Guardians of the Galaxy: Review

Director: James Gunn
Running time: 2 hours and 2 minutes
Certificate: 12A


Guardians of the Galaxy was supposed to have been a big risk for Marvel, outside of the hardcore comic book circles, it was largely unknown, not even me a casual Marvel fan had ever heard of it. But with an opening North America box office of $94 million, it looks like the risk has paid off big time.

There is a lot to admire in the film, and although there is obvious tonal similarities in its final act, it is certainly different to any other film adapted from the Marvel catalogue.

After visiting his dying mother, a young Peter Quill is abducted by Space Pirates called the 'Ravagers', led by Yondu. Twenty six years later, Quill (Chris Patt) gets his hands on a powerful and mysterious orb, because of this he is now the target of the main Villain Ronan the Accuser, who sends assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to retrieve it. And with a bounty on his head, Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) see it as too high a price to turn down. Through various scenarios in the story, they meet up with Drax (Dave Bautista) in a prison, and from there they team up to stop Ronan from destroying the world.

From the moment you see Chris Pratt dancing to Redbone's 'come and get your love' on the planet Morag, you know this film is going to be fun, and to its credit, it does try its very best to be fun and colourful. In a very retro way, it's a reminder that Science Fiction films can be fun, when so few modern ones are.

Let's begin with the good stuff. The visuals in the film are beautiful, the galaxy in which the film takes place is certainly breathtaking, and every inch of it oozes off of the screen.

The characters are unique and work well, because of their own personal flaws they all begin as anti-heroes, so they are a little bit more relatable compared with your typical superheroes.. Chris Pratt plays the everyday out of luck, charming rogue, satisfyingly. Bautista is surprisingly okay as Drax when you consider that he has very little on-screen acting experience. But the star of the show is Rocket, the sharp tongued little raccoon has been superbly animated, and brought to life by Bradley Cooper. Without his electric presence the film wouldn't be anywhere near as good.
The chemistry between the four of them is sublime, in both the moments of comedy and the more dramatic/serious scenes.

The action scenes are entertaining, at least the shooting and hand to hand combat scenes are. The best example of this is a prison escape plot point. Not only is it exciting but we get to see all of the individual qualities that each character brings to the team.

I love the mix of 70s and 80s soundtrack, certainly my kind of music. Gives the film a nostalgic but fun feel to it.

But the film does have problems, which I think have been kind of brushed over by the mainstream critics.

The film is very contrived, and yes I know this is based on a comic book. But the story progresses by stuff just happening, action scenes prodded in from nowhere, and locations are visited and left far too quickly. There really isn't much of a narrative structure at all.

Some of the action scenes are too busy and tipping on the edge of boringness. This isn't helped when the editing can be very choppy, too often the camera would too hastily change from one character's scene to another, this is only ever noticeable in the last act of the film.

From his introduction you would have been fooled to think that Ronan was going to be a powerful and intimidating villain, but he quickly becomes cliched and forgettable. While his motivations are explained, they're never really explored. And because Thanos (one of the most bad arse villains in the Marvel universe, for those who didn't know), is lurking in the background, his stature is further diminished because it becomes obvious that he is just a piece of meat waiting to be slaughtered.

Verdict

Guardians of the Galaxy is not only a fun blockbuster, but on the whole, a technically well made film. It continues Marvel's consistently good library of films that its made over the last six years or so. The positives far outweigh the negatives, which aren't themselves too drastic. I would put this in the top five of my Marvel studios films.

3.5/5