James Gunn begins Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 with one of those iconic marriages of sound and image that have been his calling card since he broke out in the first Guardians of the Galaxy. The planet is Knowhere, the Guardians’ HQ, and the subject of this opening segment is Rocket “I’m not a Raccoon” Raccoon (voice of Bradley Cooper), which is appropriate as this third and final Guardians will delve into the character’s back story. Gunn’s camera wanders through the streets of Knowhere, taking in the casually wild environs as Rocket saunters into a bar, where Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is dead drunk as part of his ongoing malaise over the loss of his version of Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The melancholy tone is perfectly established by an acoustic version of Radiohead’s “Creep,” which plays out in its entirety.

On the surface this sounds good, and the scene works. But you don’t have to look very hard for the signs of creative strain. For one, “Creep” is not the sort of counterintuitive needle drop one might hope for in this context. When pop music coursed through the original Guardians, Gunn got the same sort of credit Quentin Tarantino gets for rediscovering lost classics and introducing them to a modern audience. No one needs to rediscover “Creep,” though. Gunn does rise to that occasion other times during the film – Spacehog’s “In the Meantime,” which also features in the trailer, is a good example – but the “Creep” choice serves as a useful metaphor for how we might understand this whole film. It works but it no longer feels touched by inspiration.

That’s not to say that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. is lazy either. Gunn might have had reason to phone this in – he was originally fired by Marvel/Disney before being rehired as this movie’s director – but he’s constitutionally unable to give a movie like this anything but his all. If the first two Guardians movies didn’t stake his claim to a particular style of sound, image and humour, then he gave us possibly the most fully realised version of his brand with his Suicide Squad reboot for rival DC two years ago. Simply put, there’s a reason Gunn has become the most in-demand director of superheroes movies outside of the Russo brothers.

There are a couple things, then, that keep the third Guardians from reaching its full potential, and they can be tied to story choices – for which Gunn, as the sole credited writer, is also responsible. For a movie that makes a lot of the fact that it is going to be the last of its kind, the story has the feel of a quirky middle movie for much of its running time, rather than something with a distinct finality to its stakes. That could be because the movie is populated with strange creatures that look like Gunn watched Toy Story and decided to make a whole movie based on that mutant toy in Sid’s bedroom with the baby doll head and mechanical spider legs.

Death is always a spectre in what is announced as the final movie in a series, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 does have that at least. Not long after the “Creep” scene, Rocket receives a chest wound when a strange gold-skinned superhuman (Will Poulter) swoops into Knowhere attempting to kidnap him. After defeating the enemy and surrounding their potentially mortally wounded friend, the other Guardians – Quill, Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) – realise they can’t operate on him as they normally would. That’s because Rocket has a kill switch, proof that he was someone’s proprietary technology, who wanted to neutralise him from afar if need be. If they operate, the kill switch will trigger, unless they can locate the company that did this and disable the switch.

A very Guardians-style adventure ensues, which crosses their paths with the wrong version of Gamora – the one from the alternate timeline who doesn’t remember her relationship with Quill – as well as with the mad scientist who did the experiments on Rocket. That’s The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who has a thing for creating new and “better” species that involve such monstrosities as human-octopus hybrids, usually with cyborg parts. The Guardians will travel to the Earth-like planet where he houses these creations, as well as the space station made of organic material that guards his technical secrets, in their quest to save Rocket.

There are lots of other characters and lots of other things going on in this movie, but it feels streamlined enough to make its 150 minutes pass relatively painlessly. Yes it’s funny enough, as Gunn knows how to get the most out of comedic personalities like Bautista and Gillan, leaning into the former’s goofy wordplay and the latter’s foul mood, as permanently black as her eyes. There are clever action scenes filmed in continuous shots, which give the viewer a clean spatial awareness of whatever arena is hosting this fight. There are weird aliens – some too weird? – and there is pumping music throughout, hypothetically emanating diegetically from the iPod Quill had with him when he was first kidnapped from Earth by the Ravagers. In other words, it’s everything you would want and expect from a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

So what’s the problem? Maybe there isn’t one, but neither is there a specific reason to cheer this movie. The Guardians have actually had some of their most memorable appearances in Avengers movies, so including last year’s Thor: Love and Thunder, this is actually the sixth time they’ve appeared together in a Marvel movie. And six is enough.

To their credit, Gunn and Kevin Feige understand this. Thor went one too far by coming back for a fourth movie, and the Guardians are better served going out on their own terms, before we’re sick of them. I won’t spoil here whether the spectre of death amounts to anything or is just used for dramatic heft, but I will say that Gunn knows how to wrap up a trilogy, culminating this movie with a farewell that also feels like a celebration. That’s fortuitous, because knowing the Guardians of the Galaxy lo these ten years has indeed felt like something worth celebrating.

 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently playing in cinemas.