Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Released in theaters on May 5, 2023

Released on Disney+ on August 2, 2023

Runtime: 2 Hours 2 Minutes

Rated PG-13

All of the Guardians of the Galaxy are back (plus some new ones) for their third and final movie together. This time Rocket takes center stage and his back story comes to the forefront sending the Guardians on a mission to not only learn more about him, but to save his life. Unbeknownst to our heroes an evil man known as the High Evolutionary seeks to take back what is his, at all cost. His obsession will send him on a crash course into the Guardian’s of the Galaxy. So sit back, strap in, and be ready to jam to some awesome tunes as the Guardians of the Galaxy save their friend and maybe some others along the way.

In order to know who is who and the reasons for characters being in the places they are one will need to watch the other Guardian movies, Infinity War, Endgame, and the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special.

Themes:

Family, love, flaws, evolution, experiments on animals, animal cruelty, rad music, God, gods, aliens, monsters, t Telekinesis, telepathy, starships, friendship, lost love, people from alternate realities, human experimentation, perfection, what makes something good or right, drinking, teamwork, pirates, big corporations, ethics, morality, courage, saving those who cannot save themselves, flirting, afterlife, animal’s minds, evil, amnesia, creating life, kill switches, death, beauty, playing God, and “I am Groot.”

Language:

James Gunn, the director, has bragged that this is the first MCU movie with the f-word. So, expect it to show up once. Sorry, spoiler alert. You will find name calling like “moron” and “stupid,” but you will find worse. The d-word, hell, piss off, a three letter word for booty, Dick (but not the name), the sh-word for poo, and probably some others. Expect these words multiple times. In my opinion the Guardian movies have always been the lewdest of the MCU movies, and has the most cursing. The villain also says, “There is no God!”

Stuff to be aware of:

Like I said above, Guardians tends to be a bit lewd. Expect some sexual innuendo and jokes. One of the characters makes a male character fall in love with another male character and it is played as a joke. There is lots of shooting and fighting, but in my opinion this is one of the grossest and freakiest MCU movies (outside of some of the stuff in multiverse of Madness). Some people have body limbs severed, one man gets fried and we see his remains, some people implode when Groot shoves tree in them, some get sliced into parts, people freezing in space, etc. One of the big themes in the movie with the bad guy is that he does experiments on animals. There is lots of animal cruelty in this movie and he creates odd and scary looking creatures that are part animal and part machine, with human qualities. The villain is evil and the movie makes you well aware. There are gross and scary looking creations that would scare my kids for sure (for example a bunny with metal over its mouth, its legs removed, and it has mechanical spider legs). The fights are intense and the monsters are the stuff of nightmares. This movies earns its PG-13 rating and I would not suggest anyone under age 13 seeing it. Two additional things are there is character that gets mauled in the face by an animal (expect to see his face) and there is a brief scene with a creature selling other creatures drugs.

Overall:

I have mixed feelings about this movie. The bad - The story, to me, feels like it’s all go here, find this, flashback, now go here to find that, flashback, now go here. It all goes very fast and some of the story bits just seem to be in place to put certain characters in certain places. The dark intensity of parts of this movie are disturbing and then the next minute there will be lots of humor. It was kind of like emotional whiplash. Torture and evil experiments and then funny jokes from Drax.
The good - All the characters get a fitting end to the Guardians saga and I feel they are all well earned. The story is very emotional and has lots of sorrow. I don’t recall crying in any MCU movies, but I did this one a couple of times. They make you feel love for certain new character and you feel very sorry for them.
I’m still processing this movie. I don’t feel like I can say “I really liked it” or “it’s lots of fun.” I can say it has some humorous moments and some very emotional ones. I think the movie can bring about some deep discussions about God and man trying to play God.

On the comic book nerd side of things I feel Adam Warlock was just thrown in so he could be in future MCU movies. In the comics this guy helped beat Thanos. He is like Marvel’s Superman. \In this he is just a lackey for the High Evolutionary. Maybe we will see more of him.
As I ponder on this movie more I may write some more, but that is all I got right now.
Last thing - Cosmo is awesome, but I knew she was.