Before this movie was announced did you honestly know who the Guardians of the Galaxy were? I didn't, but now I do and they're awesome!
Guardians of the Galaxy is directed by James Gunn and yet again sees the Marvel Cinematic Universe expand even more, this time in the far reaches of space. It is definitely Marvel's most ambitious film to date as it takes a group of relatively unknown comic book characters and gives them their moments to shine. Chris Pratt plays Star Lord, a human being captured by an alien ship at a very young age, who steals a mysterious power source in the shape of an orb. This then leads him to form a team with a group of 4 other misfits; Gamora, Drax, Groot and Rocket with the goal of stopping Ronan the Accuser from destroying the Galaxy.
Yet again Marvel have produced a fantastically fun movie only this time they're giving us a space adventure movie which doesn't take itself too seriously. I enjoyed the movie a hell of a lot and I'm glad that they've announced a sequel.
The movie has in my opinion one of the best moulds of drama and humour I have ever seen. I found myself laughing quite consistently throughout the movie, particularly one scene which involves all 5 of them sitting in a circle. 80% of the jokes either hit sufficiently or left me gut busting and it is by far Marvel's funniest film to date. And Chris Pratt as Star Lord is honestly at the centre of most of the humour in this movie and he is awesome as this character. He's a badass in combat but at the same time is the character with the most depth and development.
The band of misfits all work well off each other and they really are an interesting bunch of characters. Zoe Saldana is perfect for the role of Gamora and has a really intriguing backstory which involves Thanos, the big purple guy in the post credits scene of The Avengers. Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel, is also awesome yet so cute at the same time. He was involved in my favourite few moments of the movie; one of which was comedy gold and the other a dramatic scene which actually really got to me.
Rocket Racoon, voiced by Bradley Cooper, steals the show. Rocket is so funny. Plus he looks awesome as well. You'd expect a Marvel movie to look good and this movie lives up to that. It has these grand epic shots of space and of different planets and also has some cool and colourful special effects which look amazing, particularly Rocket's fur.
Dave Bautista in my opinion does take time to slip into the role of Drax and he isn't exactly the greatest actor on the planet. But when he does get all warmed up he does have some great moments which are pretty goddam hilarious. I keep saying it but this is honestly one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. Whenever it may begin to seem it is becoming too serious the movie does a 180 and starts to spoof itself. It's very self aware and I really liked that.
I do have small issues with it including how some of the jokes in the first half did fall flat and the dialogue became woolly, fluffy exposition at times. The movie did do that a few times where it felt as if a character was giving unnecessary backstory for the sake of telling the audience these things.
My biggest issue with the film is the villainous characters. Korath, Nebula and The Collector appear in the movie and I didn't really care much about them. The main villain is Ronan the Accuser and while it was cool to see how he linked with Thanos, he wasn't a good villain for me as he had no backstory and his motivations were never clear, he was only there to be the bad guy.
As far as criticisms go that's it. Guardians of the Galaxy proves that Marvel can make relatively unknown characters awesome by putting them in fun, hilarious adventure films which Guardians is. It's a hell of a fun time which I recommend you see. Also, if you think the post credits scene will tease The Avengers: Age of Ultron, you may be disappointed. But I wasn't, I just found it funny:
Rating - B+
1 sentence summary - A self aware comic book movie with great humour, action and interesting characters.
I will be doing a spoiler review for this movie which should be up by tomorrow.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
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