Guardians of the Galaxy is a thrilling,
hilarious, bold, and utterly unique movie that I can't possibly
recommend enough. It's the first big new addition of characters to
the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 3 years since Captain America: The
First Avenger put the last piece of the foundation in place for the
absolutely amazing Joss Whedon triumph The Avengers. It's also the
most oddball story of the bunch, prominently containing as it does
such characters as a talking Raccoon named Rocket (literally named
after the Beatles' song) and a talking tree named “Groot” who can
only say the words “I am Groot”. He's a very memorable character
to say the least.
These two are bounty hunters who team
up with the cold blooded assassin Gamora, the murderous Drax the
Destroyer, and the human Peter Quill, who is a mercenary or thief of
some sort packing a series of gadgets which are surely giving Boba
Fett a massive hard-on somewhere, to form the titular gang of heroes.
In the surprisingly intense and emotional opening scene we see a very
young Peter Quill watch his mother die before being suddenly abducted
by aliens and taken away from Earth forever. This experience of
losing everything is ultimately what draws this group together, and
its only one very effective aspect of how writer/director James Gunn
tells this story.
The fact that the very heavy opening
sequence works so well also sets up a brilliant contrast with the
next scene, as Blue Suede's “Hooked on a Feeling” blasts across
the title card and we see the adult Peter Quill dancing hilariously
through an alien landscape. A huge part of the film's success is its
wonderful ability to make instant switches in tone in a way that
really enhances the experience. It isn't afraid of taking itself
completely seriously as a sprawling space opera but also loves to
walk right up to that line of seeming TOO serious and melodramatic
before suddenly switching back to being completely irreverent. One
minute characters are making intense and dramatic monologues about
gaining ultimate power and bringing about the destruction of worlds
and juuust when things start to go a little too far and your eyes are
about to roll, Peter Quill calls someone a Ninja Turtle, the tension
is completely broken and you're right back with it. This one-two
punch is played for laughs again and again, but it also helps to sell
the outlandish space-opera world of the story.
Chris Pratt as Peter Quill is the guy
doing this most of the time and he is a HUGE part of why the movie
succeeds on that front. Peter Quill as a character is supposed to the
audience surrogate. He's an 80's kid from our world and so he views
all of this in much the same way we would. This is a world with
talking raccoons and trees and blue men running around and Quill
reacts to all of it much the same way you or I would. This forces
Pratt as an actor to have to hit a really interesting balance in his
performance. Normally in a sci-fi world like this, you want the
actors to seem like they totally buy into the reality of the fantasy
world their characters inhabit. If you go and watch the audition
tapes of various actors reading for Luke Skywalker, you'll see right
away why they hired Mark Hammil. He was able to read lines about
running to Tosche Station to pick up power converters as though it
was a totally normal and mundane chore to be given. Because Hammil
was able to take the world completely seriously, we were as well.
Pratt has to do the same sort of thing while also filling the role of
outside observer who is very much aware of the ridiculousness of it
all and in my opinion he completely nails it.
The movie's amazing soundtrack is
another huge part of keeping the movie grounded. Peter Quill's
“Awesome Mix #1” is a great mix of 70's pop music that will surly
go down in history as one of the great movie music mixes alongside
The Big Chill or Pulp Fiction soundtracks. The songs are also
deployed perfectly in the movie, setting exactly the right tone in
the scenes where they appear. But not only do they enhance the style
of the film, the music is also a huge part of Peter Quill's character
as the cassette tape he uses to listen to these songs are his last
and most important connection to Earth and the mother he lost. The
cassette plays a significant part in his story and is one of the
smartest touches in a very smart screenplay.
The other characters are almost as deep
and interesting, although I tend to think Gamora and Drax are
slightly less developed and not quite as lovingly rendered as the
amazing duo of Rocket and Groot, the MCU's resident Han Solo and
Chewbaca pair. Each individual character's personality and the
relationship dynamics between them are established with wonderful
efficiency. One of my favorite examples of this is when we first get
to see Rocket go to work as he mastermind's the group's escape from
Space Alcatraz (as I will choose to call it) which involves
instructing Quill to steal a man's prosthetic leg. The moment where
we discover why Rocket makes this rather odd request was one of my
favorites in a movie packed with memorable scenes. The script also
moves these characters from enemies to reluctant allies to actual
friends in a way that always seemed believable.
The action scenes in these movies are
done often long before the script is even finished and they are all
very fun, even if I might quibble that some of them seem merely
functional in terms of how they are presented. It doesn't really seem
like James Gunn really put his own spin on how this stuff was
presented. However, this isn't much of a concern though because of
how good his screenplay is at putting these moments in an interesting
context. The editing also succeeds in conveying the overall ebb and
flow of tension in the set pieces. For example, I might not have
been blown away purely by the stunt work or choreography of Gamora
and Nebula's fight scene, but it did a good job serving its purpose
in the context of the scene and built enough tension to keep things
exciting. Plus, touches like the irony of watching Groot walking
around in the background, prematurely executing the plan Rocket is
outlining, help to perfectly set up the action.
Guardians of the Galaxy is my favorite
film of the summer, and possibly my favorite film of the entire
Marvel series. Its the funniest of the bunch and the best film of the
2nd Phase of the MCU (an arc of films that I think are
universally stronger than their predecessors). But it also doesn't
require any knowledge of those films to work and I think if people
give it the chance, could satisfy a very wide audience of people.
Check it out.
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