Thoughts on "Guardians of the Galaxy"

Considering it’s an action blockbuster bankrolled by one of the most dominant, successful company brands, Guardians of the Galaxy is a strange film. Yes, it has its moments of extravagant spectacle, and it falls prey to a last act action sequence so enamored with CGI and special effects that it is always a little emotionally disconnected. But it also has a band of misfit anti-heroes who do the right thing not because it is necessarily right but because it benefits them in some way. And by placing its emphasis on these characters and their playful, occasionally self-consciously wry, interactions the film feels lively and snappy. Marvel took a risk with a film like Guardians which is based on a comic book property that is obscure and features characters who are downright bizarre (a sentient tree (voiced by Vin Diesel) and a talking raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), anyone? – the former of which is possibly the most memorable and endearing of the film’s characters). But that clout is being used smartly and confidently. At its core, Guardians isn’t especially daring though. It is familiar really: a space opera meets an old adventure serial. It is a throwback, featuring the wit, imagination and sparkle of popcorn films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It also features a good dose of the group dynamic of The Avengers, thrusting a bunch of people that make no sense occupying the same space and watching them riff off one another. The result is inspired and it leads to Guardians, at times, being filled wall-to-wall with jokes. The film may just be Marvel’s funniest outing yet. But it’s, more accurately, the most jubilant, riding on a wave of child-like glee. This starts with central protagonist Peter Quill (played pitch-perfectly by Chris Pratt), self-monikered as “Star Lord”, a dude who is in a deep state of arrested development after leaving earth on the day his mother passed away. Quill is full of himself, and yet he lives life flying by the seat of his pants. He won’t accept responsibility because he essentially has lived his whole life avoiding growing up. That sense of loss and sadness lingers in the background of the film but sits there understatedly, threatening to bubble up every so often. The five members who make up the titular Guardians (also featuring Zoe Saldana as warrior-princess Gamora and former-wrestler Dave Bautista as the deadpan comic wonder Drax the Destroyer) are trying to outrun dark, pained pasts, often through sheer force of quip-delivering will. Towards the end of the film, Quill labels himself and his compatriots “losers”, and he is right. These aren’t the heroes we’ve been taught we deserve; they act cowardly, foolish, dumb, and selfish. Co-writer and director James Gunn gets a significant mileage out of that fact. The scope here is large, gallivanting from planet to planet in a large corner of this universe. The story being told is needlessly dense and intricate and not always easy to follow. But the mythology is almost beside the point, a Rube Goldberg-ian device to facilitate character-based fun. As A.A. Dowd notes, “What’s faintly delightful about Guardians Of The Galaxy is that half of its heroes seem bored by the mythology, too.” By placing the perspective primarily on a bunch of ill-equipped people/creatures, heroic only by circumstance, swept up in politics, intrigue and conflict that is beyond them, it makes for a story Marvel has yet to tell and one that finds new, quite entertaining notes to hit.