Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Once upon a time there was a baby raccoon, randomly selected to participate in a great experiment in which it had no say and no comprehension of what was going to be done to it. The results of that experiment changed it from a humble animal into an intelligent, sentient being, capable of greatness, but that transformation was mediated through pain and suffering, creating a creature of silently borne rage determined to escape.
Survivors of the Infinity War, at a cost, and sometimes companions of Thor, the self-proclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy have made their home in the space city of Knowhere, but stoically enduring the constant pain of his cybernetic implants Rocket remains an outsider, while Peter Jason “Star-Lord” Quill is not coping any better, drinking to oblivion to forget the loss of Gamora, returned from the dead but with no memory of her time as part of the crew.
An unprovoked attack brings tragedy to the back alleys but also focus; severely injured in the attack, Rocket was apparently the target of Adam Warlock, an assailant endowed with great powers and perfect hair, but his implants prevent intervention to save his fading life, the only chance to find the people who created him, apparently the same people who are now hunting him and wish him returned to the Orgoscope, regarding him as their proprietary cyber genetic intellectual property.
Iron Man and Captain America both having headlined three films apiece before retirement from front line, so Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 sees the swan song of that group of interstellar rogues, at least in their current lineup, with Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, Dave Bautista’s Drax, Karen Gillan’s Nebula and Pom Klementieff’s Mantis going back to the beginning to save Bradley Cooper’s Rocket, assisted by Sean Gunn’s Kraglin, his spacedog Cosmo and, reluctantly, Zoe Saldaña’s Gamora.
The first two Guardians of the Galaxy films a series of exuberant and chaotic encounters and adventures in exotic cosmic locations powered by the insane imagination of writer and director James Gunn, the tone of the final mission is set by the opening scene accompanied by Radiohead’s anthem to the disenfranchised Freak, a warning that this is not going to be a riot of laughs, that the joy which has gone before must now be paid for with hard truths.
A man on the run his whole life, hiding behind jokes and pretending not to care, Star-Lord is confronted with the imminent possibility his closest friend will die and reliant on his angry, amnesiac ex-girlfriend to break him into the Orgoscope. His world crumbling, his pain is nothing to what has already been endured by Rocket and his own found family, other victims of Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary who believes by creating the perfect species he can create the perfect society.
The exalted High Evolutionary possessed by a godlike ambition which justifies those sacrificed along the way, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 is often distressing viewing, Rocket, Lylla, Teefs and Floor and others like them tortured for an end from which they will never benefit but given voice to express their own desires, refusing the whims of the volatile megalomaniac who created them.
A film of second chances and last ditch efforts, of traumatised individuals holding each other up in hopes of making something better than what they were given by life, bouncing in rainbow EVA suits from the skull of a Celestial to a totally organic world and an alternative Earth, the Guardians’ farewell tour may be driven by tragedy but refuses to be defined by it, bonded together by laughter and tears in their patched up flying intergalactic home, beaten and bruised but never broken.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently on general release and also screening in IMAX 3D
