Guardians of the Galaxy

The Marvel Cinematic Universe put out a new addition last week week with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Produced by Kevin Feige and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman, the film stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close and Benicio del Toro.

Peter Quill (Pratt) is an outlaw that calls himself “Star Lord.” After stealing a sphere-like artifact, he finds himself with the unlikeliest of allies: the assassin, Gamora (Saldana), the genetically-engineered raccoon, Rocket (Cooper), the living tree, Groot (Diesel) and the inmate Drax (Bautista). Calling themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy, they must find a way to keep the artifact, which contains a powerful infinity stone, out of the hands of Ronan the Accuser (Pace), genocidal maniac bent on cleansing the universe of all who stand in his way.

A film centering on C-list and D-list superheroes was a bold move for Marvel, considering this is the equivalent of DC putting out a film for the Legion of Super-Heroes. Yet, Guardians of the Galaxy succeeds on almost every level. It maintains a light-hearted humorous atmosphere even when the tone shifts into the serious moments and has great characters that have near flawless chemistry with each other alongside a good villain.

Right off the bat, it’s clear that Guardians is not the average superhero movie when the first thing Quill does as he steps on plane to retrieve the artifact is take his mask off, put on a pair of headphones and a Walkman, start Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love,” grab a lizard, use it as a microphone and dance all the way to his destination. The humor continues to be prevalent all the way until the climax when, in the middle of the action, Quill challenges Ronan to a dance-off while insulting him.

The film also has mostly great characters that have near flawless chemistry with each other. This is especially notable in certain interactions, such as two between Quill and Drax. It’s established that Drax is extremely literal and doesn’t understand the concept of metaphors, thinking the slicing gesture means a literal finger to the throat, and Quill has to explain to him what it means. Near the end, Drax is about to kill Korath the Pursuer (Hounsou) and repeats to him the meaning of the metaphor rather than making the motion. It’s his glee towards Quill about how he used a metaphor and Quill’s reaction that sells it. Rocket and Groot also make a great duo, which is cemented in their first scene when Rocket berates Groot for drinking from a public fountain. He looks back and Groot’s still doing it.

As a villain, Ronan is pretty good. He’s menacing and twisted, with a bizarre sense of strength and weakness. His first scene is him smashing someone’s head in because he hates their race and it only goes on from there, killing Thanos’ vizier (Alexis Denisof) because he didn’t like what he was hearing and proceeds to double cross Thanos (Josh Brolin) when he gets his hands on the Infinity Stone. He’s not a great villain, but that’s not entirely a bad thing as this film was mainly about establishing the heroes.

However, the film isn’t entirely perfect. Some characters were underused, like Nebula (Gillan). All her scenes are great, but she really needed more screen time. Drax and Gamora are also a little underdeveloped. Billed as “the Destroyer,” Drax very unevenly loses his one-on-one fight with Ronan, even though he should be on equal terms with him. And Gamora is known as a living weapon, yet she isn’t able to take care of a small group of prison thugs without Quill intervening. However, the development they have is still pretty good and the great interaction between all the characters does well in masking it.    

Marvel hasn’t lost any speed since it started building its Cinematic Universe in 2008, while DC continues to stagnate. Afraid that audiences would be confused with a Wonder Woman movie, the decision was made to throw her into the Batman/Superman movie scheduled to be released next year. Meanwhile, Marvel threw audiences a raccoon with a machine gun, who was welcomed with open arms.  

Guardians of the Galaxy launches up to #1 for 2014 New Releases. And it'll take a lot to displace.