Knee-jerk review: "Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3"

1. We still cannot wrap our heads around the fact that Bradley Cooper is the voice of Rocket Raccoon.  We can't hear anything of Cooper's usual voice in that character.
2. These Guardian movies are chock full of humor (like the lengthy confusion over which button opens which communication channel among the Guardian's spacesuits), so we're very curious to see what writer-director James Gunn does with the DC franchise now that he's in charge and developing a new Superman project.  At this point, worn down by the unrelenting grimness of the Chris Nolan Batman movies and Zach Snyder Superman movies, we cannot imagine those characters with any sort of light touch.
3. Pleasant surprises to get both Spacehog's "In the Meantime" and Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" on the soundtrack.  Great songs.
4. Seems logical that being called a "bad dog" truly is the ultimate canine insult.
5. How the movie resolves the Peter-Gamora relationship (remember that this is the Gamora who has no memory of her romance with Peter because of the events of Avengers: Endgame all the way back in 2019) was a surprise, but completely plausible.
6. It gets pretty dark.
7. All of those recent think pieces about the death of the superhero movie may have been premature given Volume 3's $700 worldwide million gross to date.  Then again, this cast of oddball characters are uniquely endearing compared to the usual slam-bang CGI superhero epic.
8. The production design of the deeply weird, half organic Orgocorp headquarters - including the wild costumes of Orgocorp's employees - is fantastic.  Critics like to say "you've never seen anything like it" but in this case it's true.
9. "Kill one stupid guy that no one loves."
10. You may have heard there's some unexpected pathos from a subplot involving Rocket-like test animals.  Plenty of films with all-human, live-action casts wish they could create that kind of emotion.  We're not crying, you're crying.
11. It may not be as good as the first one from 2014 simply because that movie was such an unexpected joy, but it's definitely stronger than Volume 2 in 2017.

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