In the six years since Volume 2, the Guardians have been through the Infinity War wringer, and a delightful Christmas Special. Everyone knew this would be the last Guardians movie, so of course this movie ends up taking itself and its characters way too seriously.
Rocket lingers near death for nearly the entire movie. While the rest of the team pursue the most obvious McGuffins in movie history, we see Rocket's origin story, as the villain conducts gruesome experiments on baby animals. These scenes play out in excruciatingly obvious and belabored detail. We know we're going to have to watch Rocket's pure-hearted talking animal friends get slaughtered, and it's as awful and manipulative as possible. PETA would have pulled their punches more. If you could edit out all the Young Rocket scenes, you could show this movies to a PG audience. As it is, it's a hard PG-13, and nightmare fodder for elementary-age kiddos.
The first two movies were so much fun, the fun there is to be found in this one feels tonally weird against the Rocket flashbacks.
The villain, and his plan for improving all life in the galaxy, feels half stolen, and half underwritten. He wears his face stretched over his head like a mask, which has already been done in a Star Trek movie; even Peter Quill knows this look was copped from Robocop. The screenplay overall feels shoddy, like there were a half-dozen side stories writer-director James Gunn considered travelling down, changed his mind, yet too much remains of those ideas, for the remainder to play smoothly. The more I think about it, the more questions I have.
And of course sequel bloat is in effect: Volume 3 clocks in at 2½ hours: 29 minutes longer than the first one and 14 minutes longer than the second. The first movie had to introduce the six leads and the world they live in. This one didn't have to do any of that and is still a half hour longer.
What did I like about it? Quill's slightly updated hairstyle is silly in a good way; in the wake of the Christmas special, Mantis and Drax are my favorite pairing; and the running joke with Cosmo the Spacedog was awesome. I've noticed that the Guardians movies have innovated the art of non-human skin tones. The red and gold and blue and green aliens in these movies don't look like they're just wearing paint or makeup. I don't know what they're doing, but it looks real. On that note, the production design in this series continues to celebrate the out-there visual possibilities of comic books, the origin of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that many of the other films tend to ignore.
My grade: C. My son and his friend gave it a B, but they had many many questions on the ride home. (Triplex Great Barrington)