Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Our Review

The farewell that earned its tears. James Gunn’s last Marvel movie before the DC jump is a story about Rocket, and the film spends its flashbacks on the raccoon’s origin: a lab, a madman called the High Evolutionary, and three fellow experiments who dreamed of a sky they’d never seen. It is the darkest material the MCU has attempted, played without flinching, and it retroactively makes a trilogy out of the character’s every quip.

The present tense plot is a hospital run: Rocket is dying, and the team dives into the corporate empire that built him to steal the code that saves him. Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary is the series’ most hateful villain, a eugenicist whose calm makes the cruelty worse, and the film gives him no redemption and no mercy in the payoff. The opening sequence, Rocket shivering under anesthesia while the team refuses to lose him, sets the stakes honestly.

The comedy still lives: Drax and Mantis drunk on a sidewalk, a heist through an organic corporate fortress, Cosmo the dog’s telekinetic gags. Nebula gets the arc she’s been owed for six years. The ending disbands the team with each member walking toward a life, and the last shot, the old lineup’s music playing over a new one dancing, is a graceful full stop.

Our score: 8/10. The trilogy’s best entry since the first.