Film Review

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (2023)

Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Peter Quill rallies his team to defend the universe and one of their own…

During Marvel Studios’ rise to box office dominance in the 2010s, it’s fair to say Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) represented the first significant test of their creative wisdom. Iron Man (2008) may have been a financial risk because the character wasn’t yet as popular as Spider-Man or X-Men, but even comic-book nerds had little awareness of the Guardians, despite them having been around since 1969.

The decision to hire filmmaker James Gunn (Slither), then best-known for writing Scooby-Doo (2002) and the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake, having only just directed a body horror called Slither (2006) and the dark superhero comedy Super (2010), was arguably Marvel’s biggest gamble. It paid off. Guardians remains one of the studio’s most popular additions, despite a shaky sequel in Vol.2 (2017). It helped that the original film was so separate from everything else happening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), so if the project had backfired Marvel could claim it…