Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is becoming the comeback that the MCU desperately needed.
After a string of box office duds, "Vol. 3" shows that some life is still left in the Comic Book Movie, and Superhero genres.
"Black Adam" and "Shazam: Fury of the Gods" were bonafide commercial and critical flops, while "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" severely underperformed, and it might be the first Marvel Cinematic Universe project to lose money in theaters. Even "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," the sequel to the 2018 box office juggernaut, ended up not breaking the one billion mark, settling on 860 million dollars compared to the 1,38 billion of the original.
"Guardians of the Galaxy" has always been a beloved, if off-beat, corner of the MCU, and it has always been referred to as a trilogy, but there were still many reasons to doubt this entry's success. Not only was there the aforementioned comic book and MCU fatigue, but superhero trilogy capers rarely stick the landing.
The last entry was also a whopping six years ago, a fact that might've been mitigated by regular appearances of the Guardians in the last two Avengers movies, a Thor movie, and a Disney+ Christmas Special. Lastly, there was the behind-the-scenes drama where writer and director James Gunn was temporarily fired due to the resurfacing of controversial old tweets, which could've influenced the audience's perspective.
All those worries turned out to be for naught, as "Vol. 3" has been critically acclaimed and is performing exceptionally well at the box office, reinforcing the fondness audiences have for this strange group of outcasts that include a humanoid alien tree and a grumpy cyborg raccoon.
In its opening weekend, "Vol.3" grossed $118 million domestically, an improvement over the first movie's $98 million but less than "Vol. 2" 's $147 million, while it made a series-best $168 million internationally. It is remarkable that it managed a paltry 48,9% drop in its second weekend, a rarity among blockbusters nowadays and the second smallest decline from an opening weekend in all of the MCU.
Much of this performance is attributed to solid word-of-mouth, even compared to its predecessors, and a rich emotional storyline centering on the raccoon character, his backstory, and his focus on animal rights through his perspective.
Despite all of this success, it's still unclear if there will be a fourth Guardians movie, as director James Gunn and stars Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldaña have already stated that they do not intend to return to these roles, or if it'll manage to overtake what is currently the year's box office champion "Super Mario Bros," which has amassed $1,210 billion so far.