Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

After waiting for weeks to go and see this, the weather finally let up and it felt cool enough to go sit in a dark cinema and enjoy it.

 

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and rest of the team from the previous movies are back again, with a reborn Gamora (Zoe Saldana), along with her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Groot (Vin Diesel) on a rebuilt Knowhere. With Yondu (Michael Rooker) no longer with us, Kraglin (Sean Gunn) takes over his Ravager crew and has inherited his whistle-controlled weapon and Cosmo the Spacedog (Maria Bakalova), who has psionic powers, gets a much larger role. However, this movie is all about Rocket (Bradley Cooper).

Just as the team are settling into the new Knowhere, they're attacked by a super-powered being (Will Poulter) who tries to kidnap Rocket. The team manage to fight him off but Rocket is left seriously injured and he can't be healed normally due to having a killswitch embedded in him and so the tale is all about finding the killswitch override in the place that Rocket was made - Orgocorp. Of course, that's also home to this movie's baddlie, The High Evolutionary (Chuckwudi Iwuji).

During all this, we get Rocket's origin story. How he was modified and enhanced by Orgocorp, and how The High Evolutionary was enraged that Rocket might actually be smarter than he is, so much so, that he wants his brain removed for more experimentation.

So, as before, we get a stonking sound track of mostly retro music tracks and loads of humour woven through the storyline. Peter is pining for the Gamora he lost, Gamora has no memory of Peter, Nebula is still trying to run things, Mantis still has her empathic control thing, Drax is still an idiot and Groot is still "I am Groot!" and it all works brilliantly.

Altogether one of Marvel's better movies and, even though some people are saying it's the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, the closing line does say "Star-Lord will return!"

9/10 😀