Guardians of the Galaxy have settled at Knowhere. Adam, a warrior of the Sovereigns, attacks and wounds Rocket, but is chased away by Nebula. The Guardians realize they cannot make a surgery on Rocket because he is implanted with a kill switch in his body, so they go to Orgcorp space station to get a code to nullify it. Rocket remembers his origins: he was a normal raccoon who was given intelligence in an animal testing lab led by scientist High Evolutionary, who wants to create perfect humans, and only uses animals to die by the thousands in his experiments to further his goal. Rocket is saved and thus joins Star-Lord, Groot, Drax, Mantis and a new Gamora to battle High Evolutionary, who created a Counter-Earth populated with humanoid animals in towns, but orders to have the planet exploded because he wasn't satisfied with the result. The Guardians arrest High Evolutionary, while the lab-created children and test animals are evacuated from his space ship. Star-Lord returns to Earth and finds his grandfather is still alive, while Mantis leaves to find herself. Drax is left to raise the lab kids on Knowhere.
"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is better than the weak part II, yet still weaker than part I, and is definitely the most contemplative, complex and tragically emotional edition to the film series. It has a muddled, but fascinating plot which sounds like an inversion of the devo chamber from the '93 "Super Mario Bros." movie, showing a villain, High Evolutionary, who is trying to evolve animals into intelligent anthropomorphic beings in order to use that knowledge to evolve humans into a perfect species, thus posing several uncomfortable questions about achieving ideal goals through mass pain and suffering via exploitation of disposable "others". Its hidden theme is surprisingly subversive: animal testing in laboratories, and how their suffering is "invisible" to humans, indicating specism. Part III is thus not that funny anymore as its original, and features one unexpectedly melancholic-touching sequence, the one where a dying Rocket has a vision of heaven where he is reunited with otter Lylla and his animal friends, which is something on a level of sadness that no other Marvel film managed to achieve. Overlong, overburdened by too many subplots and heavy-handed in certain moments, part III still works in its scarce, but welcomed scenes of humor. One of the best examples is when Star-Lord insults the "facelift" High Evolutionary by comparing his face to RoboCop and Skeletor. Drax reciting Mantis' words to Star-Lord, but then he randomly starts to improvise: "Yesterday, I made a poop shaped like a fish. Even my butt is capable of making an analogy." Star-Lord trying to charm an alien secretary by presenting himself as "Patrick Swayze". The action fight of the Guardians storming the entrance of the henchman 117 minutes into the film and the ensuing shootout are filmed in a great two-minute scene in one take. Despite a strange shift in tones and meandering directions, part III is a worthy conclusion of the saga: James Gunn is ahead of the curve in the superhero genre.
Grade:++
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