‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3’ Reviews Barely Land It Inside The MCU’s Top 20

Early reviews for this weekend’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 have arrived, and they are…fine. In the context of recent MCU movies, they are actually pretty good. Though in the context of the MCU as a whole, it’s not quite a breakout hit. And it’s reviewing worse than the previous two Guardians movies to boot.

Right now, with 90 reviews in, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. That would put it as the 19th best-reviewed MCU movie, though that’s out of 32 movies total. Here’s what sandwiches it in the list:

17. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – 84%

18. Ant-Man – 83%

19. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – 82%

20. Captain America: The First Avenger – 80%

21. Captain Marvel – 79%

22. Black Widow – 79%

So, the bad news is that it’s reviewing worse than the original Guardians of the Galaxy at a 92%, and also Vol. 2 at an 85%. It’s possible the numbers could still fluctuate, but I doubt we’ll see dramatic shifts. The good news is that it’s reviewing a lot better than some recent MCU bombs, namely Thor: Love and Thunder at a 63% and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which was recently the MCU’s second-ever Rotten-rated movie at a 47%. It’s also reviewing better than Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness at 74%, and as you can see, isn’t all that far off from Wakanda Forever.

I do think critics now are kind of over the MCU, so we’re seeing scores that are perhaps lower overall than they would have been a few years ago. Most of the upcoming Marvel projects coming soon after this are Disney Plus shows, but the next MCU movie will be November 10, combining Captain Marvel, Monica/Spectrum from WandaVision and Kamala Khan from Ms. Marvel. We’ll see if it can perform better than the original Ms. Marvel, and my guess is that it probably will.

As for Guardians of the Galaxy, this is the last Guardians movie, period. James Gunn is moving on to run DC and while I suppose it’s not impossible that a Guardian or two will show up as a cameo in a different MCU project eventually, or reappear for the next Avengers films, no more group adventures, sadly, it seems. The end of an era.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.