‘Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3’s “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” Fight Scene Rules Harder Than Anything Else In The MCU

If the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise was to be remembered for one thing and one thing only, and that “one thing” could not be “billion-dollar franchise about a talking raccoon and tree,” it would have to be the needle drops.

While dropping popular music into motion pictures is not a new thing, the Guardians films took the sometimes polarizing storytelling device to a whole new level. Writer/director James Gunn wove music into the franchise’s narrative, making off-kilter choices that spoke to characters and moments, oftentimes diegetically. Gunn wasn’t just dropping “Seven Nation Army” into a scene and calling it a day, nor was he always relying on evergreen crowd-pleasers like, I don’t know, “Don’t Stop Believing.” He dug deep to find under appreciated classics (The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb”), he found poignancy in the obscure (Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah’s “Lake Shore Drive”), and rehabilitated the image of songs that had been reduced to cheesy jingles (Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”). The soundtracks to each film feel like personal mixtapes handed to the audience from a director, just like a cassette tape passed from mom to son. But with the franchise concluded, at least as shepherded by Gunn, there is one needle drop that stands out from the pack — not because of the song itself, but because of the visuals, the context, the catharsis, just the whole damn package.

I’m talking about the Beastie Boys brawl in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, set to 1987’s “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” While there are more emotional needle drops to be found in the franchise (both uses of “The Chain” in Vol. 2) and more toe-tap friendly songs (“Come and Get Your Love,” obvs) and even songs with way more vinyl-collector-cred (“Moonage Daydream”), none of them distill what the entire Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is all about like the “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” sequence.

Let’s talk about the moment. This is the part of the movie where the Guardians of the Galaxy have a choice to make: hightail it off this combustible, moon-sized, eugenics nightmare factory or turn around and rescue the hundreds of children being held hostage — and fight their way through every damn one of the High Evolutionary’s foot soldier and cyborg Hell Spawn to get the job done. One by one, the Guardians turn and walk further into the fire, starting with Rocket declaring that he’s “done runnin'” then Groot, Nebula, Star-Lord, Mantis, Drax, and finally — with an eye roll — Ravager Gamora. This choice to do somethin’ good is set against a backdrop of hellish fire and the pounding stomp of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”‘s snarling riff and those cocksure opening lines: “Foot on the pedal never ever false metal / Engine running hotter than a boiling kettle / My job ain’t a job It’s a damn good time / City to city I’m running my rhymes.”

Then, the brawl to save them all. Drax pulls open the doors and starts two minutes and fifteen seconds of absolute done-in-one mayhem as the entire team, even adorable tagalong monster Blurp, absolutely wreck shop against dozens and dozens of suckers who have no clue who they’re messing with. And instead of switching over to an orchestral score, “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” plays in nearly its entirety, underscoring every blast and squish and scream with a bedrock of hard-hitting beats and shredding metal guitars.

It fucking rules harder than anything else we have ever seen in the MCU.

This marriage of ill anthem and frenzied ass-whooping is one of the many sequences I didn’t know I was dying to see in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. But here it is — a scene of every Guardian engaged in close-quarters combat. There are no gags to be had here, either. The punches ain’t punctuated with a punch line. Every single one of them is shown to be the relentless badass that they are underneath all of the quips and in-fighting. And throughout it all, they’re executing levels of teamwork that show how tight this group is. Mantis chucking a dude into Groot’s extended branch, Rocket sprinting down one of Groot’s tendrils to leap deeper into battle, Nebula and Star-Lord watching each other’s backs, even Blurp pouncing on a goon that Drax has already pinned to a wall. It’s all in harmony with that wailing guitar solo of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” The shot, weaving over, under, and through the melee, passes focus from Guardian to Guardian exactly like how the Beastie Boys pass the mic.

Subconsciously, I think this is why the music matches the moment. The Beasties, especially in 1987, had the same cocky underdog attitude that defines the Guardians, no matter how many times they save the galaxy. But even on the Beastie Boys’ debut, before the arenas and activism and artistic music videos came to define them, the group had a distinct interlocking style where all three emcees — Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA — were equally vital to the success of any single. That’s the damn Guardians right there, and this scene shows it.

No member of the team is powerful. Some are stronger and more durable than others, but Groot and Mantis are the only two with powers that go above and beyond a run-of-the-mill super-human. There are no gods here. There’s a bunch of a-holes who, as Peter Quill said in Vol. 1, are just a bunch of losers. They’re individuals who have lost so much, and who all thought they were better on their own or in isolated, co-dependent partnerships. More so than any other superhero team franchise, more so than all the X-Men and Avengers films, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise really captured that familial spirit. This really feels like a found family of individuals who have grown better the longer they’re together.

Were any one of these a-holes flying solo in this battle, none of them could fight through this much hell and do this much good. But together? In this scene? With that song and this attitude? They’re deadly. They’re unstoppable. They’re the Beastie Boys at the Garden cold kickin’ it live.