LOS ANGELES, April 28 (UPI) -- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, in theaters May 5, starts the summer off with a fun, emotional blockbuster.
Guardians of the Galaxy leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) and Kraglin (Sean Gunn) now are headquartered on planet Knowhere.
When Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) crashes through Knowhere, Rocket sustains a grievous injury. Trying to save him, the Guardians discover the people who created Rocket installed a kill switch that will activate if they use a healing Med Pack.
With Rocket's prognosis giving him about 48 hours before he succumbs to his injuries, the Guardians set out to find an override key that will allow them to heal Rocket. Gamora (Zoe SaldaƱa) agrees to help them break into the lab that manufactured Rocket's kill switch for a fee.
Remember, this Gamora comes from the past, before 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, thanks to the time travel in Avengers: Endgame. This Gamora never met Peter, let alone fell in love with him, so Peter has to cope with reverting to a stranger in her eyes.
As a superhero space opera, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 obviously has a lot of visual effects, but this entry also has more practical sets than many of Marvel's more earthbound movies. The Knowhere headquarters, laboratories and spaceship interiors feel tangible because they're real.
The aliens the Guardians encounter on this mission allow writer-director James Gunn to create some new creatures with practical makeup. There are a few scary images parents will want to evaluate before exposing little kids to nightmare fuel, but they are all imaginative.
The Guardians' sense of humor is on full display throughout the mission. The gang argues about funny nonsequiturs during crises.
Mantis and Drax mess with each other in ways that are harmless, but annoying, for the sake of viewers' amusement. Peter even jokes about how convoluted Gamora's timeline is, which is a valid response to plot points inherited from other filmmakers' movies.
But, where Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 resonates the most is in its emotional storyline. While infirm, Rocket flashes back to his past as a laboratory experiment of The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji).
Rocket made friends with other animal experiments. Since they haven't been in contact in the previous movies, the flashbacks are tinged with the tragedy that Rocket somehow lost contact with a family he had before.
The Guardians movies have always been about families, whether Peter mourning his Earth mother or the misfit aliens finding family with each other. For introducing an entire backstory for a main character, Guardians 3 makes the creatures of the High Evolutionary's experiment genuine emotional connections for Rocket.
The Guardians visit the High Evolutionary's Counter-Earth, which is populated by his successful experiments. Counter-Earth is an entire city with streets, back alleys and neighborhoods, which feels even vaster than the enclosed sets of the film's first two acts.
Peter points out the familiarity of the High Evolutionary's plot to create a supposedly perfect society. This observation works as commentary on superhero tropes because it is relevant that egos always make antagonists believe they are unique, even when they cause the same harm as their predecessors.
The High Evolutionary is creating living beings and then terminating them if they don't meet his standards. That is much more personal than a generic plot of world domination.
Guardians 3 does not completely avoid all the pitfalls of the superhero genre. There are too many characters, and Warlock in particular comes and goes. The Guardians still have to go to the place to get the thing, as most of these plots boil down to.
Stakes remain an issue. The film is full of fun set pieces, but many of them keep extending deadlines well past what has been established, and the rules seem to keep changing within a single scene.
But, the emotion works so well, that's what counts. Guardians is hardly the worst offender when it comes to plot holes, but few of its contemporaries reach their conclusion with such humor and heart.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
