Guardians Vol. 3 corridor fight: why it's the perfect scene

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña and Dave Bautista, feels like a home run for the MCU. Its corridor fight near the end is, to me, a perfect scene. I think it shows why I fell in love with the genre, and it brings together all the elements that made the franchise so successful.

To explain why that scene lands so hard, I have to start with where Marvel had been before it, and why the film arrived at a moment when the studio seemed to have lost its way.

Marvel had started to feel like an assembly line before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

After many underwhelming projects, it felt like the franchise had somewhat lost the heart and creativity that once made the studio special. What we were getting felt like products coming off an assembly line, whether in cinemas or in the Disney Plus shows. It seemed like Marvel was bombarding us with mediocrity, with the focus solely on making as much money as possible. We had Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which I'd call the Multiverse of Madness, and many more.

There was lots of talk about superhero fatigue at the time. With Marvel being the biggest producer of content in the genre, it felt like this once gigantic juggernaut had somewhat lost its way. Unfortunately, the same thing happened with Star Wars. Its projects once felt like major events you couldn't miss, but people became happy to skip them because they didn't feel like they mattered.

I love comic books, but it had got to the point where even I thought things were getting oversaturated. There weren't any stories that felt like they innovated and raised the bar.

The current slate felt like a comic shop mystery bag

I was talking with someone about how many projects were coming out, and I compared the slate to something from back in the day. You'd go into a comic shop and pick up one of their prepackaged bundles, about 10 books put in a black bag and labeled something like mystery mix. The price was cheap, so it seemed like a good deal. When you opened it at home, there were some good ones, but most of them were meh.

In the end you'd read about three of them, and the other seven were ones you weren't interested in, so you never opened them. I feel like that's the current state of affairs. We've been given a big bundle of books, but there's a lot we can't be bothered to read, and we're sitting around skimming through the ones that might turn out to be interesting.

Everyone gets a comic book movie or show these days, but the C and D list characters are no longer the innovative ones they used to be. Batman and Superman always had a big audience, so they could afford to do things by the numbers. It was normally the more obscure characters that had to do things differently to stand out. I feel like The Batman and Joker are being far more creative now, while the likes of Shazam and Ant-Man are the ones going through the motions. That's why I'm happy to say Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 shows that when someone puts their heart and soul into something, it can take things to the next level.

How the Guardians end up on the High Evolutionary's ship

The corridor scene feels like James Gunn going Super Saiyan. He brings together everything he's learned since that first Guardians movie to make this moment his masterpiece. To see why it works so well, you have to look at what the Guardians go through first.

After an attack by Adam Warlock earlier in the movie, Rocket is left at death's door. The team discovers a kill switch inside him that would activate if they tried to use a med pack, so they set out to meet his maker. That leads them to the High Evolutionary, who wiped out an entire planet of his experiments because he didn't think they lived up to his standard.

The group had split up beforehand to go and meet him, and the planet's destruction pushed them further apart. Just before the scene, they finally reunite in the hangar of the High Evolutionary's ship. Quill says they have to go and rescue Mantis, Drax and Nebula, but those three make a big entrance by bursting through the walls on the backs of some creatures.

Rocket refuses to run, and the Guardians stand up for the outcasts

At this point the group could easily fly off and leave the High Evolutionary to his own ends. His experiments have been disrupted, and his subjects have even turned against him and tried to form a coup. There's just one thing: the ship is full of animals and children that the High Evolutionary could subject to more experiments. Getting flashbacks of what it was like under the knife, Rocket valiantly says he's not running anymore, and they step up to save the others.

This exemplifies what makes the Guardians the Guardians. The group is very much a voice for the misfits and outcasts who are often overlooked. Superhero movies at one point fell into the cliché of centering on saving the girl, with Lois Lane and others as damsels in distress. It's rare to see the freaks given a voice, but the Guardians are seen as their champions.

Before the first film was released, no one thought it would be successful, because this was a team made up of a raccoon and a talking tree. However, Gunn has always been a voice for obscure and overlooked characters, which the Guardians and the High Evolutionary's victims exemplify.

The animals in cages may be a metaphor for the voiceless

You can argue all day about animal testing, but farming, the dairy industry and the cruelty within them are often things we put to the back of our minds when we're eating and enjoying ourselves. That's a big tangent, but I think Gunn purposely put animals and kids in cages to maybe act as metaphors for things in our world, as a way to be a voice for the voiceless.

It's there if you want to see it and not if you don't, but it adds a nice layer of subtext to what the Guardians are trying to accomplish. Whatever you make of that reading, I think there's no denying how good this scene plays out.

Why the Beastie Boys' No Sleep till Brooklyn fits the Guardians

The scene is set to the Beastie Boys' No Sleep till Brooklyn, a signature song that carries its own meaning and ties in with the group. The track is about touring. In it, the rappers talk about how tiring it can be to go on gigantic journeys from city to city, away from home, facing the monotony of playing the same songs over and over without a sense of place.

Running throughout the music is a sense of determination, and they say they won't rest until they reach their home in Brooklyn. Metaphorically, that's what the Guardians are going through too. They've been broken apart and have been through battle after battle, but they won't stop until they save the day and get home. It works perfectly in this moment.

It also shows Gunn's signature style in full effect. This is a director who has built his name on making moments play almost like music promos, and he's an expert at selecting a song for a scene. Every Guardians film has had its own soundtrack, and we've gone from cassettes all the way up to the Zune, which Peter plays at the start of the scene to kick things off.

The one shot corridor fight shows every Guardian at their best

As for the moment itself, you have to marvel at the technical work behind it. One shot takes are ridiculously hard to put together, but Gunn has this hallway scene flowing from one character to the next. It shows all their strengths and weaknesses, and it exemplifies how good the group is.

Groot stuffs a branch down one of the creatures and explodes it from the inside. Quill throws electrical charges on guards, and Drax pins someone to the wall with his knife. There are even callbacks to the prior films, with Rocket standing on Groot's shoulder shooting, and Quill's charge being something he's used in other movies.

My favorite moment by far is Nebula getting punched in the head. Lots of her bones and parts are broken, and I love how she pulls everything back into place and keeps firing. The movie is laced with body horror, but this is the moment that stands out to me.

Gamora's fight closes the scene with the team united again

The scene ends with Gamora fighting off one of the High Evolutionary's squid headed creatures. She's a character who hasn't felt like part of the group because of everything that happened earlier in the franchise, and Quill has tried his hardest to get her back with him. I think it's during this moment that she finally feels like part of the team again.

Ending on her, with the team all standing around as the shot pans, is an outstanding way to close it out. That final shot of the group together works so well to show they're once more united.

Why I call the corridor fight perfect

So much of this scene works because of the choreography: the way the camera moves through the stomach of a creature, the way we see the Guardians working together, and the way the music reminds us what's really going on. This is the team coming together one final time to show us why we fell in love with them in the first place.

It's got great callbacks, it's beautifully executed, and it shows the entire team, in front of the lens and behind it, at their best. "I don't know if this is the best action scene in the MCU but I'm hard-pressed to think of another one that tops it." In the end, I can't wait to rewatch this moment, and to me, that's why it's perfect.