In terms of everything that Marvel has released as part of their Cinematic Universe, I think it’s fair to say that Guardians of the Galaxy is the most difficult to predict. A film starring characters that the general public wouldn’t have heard of even in passing, it’s pretty much the single biggest gamble Marvel has played since the release of Iron Man, starring a character who — at the time — was not even half as big of a deal as he is now. All we (the royal we, not the comic-reading we) really had to go on was the fact that it took place in the same arena as the rest of their films, albeit on the other side of the galaxy, and that it would effectively introduce a new Space Avengers in half the time it took to introduce the regular Avengers.
The result is something a touch unpredictable. It’s easy to nod and say “Of course we’re going to enjoy the film,” but Guardians is a different kind of beast altogether, and an entertaining one almost altogether different from that which came before.
The uphill battle of the film is bringing everything together. By now, with Marvel films we’re used to a certain amount of familiarity in the way that things are introduced, but this is Marvel’s first team-specific film in that none of the characters have ever been seen before this. The Avengers benefitted from most of the cast having “origin story” films enough that their core essence could really shine through when the cast was brought together, but Guardians has no such benefit of the doubt to run off of. As such, the opening is a bit of a rough start; Peter Quill is given the most focus as our human connection to it all, but the rest of the team is sort of squeezed into his drama in ways that both work and don’t. It’s slightly uneven, trying to make things fit that don’t seem like they will (which seems to be the core idea of the team anyway), but once the film assembles its rag tag bunch everything picks up and starts running much smoother.
Part of this is because the heroes of the film work much better together than they do apart. Quill is a leading man archetype, but without other people to bounce off of he’d be far too unlikable to follow the entire time; this isn’t RDJ’s lovable asshole Tony Stark, but rather someone a touch more selfish and backstabbing with no great reason to change. Putting Quill with Gamora and Rocket and Groot and Drax, on the other hand, allows for a rather organic form of growth for the character. The same goes for other characters as well; Gamora and Drax both are delivered as one-dimensional characters, but playing off one another allows their true qualities to shine through.
That everyone spends half the film degrading and yelling at each other certainly helps this, but the biggest trick Guardians successfully pulls is introducing a team that you can’t help but think will never work — and then, when they do, it’s triumphant for the audience as much as it is the characters.
What’s also remarkable is that, all things considered, this is the least atypical of Marvel’s films. For better or for worse, all of Marvel’s films up to this point have been rather formulaic in their origins; all of the heroes find themselves betrayed by someone close to them, or find out that the life that they have built for themselves is at least partially based on a lie. Marvel’s bread and butter comes from underdog heroes and making you care about the villain before you realize they’re the villain in the hopes that this will add some weight to the drama — but Guardians very much eschews that notion. The underdog nature is there, but otherwise it’s pretty straightforward: there are clear-cut heroes and villains, there is clear-cut danger, and yeah, there are twists and turns but there’s no last second twist or shock. Guardians avoids all the trappings and obvious revelations overly prevalent to its predecessors, and it is all the better for it.
Of course, every one of the Guardians gets a different way to shine. It’s actually rather clever; each character is given a specific mannerism or quirk that belongs only to them, even if it’s something minor (or obvious, in a certain tree’s case). These eccentricities are then ramped to eleven in the group format, and this in turn it allows for a shocking amount of character development in a smaller time frame. Every member of the team gets specific situations in which they become the sole focus in order to shine, or are given scenes in which their backstory is revealed in order to offer more sympathy, Rocket perhaps being the best example of this. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes less so, but by the end of the film you’ll understand in-depth who these characters are; that this could be accomplished in a team film where everyone is fighting for attention is perhaps the most impressive aspect of all.
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So in that regard, the core cast of the film absolutely nails their roles. The roles are different from the comics (or rather, the ones the film reports to be based on), but like with most Marvel casting it’s now rather impossible to see what any character would look played by anyone else. Chris Pratt is Star-Lord in the same way Zoe Saldana is Gamora and Dave Batista is Drax; they’ve defined the roles on a new stage, and made them feel like extensions of themselves. Looking at how each actor brings the character to life, even in the voice department with Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper (who finally managed to convince me Rocket shouldn’t be British), offers up roles that everyone here feels almost born to play. There is so much charisma present in each of the characters that it’s hard to come away from the film with a favorite; they’re a team of characters and actors that all work incredibly well together, and it’s near impossible to separate.
Even the secondary cast breathes life into their smaller roles. It’s an eclectic cast for sure, but John C. Reilly’s Dey or Benicio del Toro’s Collector all manage to feel fully formed, even though they’re only part of the film for pint-sized bites at a time. The amount of people in this film that have “bigger roles in the comics” (as we always lament to say) is quite large, but everyone does manage to give you just enough reason to care or be invested with their actions or the future of their roles.
Also, a great deal should be said about Lee Pace, who has made his career playing some of the nicest characters in films and has somehow transitioned into someone really menacing across multiple roles. Ronan the Accuser is certainly the biggest of the bunch, but as the film’s core villain Pace brings a great deal of emotion to an otherwise one-dimensional role. Whenever he walks on screen you can’t help but have your eyes drawn to him and his actions alone; I personally didn’t know Pace could yell like that, but you’d be surprised.
However, the biggest flaw of the film is the sheer amount it attempts to cram in. It’s not done to a bursting capacity, but it’s certainly close. There are a ton of wonderful easter eggs, sure (one which left me completely shocked in its inclusion), and the way certain comic ideas are reinvented can be interesting at times, particularly with the grounding of the Nova Corps. Yet there is so much involved with the film that at times certain aspects or characters feel downplayed, like Karen Gillan’s Nebula; there’s a very obvious point to the character, but the screen time given to her doesn’t seem to justify it. The film does occasionally stumble in that department, as there is so much to see here that by the end you’d be hard pressed not to find a few things that you don’t feel you saw enough of; it’s a greedy complaint to make, but with a movie as big as this that casts such a wide net, it feels like a shame to bring in so much talent only to have some of that talent get such little screentime.
(There’s one in particular I’d critique more in-depth, but I don’t play the spoiler game, I’m afraid. You’ll likely understand if you’ve seen the film, though.)
Guardians seems so obsessed with the idea of introducing something you’ve never seen before from Marvel that there’s a lot that feels like Gunn and co. throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. What’s problematic about that is that it’s clear Marvel sees this as a tentpole; it’s not that I imagine people wouldn’t want to see the film, but there are so many concepts introduced that it feels a bit like overload — especially since a large majority of it will ostensibly be explored in other films entirely. There’s also a tawdry amount of exposition in the film, sometimes to the variety that someone feels the need to state an action that is very clear in what the film is showing, which is a bit embarrassing.
Yet despite this, the sheer amount of imagination present in the film is perhaps the thing that makes it all ultimately work (aside from the main cast). It actually feels a bit like distraction made for those with short attention spans, but it also works best because of that. After the film you may be wishing you saw more of X, but during the film the transitions are so quick between set pieces and action sequences that it’s hard not to be captivated by the new, shiny things in front of you. Whether it’s the Nova homeworld or the space prison or the floating severed Celestial head out in the depths of space, the sets are so well crafted and create some of the most extravagant and fantastical imagery we’ve seen in sci-fi films in quite a while, the likes of which probably haven’t really been felt or experienced since the first Star Wars trilogy. A universe is born here, and I can’t help but imagine what kind of things we might see in the sequel, let alone the future of the Cosmic Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Continued below(I also couldn’t help but pettily mutter under my breath, “See, JJ Abrams? This is what you should’ve been doing in Star Trek, man.” But that’s another nerdy argument for another day, I suppose.)
Hours later and I still find it difficult to believe that I could sit in a theater, even a small local one, and find it absolutely packed to the gills with people actually excited for a film that features a talking tree and space raccoon as bounty hunters. I can barely believe there are people gasping and cheering at things that, if I described, would probably find a high school jock shoving me into a locker over.
To be quite forward, there’s so much about Guardians that feels like it shouldn’t work, to the extent that because it does the movie makes Marvel seem like an invincible behemoth at this point. Part of it certainly comes down to branding, sure, but for a studio that has such a direct hand in curating the talent involved with their projects and how their projects work, it’s a miracle that a film with as much nonsense crammed into it as this one is as entertaining and generally steady as it is.
This isn’t the political intrigue or action of Winter Soldier. This isn’t the fantastic myth-building and sorcery of The Dark World. This isn’t even the culmination of ideas and high stakes of Iron Man 3.
This is different. This is the Guardians of the Galaxy film, and you’ll be damned if you don’t have a damn good time watching it.
So Guardians soars, and it flies high. We could make a million puns to describe the better qualities of the film, but for me, it actually all comes down to one line that Michael Rooker throws out in the latter half of the film that, in a blink and you’ll miss it kind of way, quantifies one of the film’s oddest up-to-that-point plot holes. This speaks to the film’s biggest strengths, which is the script by Nicole Perlman and James Gunn; without the care and balance offered throughout, literally none of this would’ve worked and everything would’ve fallen apart. Guardians is the definition of trying to cram in too much, but pretty much everything teased in the beginning of the film has some sort of pay-off by the end, and a whole new realm of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is given life in a way that took Phase 1 six films to truly fashion before making headlines.
Guardians had some impossible odds stacked against it, and while it’s by no means a perfect film it’s still an incredibly entertaining one. It spins its plates and drops a few, but it’s decidedly the best film James Gunn has ever made. What we’re given with this movie is a whole lot of things that should in no way work, a team that shouldn’t function, and a bunch of characters we shouldn’t like — and yet it works, they function, and they’re all impossibly likable. Future films could benefit with a bit more of a singular focus and less energy put into trying to cram a lot of eccentric world building into a two hour run time (rumors of cut cameos actually made me sigh with relief), but there’s so much to enjoy within this film and just enough set-up for the future that I’d be more than happy to sign up for future installments of this lovable bunch of a-holes in Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Electric Boogaloo.
But more than anything else, what this film says to me is that for Marvel is smartest by getting us hooked on a feeling, and then leaving us high on believing. Well played, Marvel, Gunn and co. Well played indeed.
As a final note, if I may.
Over the past month, we’ve run something here at the site called Guardians Month, in which we’ve asked artists to do pieces based on their favorite Guardians, as well as a few other written pieces (including but not limited to a beginners guide to the Guardians, for those interested in reading more after seeing the film that I put together for you — yes, you). It’s been fun, and we’ve gotten some great art out of it, as well as a ton of great interviews, like with Bill Rosemann about the creation of the team that stars in the film.
All of this, though, is done towards the benefit of Bill Mantlo, the creator of Rocket Raccoon. Mantlo suffered injuries when he was struck in a hit-and-run car accident while rollerblading, and it was an accident that left him in need of constant care due to a brain injury related to the accident. It’s a heartbreaking story, and I recommend reading more about it in order to get perspective on where Bill is at. Bill left us with a lot of wonderful characters and memorable stories, very literally taking characters that were nothing but dimension-less toys and turning them into cult favorites, and it’s a shame that we don’t get to experience the world of Bill’s imagination anymore.
So if you enjoyed the film, got as much entertainment out of the sassy little guy as I did and would like to help out one of the men behind the raccoon, I’d encourage you to read about the ways that you can help out Bill. For more information about our Guardians Month, including a list of everyone who was involved, you can find that here. Our auction will be starting soon, so make note of which pieces you like and keep your eyes peeled to Multiversity for further information.
