| Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: May 5, 2023 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
37
Mixed:
24
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Apr 28, 2023
May 4, 2023
The MCU has been stumbling a bit since it bid goodbye to Captain America and Iron Man, and by reuniting us with characters we've known and loved for years, GotG 3 marks a welcome pivot from a recent run of unimpressive experiments and disappointing debuts. It'll be a long time, if ever, before we feel this kind of emotional payoff from this franchise again.
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ColliderApr 28, 2023
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 isn’t just the ideal sendoff for this group, it’s the best MCU film in years, and a reminder of how much fun and moving the Marvel Cinematic Universe can actually be after film-after-film of recent disappointments. The Guardians of the Galaxy were the best corner of the MCU, and Gunn has created the perfect goodbye to this gang of misfits.
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Apr 28, 2023
For all the emotional resonance and action-packed blockbuster mayhem in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, it’s still got a lot of impish nonsense, jarring tonal shifts, and enough morbidity and outright gore that it’s now abundantly clear that the PG-13 rating doesn’t mean anything more. This is a movie that will probably traumatize some kids and maybe a few adults.
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Apr 28, 2023
James Gunn bets big that you love each and every one of these Guardians. It’s a movie about friendship and the love these characters have for each other and risking everything to help the people you love. Without that bond to these characters, this movie doesn’t work. It’s still a funny movie with some cool action scenes and a lot of nonsense going on, all glued together by this really powerful emotional core.
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Apr 28, 2023
I don’t think Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 quite matches the sublime pop silliness of the first film in this trilogy, but it’s easily better than Vol. 2, which had wonderful bits along with an overstuffed storyline. Vol. 3 isn’t exactly streamlined — it still runs about two and a half hours — but it is more focused on its themes and ideas, and on giving the Guardians the sendoff they deserve.
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The IndependentApr 28, 2023
The Guardians films have always been about the fact that many of us are like putty – shaped not by where we’ve come from but where we are and could end up. Vol 3 should make audiences thrilled about what comes next for Gunn in his new position as co-head of DC Studios. As for Marvel – well, it’ll be their loss.
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Apr 28, 2023
Apr 28, 2023
With writer/director James Gunn off to DC and some of its stars signalling they’re done with their characters, there’s an inevitable air of finality – not to mention contractual obligation – about this third instalment in Marvel’s Guardians series. If anything, though, that’s more a strength than a weakness, all involved being seemingly intent on going out on an emotionally affecting, thematically audacious high.
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Apr 28, 2023
The Guardians of the Galaxy deliver their swan song in Vol. 3 and it’s a rockin’ good time. Through Rocket’s tragic origin story we’re given a new appreciation for this whole family of lovable malcontents. And even though the plot has a bit too much going on, some of the humor feels stale, and Adam Warlock was woefully underused, the cast’s incredible chemistry and James Gunn’s soulful style remain unlike anything else in the MCU, and this movie sends them out on an emotional and action-packed high note.
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May 2, 2023
May 2, 2023
May 1, 2023
Apr 28, 2023
Vol. 3 is a messy, overstuffed finale. But you rarely question whether Gunn’s heart is in it. Sometimes it spoils some of that effect by trying too hard to juxtapose tonal extremes, and show off its brash juggling act. Yet whatever this sweet, surreal sci-fi shamble is that Gunn has created, everyone here seems to believe ardently in it.
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Apr 28, 2023
In hindsight, the most unlikely hit among Marvel’s parade of them was all about the unlikeliest of families. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 drives home that point, with a boisterous and often emotional sequel that feels very much like a true conclusion, fueled in no small part by writer-director James Gunn having migrated his talents over to rival DC.
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May 5, 2023
Apr 28, 2023
An enjoyably eccentric, insouciantly funny and often beautiful-looking jumble of an entertainment that plays — at least when it isn’t let down by a wobbly seriocomic tone and some excessive narrative multitasking — like a sincerely moving farewell to some of the more likable rogues and motley misfits in the Marvel cosmos.
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May 4, 2023
At around the hundred-minute mark, everything in Gunn’s perfect little cinematic galaxy falls apart in a magnificently depressing fashion. It is as if the MCU higher-ups got wind of what was going down and quickly engineered a black hole of studio notes to suck the Guardians into a tesseract of meaningless set-pieces and prolonged B-plot detours.
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May 3, 2023
While some of the darker threads in the movie are welcome – Guardians was in danger of becoming overtly jokey – it suffers from many of the same problems that have dogged the latest round of comic book movies: a too-long running time, not enough genuine excitement, a generic villain, and a weak ending that doesn’t justify all the build-up.
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The GuardianApr 28, 2023
Now Guardians of the Galaxy has reached the threequel stage: overlong, yes, and finally reaching for an importance and emotional closure (perhaps inspired by Gunn’s own emotional corporate redemption) that it doesn’t quite encompass, while leaving the GOTG brand open for a next-gen reboot. But it’s still spectacular, spirited and often funny.
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May 5, 2023
May 2, 2023
To its credit, the latest and seemingly last Guardians installment— which at times can feel like a Spotify playlist in search of a movie— mostly manages to drown out the corporate exhaustion of its parent company with copious and often inspired needle drops, even more hit-or-miss one-liners, and a visual playfulness that recalls actual comic books.
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Apr 28, 2023
It’s not a disaster, and it doesn’t lack for ambition. But it’s wildly uneven and kind of blah, if that can be said of a movie with nonstop, often incoherent action, self-aware needle drops and not nearly enough smart-aleck quips from a cast we’ve seen deliver plenty of them in the past.
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SlashfilmApr 28, 2023
And that, perhaps, is the real fatal flaw of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." Gunn's first two movies felt different. They stood out from the pack and had their own unique personality. But "Vol. 3" feels like more of the same. I'm not suggesting Gunn and company are phoning it in this time around, but it certainly feels like the magic has faded. Whatever alchemy the filmmaker worked to make the first two "Guardians" movies memorable has evaporated into the ether.
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May 4, 2023
GOTG 3 is a blahbuster that, like other recent Marvel disappointments (“Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”), jogs along from one visually extravagant, strenuously jokey set piece to another without offering much in the way of either dramatic engagement or actually funny ideas.
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Apr 28, 2023
What was once an anything-goes sensibility now feels like it’s stuck in a nothing’s-sticking gear. Dark, wearisome and bombastic, along with an ensemble cast clearly radiating that they’d rather be someplace else, is not what we come to a Marvel movie for. We already have the DCEU for that.
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