James Gunn has included many pop songs as part of his Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and the third and final movie in his trilogy has delivered another banging soundtrack. However, it seems that for the first time, Gunn had to compromise on the inclusion of a song as he failed to acquire the rights to use one of the songs he had in the script due to it being caught up in a legal limbo.
Music has been a big part of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, with much of the marketing even including designs based on audio tapes and other retro music players. Like its predecessors, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings with it some instantly recognizable songs, although Gunn found his last Marvel outing gave him his only problem when it came to which songs he was allow to include. He said:
"Over 3 movies I've gotten every song I've written into a script, sometimes after much blood & toil to acquire the rights. However for the 1st time on Vol 3, we didn't get the rights to a song I wanted because it was tied up in legal battles. The song is 'Russian Roulette' by Lords of the New Church.”
While Gunn would not confirm which song ended up replacing the track, it is something that fans can have fun trying to work out. In the end the film certainly hasn’t suffered for the loss of that one track, although the director would have probably liked to make it to the end of his run with everything exactly as he planned.
Chris Pratt Says Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Has the Best Soundtrack.
The music of Guardians of the Galaxy has always been part of the story, and the new movie continues that trend. When promoting the movie, star Chris Pratt emphasised that not only is the soundtrack of GotG3 important to the story, but also the best of the trilogy. He said:
"I don't want to give you spoilers, but I'll tell you this, I think it's the best soundtrack that we've had on all of the movies. It's really good. It's moving. He's done it. James has done a great job because he curates these playlists of finding those sleeper hits … kind of bringing something up like he did with each of us, finding this little diamond in the rough and bringing it up and polishing it and letting it be on display. He does a great job with that and all of the songs in this particular volume have that same feeling."
There are certainly plenty of people who are finding that out for themselves now as they flock to see the final instalment of Gunn’s Marvel journey. The film has pulled in a huge opening weekend haul, but the real question is what next week’s drop-off will look like in comparison to other recent Marvel movies. If the film can maintain a reasonable second weekend audience, then it should have no issues surpassing Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as the highest grossing Marvel movie of 2023.