Fifteen long years after Tony Stark first clambered into his Iron Man suit and shot a repulsor blast through Hollywood’s old way of doing business, it’s hard to tell how much trouble Marvel is actually in. In purely commercial terms, the outlook still seems bulgily robust.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is, at the time of writing, the second most successful film released in 2023, while last year the studio’s cinematic output accounted for three of the year’s 10 highest-grossing titles. But even so, when was the last time you heard anyone actually expressing enthusiasm over one of these things, outside the franchise’s heavily invested fanbase?
That hazy but palpable sense of waning enthusiasm makes the third Guardians of the Galaxy film – which was directed and written, like the first two, by James Gunn – feel like something of a litmus test. This sub-series’ wisecracking band of waifs and strays are among the most beloved members of the whole Marvel menagerie – it was arguably the extraordinary success of the original Guardians outing, which in 2014 turned a set of D-tier unknowns into box-office dynamite, that proved this cinematic universe was going to thrive. So if anyone could rekindle widespread audience excitement, it would surely be Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill, Dave Bautista’s Drax and the others amassing for one final rodeo.
It’s ironic, therefore, that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 should itself be so irritable and frazzled: watching it often feels like snooping on a group holiday where the participants stopped enjoying one another’s company years ago, but are ploughing on for old time’s sake. Where the cast’s chemistry used to run on playful joshing and bickering, now every other group interaction is just sour, if not actively rancorous.
Karen Gillan’s Nebula, in particular, is just relentlessly bad company here, while Zoe Saldana’s Gamora, arbitrarily resurrected after her death in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, is now essentially a stranger to the rest of the gang, scuppering the group dynamic. (Pom Klementieff’s Mantis, who gets the lion’s share of funny moments, is clearly the one who’s decided to put a brave face on it.)
