Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Peter Quill rallies his team to defend the universe and one of their own – a mission that could mean the end of the Guardians if not successful.

The third and purportedly final movie in the ‘Guardians and the Galaxy’ series (subtitled as ‘Vol. 3’) provides an emotional final adventure for the ragtag space gang as they attempt to prevent a new villain from capturing Rocket in his quest to create the perfect world. For those who have seen the first two films i.e. all of you I suspect, the formula is similar – whip snap dialogue, plenty of humour and an era appropriate soundtrack (it’s the third outing so we’re now in the 90s), but like most of Marvel’s post-‘Endgame’ material it feels tired and lacking in the spark that made these films such a success to begin with, leaving it trading on the in-built feeling the audience already had for these characters.

The movie begins with an attack on the guardians new headquarters by a Sovereign warrior called Adam (Will Poulter), which ends up with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) receiving a critical wound and fighting for his life. Discovering that their med-packs cannot heal his wounds due to a kill switch placed within Rocket by the nefarious corporation who experimented on him as a baby raccoon, the guardians set out to track down the mad scientist behind it all to save Rocket’s life. What follows is the usual Guardians adventure as they hunt down a villain – the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) – while Rocket recalls his past as he lies unconscious, spinning off into a pretty dark and tough to watch animal testing subplot. I felt that was the strongest element of the movie, albeit it was an awkward fit in a Guardians movie where it interrupts the usual quips and banter.

I was struck by the poor quality of acting in the movie as much as anything, not aided by a script that was doing very little for me. Pom Klementieff is wooden as hell (you could argue that’s by design, but that excuse only works to a point), and the less said about Chukwudi Iwuji the better (but I’ll say some stuff anyway!). He isn’t helped by the character who is a seriously rubbish villain with no premise and who I never bought as a real threat to the Guardians, despite how the script tries to make him so, but Iwuji is just not good at injecting even an ounce of charisma or threat – he is a void. To be fair, Marvel (and DC to bring them in) have struggled with villains for some time now, Ultron aside, but it does really hinder a movie such as this which requires a good villain to make the formula for these movies work. If you don’t have one, you probably don’t have a good movie in this genre.

For full disclosure I’ve never been as wowed by the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movies as others have been, so my in-built feeling for the characters isn’t there, which is an issue for me here as a lot of the heavy lifting is being done by what you’ve seen these characters do before and not how this movie is playing out. If you hadn’t worked it out by this stage, I wasn’t really impressed and thought ‘Vol. 3’ was a bit of a damp ending to the Guardians story (I’m sure they’ll be back at some stage or in other movies), but at least this isn’t another multiverse story so it has that going for it!

Rating: 2/5

Directed By: James Gunn

Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Will Poulter, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Linda Cardellini, Nathan Fillion and Sylvester Stallone

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6791350/