With their tenth installment in an ever growing cinematic universe, Marvel Studios has crafted a film that is filled with personality, charm, wit, and excitement.
Initially labelled as a gamble for Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy takes most of its inspiration from the 2008 run of Marvel comics created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. A team of D-List superheros so unknown that multiple references in the comic itself make their obscurity clear. What made many people label this as a risk was what I thought made it such a pleasure to watch. With most comic book movies there are hundreds of incarnations of the characters they are adapting to film which can sometimes limit a writer's ability to draw out the best possible movie of out them. Filmmakers feel they have to be absolutely beholden to what came before them that it never truly feels like their own. With this film and this property, James Gunn took a lot of the bare essentials of the characters' origin stories, which for non-Peter Quill characters were usually dispensed in quick little expository scenes, and created his own characters.
Most of the characters don't really resemble their counterparts from the Abnett and Lanning run, and that's one of the films main advantages. This is clearly a James Gunn movie throughout; his personality and sensibilities as a filmmaker are clear and present throughout the movie in it's humor, heart, and how it functions as a moving character piece for essentially 5 brand new characters.
The most surprising aspect of the movie is how easily it extracts emotion out of its viewers. A movie of this size can just as easily load up on comedy/action and not give us any reason to care about the characters. Every member of our protagonists is given a moment to make us care and that is no easy feat. Gunn could have decided to just settle and make this a Star-Lord movie while forgetting the rest of the characters by giving them flimsy motivations and half-baked development, but it avoids that trap and instead makes all of the characters the driving force of the movie. There's a moment in particular towards the middle of the film where a drunken Rocket Raccoon is detailing how he became what he is and it's so surprisingly filled with emotion that I was seriously wondering if I was still watching a major summer blockbuster. Even with that said, the movie never forgets what it truly is and never loses itself in its own sentiment. It starts out on a pretty downer note detailing Peter Quill's origin story, but then quickly segues into a opening credits scene depicting Quill dancing to "Come and Get Your Love". It's incredibly refreshing to see a movie billed as a comedy not afraid to make its audience experience some actual emotions.
Whether you had reservations about the movies premise -- I can understand how a talking raccoon and a sentient tree-like life form would cause hesitation -- one of the things this movie had going for it since it started production is its wonderful cast. Chris Pratt absolutely exudes movie star charisma, his comedic timing coupled with an innate ability to just be likable is an incredible asset to any movie. Coming from Parks and Recreation, Pratt's transition from being a secondary character on a tv show -- albeit one of the funniest characters on a show filled with first-class comedic talent -- to the lead in a Marvel movie could not have gone any better.
Zoe Saldana was perfectly servicable in the role of Gamora. This is her 3rd huge sci-fi franchise and while I think her character probably could have been given more to work with, she plays the strong and fierce leading lady so well that it's not much of a problem.
The three show stealers rounding out the cast are so good that I couldn't even decide who I enjoyed the most, but Drax, Rocket, and Groot were so well realized by their performers.
Batista(Drax) was the biggest surprise in the entire movie. I came into the movie worried he wouldn't be able to hang with the rest of the cast with his limited acting experience and stick out like a sore thumb, but he displayed such great comedic timing in the way his character responded to a variety of metaphors that his race is seemingly unable to understand.
Groot was another character I was really worried about. With a character whose vocabulary is limited to only "I am Groot", there was a lot of potential to wear the joke out and use it in a cheap manor. They instead chose to humanize him and Vin Diesel's voice performance went along way with making him a great character.
I really did not expect to walk out of this movie thinking Rocket was the 2nd most interesting character in the movie. Both comic book incarnations of the character that I have read always short-change Rocket in favor of the more interesting Quill and Gamora or other members of the team. However in this movie, Rocket walks away being not only the funniest character, but the only character I would ever want a spin-off movie to center around. Bradley Cooper's voice performance gave Rocket a heart and a fiery, resentful soul that audiences could rally around.(Also credit the VFX department for creating such life-like creatures like Rocket and Groot.)
Even a movie I enjoyed this much is not perfect, it has its flaws like any other film. One of the biggest being the thinly sketched antagonists. Ronan, the films main villain, resembles Malekith from Thor: The Dark World in that he simply exists to be evil and we're only giving a brief explanation that he's some fanatical religious extremist. Lee Pace does a wonderful job with the role, but you have to wonder whether more of his parts just got cut out in editing. Karen Gillan's role as Nebula is largely forgettable and you're never given a reason to be truly afraid of her until the end of the movie.
The plot of the movie is also something that is pretty standard fare for your type of space-opera/sci-fi movies, but coming after comic book movies like The Winter Soldier and Days of Future Past, you can't help but be disappointed by the Macguffin chase that this movie devolves into -- I can't fault Marvel for doing something they had to do since they're moving towards the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, but you just kinda wish there was more to the story. The movie also succumbs to the 3rd act problem most Marvel movies have in it's insistence to always have some big CGI spectacle at the end -- though the final battle ends in a hysterical and unexpected manner with an unlikely dance contest. It's in tune with its own epic scope but seems to reek of "been-there-done-that", though Gunn did his best to make it work.
Depsite it's flaws, the movie succeeds the on the strength of its characters. Gunn decided to sacrifice story in order to give these "new" characters life and that's becoming a rare thing in big-budget movies. He infused his own personality into the movie -- the soundtrack comes to mind, especially how it's used as a character device for Quill's development -- and that made all the difference in this wild, insane, and hilarious entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I can't wait to see what he has in store for the sequel.
