Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

4. The Ambitiously Dark Tone

Vol. 3 just might be the darkest MCU movie to date. Forget Thanos (Josh Brolin) turning half the universe to dust or the horror funhouse shenanigans of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - this is an at-times genuinely bleak piece of work.

James Gunn commits fully to exploring Rocket's grim, upsetting backstory and everything that entails, but more broadly, this is also an often surprisingly violent movie that focuses on brutal injuries as far as the PG-13 rating will allow.

This is also the first MCU movie to feature an unobscured F-bomb, so that's neat.

Though there are those aforementioned times where the seams between the movie's various moods show, overall it's admirable that Gunn wanted to do something less outwardly crowd-pleasing for the finale to his trilogy, instead daring to venture to places which will surely make the film less popular with family audiences.

Those especially averse to seeing animals in peril may struggle through the plentiful Rocket flashbacks, yet it never feels like Gunn is being exploitative or shocking for shocking's sake.