Dog Days Are Over

A review of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 feels like more than just a fond farewell to a band of misfits and “a-holes” we’ve improbably come to love over the course of the past decade. It’s a deeply satisfying send-off for the Guardians of the Galaxy, to be sure, an adventure suffused with director James Gunn’s now-trademark mix of pathos and humor. But the film also comes across as a curtain call for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, a coda for the fifteen-year long saga that began way back in 2008 with Iron Man.

There’s nothing complicated about Vol. 3’s plot: the foul-mouthed, gun-toting Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) is mortally wounded early on in the film, and his fellow Guardians—Peter Quill aka Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel)—must find a way to save his life. That in turn entails a reunion with a time-displaced Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and an encounter with the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), Rocket’s depraved mad-scientist creator. Despite some emotionally painful flashbacks to Rocket’s creation and early life scattered throughout, Vol. 3 is a direct and heartfelt story that’s leavened by Gunn’s offbeat sensibilities and penchant for humor.

As in the previous Guardians films and holiday special, the humor in Vol. 3 is organic and grounded in its characters. Drax and Mantis, for instance, have a vicious sibling-style repartee: using her empathic abilities, Mantis mind-tricks a security guard into believing he’s in love with Drax—something we’re told to believe has happened before. For his part, Drax drags Mantis along with him as he disobeys orders, reminding her that she should know better than to believe that he listens to anyone about anything. But as cutting as this banter gets—and as good as Bautista and Klementieff are as a comedic pair—it comes from a place of genuine and mutual affection, as we see at the very end of the film.

Quill’s emotional vulnerability—the Gamora with whom he was romantically involved died during the events of Avengers: Infinity War, leaving him pining for the earlier version that appeared during Avengers: Endgame and now again in Vol. 3 (it’s complicated)—doesn’t spare him either. Gunn expertly uses the character’s pain as the basis for a number of gags and jokes, all without belittling or mocking the underlying sadness at play. Nebula plays the deadpan straightwoman, while the team’s golden frenemy Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) displays a child-like idiocy and innocence throughout. Even minor characters like Cosmo the Space Dog (voiced by Maria Bakalova) and Kraglin (Sean Gunn, the director’s brother) get in on the act, with Cosmo’s demand that Kraglin take back calling her a bad dog serving as a running gag throughout the film.

As in previous Guardians installments, pop songs play an starring role in Vol. 3. Gunn’s musical selections for this entry may not be quite as cohesive as those for Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, but they’re still quite effective. Spacehog’s buoyant “In The Meantime,” for instance, brightly complements the Guardians as they bounce around in low gravity outside an organic space station, while the distorted guitars and concussive drums of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” snarl as the Guardians brutally rip apart a menagerie of grotesque enemies one by one in an elegant, single-take hallway action sequence. Florence + The Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over” perfectly accompanies the joyous dance party that closes out the film and puts an ecstatic exclamation point on the Guardians trilogy—and indeed the MCU as a whole.

When it comes to themes, a strong streak of anti-utopianism runs through Vol. 3: like revolutionaries and radicals throughout history, the villainous High Evolutionary says he wants to make a perfect society. He’s an obvious fanatic who doesn’t let any amount of real pain or suffering get in the way of his abstract goals; indeed, he’s willing to create and destroy worlds at a whim, without so much as a thought or care for what he’s destroying. In his motives, the High Evolutionary echoes every tyrant convinced that they can cook up utopia with just one more broken egg. But as Rocket remarks, such people don’t really want to make things perfect—they just hate the way things are.

In that respect, Vol. 3 fits snugly into the MCU’s central subterranean theme of deeply flawed mortals taking on antagonists with pretensions to godhood and willing to use other as mere means to achieve their own ends. Time and again, we see imperfect, human heroes like the Avengers and Guardians stand up to protect and save an imperfect, broken galaxy—and indeed the very shortcomings and failings of these characters make them ideal candidates to save the day. Accepting that messy reality, as Rocket finally and fully does at the end of Vol. 3, is part and parcel of what’s made this sprawling cinematic enterprise so engaging and entertaining over the past fifteen years.

It's a different notion of acceptance that makes Vol. 3 truly feel like a grand denouement, however. If there’s any one central theme at play in the film, it’s the idea that we ought to live in the present—not get stuck in the past or try to run from it, which ultimately amount to the same thing. We see it most obviously in Star-Lord, who still yearns for Gamora and has steered as far clear from Earth as possible after watching his mother die of cancer as a boy. He even nearly meets his demise at the movie’s climax because he can’t let go of the Zune music player he received as a gift from his surrogate father Yondu, going back to retrieve it while the High Evolutionary’s ship explodes around him.

But Quill also refuses to let Rocket go when there’s still a chance, however slim, to save his best friend—he and the rest of the Guardians go to the mat to do so, dramatically illustrating that the only thing truly worth holding on to is the present. In the end and after repeated prodding from Mantis throughout the film, Quill accepts that his Gamora is gone and makes the difficult decision to return to Earth and reconnect with his aged grandfather. Much the same goes for Rocket, who ultimately releases his own lingering pain and accepts a new role as leader of the Guardians at movie’s end. It matters greatly what we choose to hold onto, Vol. 3 tells us, whether we make that choice consciously or not.

As with any concluding installment of a long-running story, a deep undercurrent of melancholy courses through Vol. 3. But it’s a fundamentally bittersweet emotion, one that acknowledges and accepts that changes and endings are a part of life—and that it’s all right to let go when it comes time to do so. That what makes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 such a fond farewell to its characters as well as a satisfying coda to fifteen years of storytelling in the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe: at heart, it’s a celebration of the good times and interstellar adventures we’ve had with these characters. And as we see in the film’s closing scene, it’s one that reminds us life is worth saving, protecting, and defending so that we can live it.

That also makes it a perfect place for many of us to conclude our own MCU journeys. With the end of Gunn’s Guardians trilogy, I have to say that my own time of intense involvement with these stories has probably drawn to an end. The flawed, compelling characters I grew so invested in over the past fifteen years—Iron Man, Black Widow, and Rocket Raccoon, among others—have now seen their stories told, and it’s time to move on. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll still watch as the MCU finds its way forward from here, though perhaps not as religiously and from a greater distance and with more emotional detachment. But the stories I love have finally reached their natural conclusions.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 reminds us that it’s fine to let all things—good and bad—come to an end. After all, we only leave all our loving behind.