Whoever’s in charge of quality-control over at Marvel Studios is sure doing one heck of a job. The comic-book-based tycoon of a production company has been churning out incredibly complex, touching, humorous action films with an impressive amount of consistency throughout the past decade. Case in point: if any other brand-name studio tried to create a movie featuring classic eighties songs and a talking raccoon, they’d be laughed right into the ground. But not Marvel.
Ever since the first trailers to sci-fi adventure Guardians of the Galaxy came out with “Hooked On A Feeling” playing in the background, half of the current adolescent population suddenly bought the Blue Swede single on iTunes or dusted off their parents’ old Jackson 5 albums. Director James Gunn has created what many are calling a rip-roaring ‘space western,’ the like of which hasn’t been seen since Joss Whedon’s vastly underrated television series Firefly was canceled.
But the truth is, when I finally sat down to see Guardians I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, because hearing people sing the praises of a Marvel movie is pretty much par for the course by now. In fact, many Marvel productions that are considered ‘great’ compared to non-Marvel films can be merely ‘okay’ when compared to other Marvel projects. This studio has almost created a league of their own in the cinema world. Their work is always witty, complex, and often makes fun of archetypal cliches that audiences have grown accustomed to seeing in superhero plot lines. They’re not perfect, of course, but they’re not a waste of money by any stretch of the imagination.
So the question in my mind when the projector rolled was, “Will this be a great movie? Or a great Marvel movie?” Because I’d honestly been led to believe the latter.
(And by the way, while I always do my best to produce spoiler-free reviews, in this case I may include some footnotes for those of you who don’t mind some minor reveals).
The movie begins in the 80s, where we see just how the human main character, Peter Quill, ended up hanging with aliens in the first place. In the wake of a family tragedy where none of his relatives think to comfort him (or even keep an eye on the young boy, for that matter), he bursts into tears and runs off, unnoticed, to grieve. At that point, he’s suddenly abducted by a mysterious spaceship, and the childhood trauma likely reaches maximum capacity. Surely whoever he grows up to be, this kid is going to have some serious psychological issues.
But the next time we see Quill, fully grown on the surface of an alien planet, he doesn’t look that much worse for the wear. A little grungy, perhaps, but he’s still grooving to his childhood walkman like nobody’s business. And as it turns out, his kidnappers also happened to be mercenary thieves, so Quill has adapted accordingly: he’s out on his own, performing wild shenanigans and committing double-crosses that inevitably lead to the audience howling with laughter… and to his meeting a pretty motley crew of abrasive misfits. Each of them brings a new form of comedy to the screen, and each has a story: a personal injustice that led them to their current criminal lifestyle. But as time progresses, they up discovering a common cause to believe in, and they decide that it’s worth putting aside their grudges against society (and each other) in order to save the galaxy. What follows is both a side-splitting comedy, a pretty satisfying adventure, and a great movie... perhaps even a great Marvel movie, but that's debatable (though I may be alone in thinking that).
Guardians boasted a largely non-human character list, so it threw around alien names and cultures and terms until I had thoroughly lost track of who planned to hunt down/destroy/avenge/kidnap/double-cross/brainwash/conquer who… and this is coming from someone who can name all thirteen of the dwarves in The Hobbit without breaking a sweat. But even with all of my cognitive powers processing the storyline, I still got turned around a lot. That’s not to say that a second or third viewing won’t clear things up, but generally the reason one watches a movie a second time is to enjoy it, not to catch the jokes that were muttered too quietly to hear, or to figure out the politics that didn’t fully make sense the first time around.
Still, it’s not as if I’m going to have to be dragged into the second screening! I had a great time laughing at the band of delinquents, and was rather proud of them as they tried to trample all over the audience’s concept of what a superhero should look like. There were elements of that where they succeeded (case in point: a psychopathic raccoon who still saved more civilian lives and city buildings than Superman did in Man of Steel), but there were equally as many moments where they disappointed, too: like the required female character who must be tough but still attractive, so they just give her incredible fighting skills and then stick her in leather from head to toe. Or the heart-of-gold mercenary creature who can’t really speak English but is still understood and translated by his partner (can anyone say, Chewbacca?). And of course there were a few cliché moments, too, like when the heartbroken child Quill is somehow ignored by his entire extended family at a moment of peak trauma, or when someone gives a moving speech to his peers about what it truly means to be a hero, or when the villain hesitates in the middle of completing his evil scheme because he gets temporarily distracted by something petty, and so on.**
So on the whole, Guardians of the Galaxy may not really be anything new in the realm of space adventures as it claimed to be. I went in expecting a few more stereotypes to get shattered than actually did (though maybe Firefly just spoiled me when it comes to space westerns). But that’s no reason to consider Guardians a sub-par creation, perhaps even by Marvel standards — it's a perfect Friday night blockbuster for the whole family, and it's one hilarious roller-coaster ride that I can’t wait to get back in line for, many times to come.
**SPOILER BELOW**
…or when Groot has the classic moment of “actual” speech at the climax (seriously, had he just been holding it in for his entire life, or what? It’s not as if saying his usual three-word catchphrase would have made the moment any less emotional, especially if Rocket could translate it)… not to mention his not-so-heartbreaking death that we all knew wouldn’t last, since he’s a comic book character and has a history of re-growing broken limbs. I wonder if all those other twigs will become a little forest of Groots.
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