Marvel Month - Mini Review - Guardians of the Galaxy

Next up in Marvel Month was one of Marvel’s biggest risks, Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy featured 5 relatively unknown characters forming a team in a single movie without any movies building up to it like the Avengers has, it also features 2 prominently CGI characters in an environment that lent itself to the use of a lot of CGI backgrounds, so doing it on the cheap would be difficult at best, the budget was as close as makes no difference $200m. They put less money into Spider-man Homecoming or any of the first Avengers solo movies.

But the gamble paid with a movie rated 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and making over $750m at the box office. But that was Summer 2014, how does it hold up 3 years later? Here are my thoughts

After the death of his mother, Peter Quill is abducted by aliens with the only reminder of Earth being his music tape. 26 years later he comes across an orb worth a lot of money and wanted by some very bad people, trying to get the orb to his buyer gets him into contact with mercenaries Rocket and Groot, vengeful Drax, and former assassin Gamora. Circumstances force them to work together to save the Galaxy.

So, why is it this movie is so well loved? Is it the story? Well, not really. It’s not a bad story by any means but it’s a relatively familiar one, it kinda feels like they were ticking off a checklist, or though that might just be in hindsight. I didn’t think the writers were looking to reinvent the genre with this story is all I’m saying.

So what about the characters? Well, there I have some nicer things to say. I like all of the main heroes, they all have distinct personalities, even Groot who’s limited to 4 words ‘I’ ‘we’ ‘am’ and ‘Groot.’ And I like one of the villains, although her character’s fleshed out far better in the next one, and that is Nebula. I also think Yondu’s fine, again, better fleshed out in the next movie.

Where I take issue, is, surprise surprise, the main villain. Here’s a novel concept for you, when you make the motivations simple, you can dedicate more time to make the villain interesting. Ronin’s motivation is to destroy Xandar because he feels a peace treaty dishonours his people or some such sh*t. Make your motivation grounded. Look at Loki, Marvel’s best villain, what did he ever want? His father to love him (Thor) to take over the world (Avengers) to escape prison and Avenge his mother’s death (Dark World) these are all very basic motivations but he’s by far the most interesting character. Ronin is in the same league as Malekith, that’s not a good league to be in. Also, Thanos does nothing but sit in his chair, I guess he was needed to establish Gamora and Nebula but beyond that, he serves no purpose in the story whatsoever.

What about the visuals? For the most part, the visuals are fantastic, you believe you’re in outer space and the style really fits with the movie’s tone, the action looks fine, and Rocket and Groot look good. You could argue that aside from Rocket and Groot, the aliens of the world look very human, but you have to reign in the budget somewhere I guess. Also, it’s kinda a pity that no comic version of Nova showed up on the home planet of the Nova Corps!

So what about the dialogue? I think that’s probably the best part of this movie. The interactions between the characters in the movie make for some hilarious moments and some touching ones too and the acting really helps with Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel all giving great performances as the lead heroes.

Character banter and acting along with great visuals propel this movie far higher than a story this generic with this generic a villain really deserves to be.

Rating 75/100