Guardians of the Galaxy - Review

DIRECTED BY: James Gunn
WRITTEN BY: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
STARRING: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Honsou, John C. Reilly, Glen Close, Benicio Del Toro

You know, to be honest, I think I'm kind of getting bored of Marvel movies. Oh no, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy thoroughly. Definitely one of the best blockbusters of the summer. Funny, quotable, nice to look at, and full of all the charm and colorful characters I've come to expect from the studio. If anything, "Guardians" bucks a number of the issues I have with past Marvel movies in that its not locked into just being continuity porn hung on a skeleton plot. It's not that continuity can't be a good, or even a great thing. In the grand scheme of things, Marvel's push for more continuity driven storytelling is in many ways unprecedented in the history of film-making. The cost of that, though, is that it feels like the individual film is becoming less and less the focus, and that as long as it fits in the grand Marvel plan it doesn't have to stand on its own two feet. Though it's story is well worn and falls squarely within the Marvel formula, as its own thing Guardians of the Galaxy still stands tall as one of the best entries in the franchise.

First off, can I just say how glad I am that blockbusters are aloud to be fun and colorful again. What with Pacific Rim and this leading the way, we might finally be entering a time where blockbusters don't have to be dark and grim to get an proper audience. We're able to have rowdy space pirates, multicolor skinned alien people, space markets made out of the severed heads of celestial beings. This is a universe where we can have talk about a peace treaty between Xandarians and Kree and not have it sound absolutely ridiculous. If all of this sounds like it requires a metric fuck-ton of tedious world building to get everything off the ground you'd be wrong. Outside of a few instances of quick exposition, we're introduced to this world largely by experiencing it. By rooting itself in a familiar story, the wild and weird world(s) this film has to offer can let loose and have fun with itself, stretch its wings a little and go crazy with it all.

Ultimately the film focuses chiefly on its most valuable asset, the characters, and man are these characters great. They all fall into broad character archetypes for the most part, but with the level of sheer force of personality and wit pretty much the whole cast it never feels forced or phoned in, even from the characters that don't quite work as well. With this and The Lego Movie, Chris Pratt's high-flying ride to Hollywood stardom is now complete (and well deserved). Just seeing how much he got in shape for the role of Peter Quill just goes to show just how much effort he put into this role, and it shows. Dave Bautista's performance is stiff and blunt to the a fault...and that's absolutely perfect for his character. The literal-minded Drax the Destroyer has some of the funniest moments in the film, and surprising some of its more poignant moments as well. His backstory is pretty usual as far as revenge seekers go, but there's a kind of innocent single-mindedness to him that makes him really endearing when it counts.

Of the main five I think only Zoe Saldana as Gamora is the only one that kind of falls short, though through no fault of her own. Marvel, can you please have an woman in your movies whose arc doesn't revolve around being a potential love interest to our main hero? At least with Black Widow they left it ambiguous, but when that's the best you can do you might need to rethink how you approach your female characters. I mean for fuck's sake, you've got a gun-toting talking raccoon as one of your breakout characters, a three-dimensional character with breasts shouldn't be that much of a challenge.

Of the supporting cast, there were two real standouts, the first being Benicio Del Toro as the enigmatic "Collector", who we already saw briefly at the end of Thor: The Dark World. As his name suggests, his whole thing is that he has this vast assortment of creatures and artifacts from all across the universe for reasons that aren't entirely clear beyond just for the sake of, well, collecting them. Honestly, though, I'm surprised at just how little screen time he actually got. His ham-tacular performance is mostly reduced to being a vehicle for a bit of expository dialogue. With the way he was built up, I thought he'd be a little more...I don't know, important. I mean we're only just now seeing the cosmic side of the marvel universe open up, so I doubt this is the last we'll see him, but his gonzo performance was one of the things I was really looking forward to going into this movie. Oh well, gotta give us a reason to pay and see the next one, right?

The other major standout supporting character for me was Michael Rooker as Yondu, captain of the pirate-like ravagers who abducted Peter Quill as a child. Looking back over his filmography, it looks like he's a bit of a regular in James Gunn films, and it shows. He gels so much with the style this film is going for and I wish he got more screentime just so he could mug for the camera some more. It's like every single pose of his face could have been ripped straight from the panels of a comic book. His character has this strange back and forth kill him/don't kill him relationship with our intrepid hero, though what that exactly is isn't really made clear. He looks cool, though, and hey, his whistle controlled arrow-dart-thing is one of the coolest movie weapons I've seen in ages.

When it comes to the rest of the characters, though, can I just ask one thing: why is it so hard for Marvel to make interesting villains? Villains OTHER than Loki that is. It's not like Ronan isn't...intimidating or anything, but he makes a whole lot of noise about vengeance and power but never reveals a motivation deeper than that he's a "fanatic" who I guess doesn't like the peace treaty his people signed with the Xandarians. He's not as bland as that dark elf guy I can't remember the name of from Thor: The Dark World (Malakite or something?) but he's a far cry from the better villains the Marvel universe has to offer. Nebula could at least chalk up a bit of her character to jealously, but she wasn't onscreen enough for her motivation to be anything other than surface level. As such, her confrontation with Gamora hinted in the trailer doesn't feel tense or emotionally charged in the slightest. We get a glimpse of Thanos, that guy from the stinger in the Avengers, but while intimidating the fact that all his associates seem to have chronic betrayal syndrome makes me seriously question his leadership abilities.

On the visual end of things, you can kind of tell that James Gunn is kind of new at this whole "action blockbuster" thing. While the action is certainly serviceable, even pretty good at points, none if it ever really stuck out in my mind as particularly memorable outside of a couple humorous moments. The close up hand to hand combat, especially, seemed a bit clumsy and lacking in the rhythm and visceral feel that Winter Soldier had (which is odd considering that movie had first time action directors too). Its a shame too because otherwise the cinematography is really solid. Also, I get that they're blockbusters and they've gotta spend their special effects budget on something, but do we really have to do the same CGI dogfights and casual slaughter as our final action set piece? When the "Guardians" as a group are doing things its fun and interesting, but watching the rest of the cast fly around and make...spaceship nets, it just made it feel like the climax was being drawn out way longer than it needed to be.

Speaking of climax, for a movie that spent most of its runtime being so irreverent and tongue-in-cheek about...well, pretty much everything, trying to convince me that I should be invested in the emotional stakes of the final battle is a bit of a stretch. They're fun characters, but having those emotional story beats at the end when the audience isn't primed for them really does kind of make the fact that the story is formulated to a fault all the more apparent. The movie is full of heart and a rowdy sense of fun and adventure, but that clashes sometimes with attempts at weightier drama it tries to inject towards the end. It's almost like its trying to be a film its not. It's not that these moments aren't well executed in their own right, but when put against the movie as a whole they really just don't fit all that well.

Maybe I'm just being too hard on it. Does it fall into some of the usual pitfalls of Marvel films, yeah, but on the whole genuinely does genuinely feel like the breath of fresh air this franchise needed. If anything, this'll encourage marvel to pursue its other obscure properties so we're not just subjected to the same superheroes again and again every single year. Time will tell whether Marvel is able to continually re-invent itself as it needs to, I mean they can't keep this up forever. Certainly the tension between the needs of the franchise and the needs of the individual artists is fairly evident (Edgar Wright anyone?) If this is any indication, though, its proof that there is at least room for some voice in the corporate machine. Avengers 2 and beyond is where the real test will come, and with D.C. stepping up with their own behemoth continuity machine, there isn't any room for error it seems.