetically bound the Guardians were as unique characters all working on the same team. Sustained by the fertile imagination of James Gunn, his need to keep his characters at a human level, even when they certainly didn’t look human, gave them an identity that we could easily relate to, and in fact wanted to. Coupling the lighthearted banter between them with music from earth decades we all know gave the film a dimensional quality that the other MCU films never even attempted.
But this is James Gunn’s last GOTG movie – he apparently understands trends well and feels that at least his conception of these characters and this team has run its course. As the ending of the film makes clear, at least two of the Guardians are, maybe temporarily, moving on. Under new creative leadership, will the new team have the same human chemistry? I’m doubtful. And without that, even the best visual effects in the movie world will not be able to make a great movie.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 – Michael’s Moments
Super-hero movies are almost always visual spectacles but, usually, don’t offer a truly compelling story experience with characters you enjoy and can relate to. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies have, for me, always been an exception. As I wrote in my (4*) review of GOTGV2, “this is a funny movie. (It) pokes fun at itself, and all comic book movies, without crossing the line into parody…The themes it explore are obvious, and sometimes trite, but the movie brings a level of humor to the mix that makes it fun to explore, even if you know it won’t be real deep.” I will add to that the observation that each character offers real human interest, even if with an alien inflection. And, of course “the visuals are outrageous.”
The latest installment is maybe not quite as good as the earlier one if only because the writer and director James Gunn had the additional obligation of setting the stage for a possible fourth entry in the GOTG family. Although he is withdrawing his creative leadership – and two of the Guardians are at least temporarily retiring – it is a law in the MCU, that all movies must lay the groundwork for a sequel. So part of its 2.5 hour length is to satisfy the MCU muckety mucks and their need to extend their empire.
Another terrific aspect of these three films is their reliance on popular music from specific decades. In the earlier two films, the songs were picked from great groups from decades when I was a younger man and in tune with the music of the time. In GOTGV3, the musical focus has shifted to more recent times. The songs are entirely relevant to where they occur in the film, but are more likely to provoke reactions in a younger audience – I’m just not all that current on bands like The Mowglis or The Beastie Boys.
Finally, and the reason this film is in our list this year, is because of the Visual Effects. Of course, with the budget they had and the technical crew it enabled, you would expect the world. But what you get are multiple worlds, each one equally fascinating as the other. The combination of motion capture and CGI has advanced to exceptional levels of realism with this movie.
So should you see this movie – if you haven’t already? If you are a GOTG fan then the answer is definitely “yes”. If you are a VFX aficionado and want to see CGI at its best as of a couple years ago, then “yes”. And, although GOTGV2 was a better movie, GOTGV3 is fun to watch with more contemporary music, lots of humor, and non-human characters that tell real human stories – so get to it when you can! (3.5*)
