Review: Guardians of the Galaxy
Directed by James Gunn • 2014 • 121 min
Since Iron Man, Marvel Studios has been building an impressive cinematic universe with a growing number of superhero films, already brought together for The Avengers and its upcoming sequel. The complexity of the Marvel universe is not limited to the big screen, as demonstrated by ABC’s Agents of Shield and the DVD-only Marvel “One-Shots.” And in 2013, Marvel Entertainment announced that it would be releasing four new series and a miniseries exclusively to Netflix in 2015, starting with the rebooted Daredevil.
With these deliberate, calculated moves to tie all Marvel properties together, Guardians of the Galaxy is something of an oddity. While the mysterious Thanos returns, having first appeared in The Avengers, there is little here to remind us that we are in a universe shared with Thor, Black Widow, and Captain America. Guardians stands alone, or rather it is more rewarding to compare to Star Wars and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than with its Marvel cohort.
Guardians opens on a young Peter Quill. After witnessing his mother’s death, Peter is abducted by a fleet of spaceships. Jump forward 26 years to the present day, where Peter (played by Chris Pratt) earns a living as a scavenger. When he comes into possession of a small orb, Peter realizes that he stands to make a fortune, but is also at odds with Ronan the Accuser, an alien terrorist working for Thanos. Wanted across the galaxy by a number of criminals, law-enforcement agencies, and bounty-hunters, Peter eventually joins forces with a motley crew of outcasts: Thanos’s daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana), bounty hunters Rocket the genetically-modified raccoon and Groot the walking tree, and Drax (wrestling star Dave Bautista), a convict looking for his chance to kill the man who took his wife and daughter from him. Working together, they take on Thanos’s army.
Despite introducing us to quite a few central characters, Guardians is remarkably well-paced and avoids awkward information dumps. While The Avengers took five preliminary, standalone films to introduce us to the team, the Guardians are rolled out in about a half-hour, and that’s plenty of time to let us know who we’re rooting for.
If there’s one thing we should be able to rely on from our superhero films, it’s that they be entertaining. Whether they tackle important themes or provide fluff, this is a genre built largely on escapism. Guardians is overwhelmingly successful on this front. Comedic timing is the film’s greatest strength, largely delivered through the buddy cop dynamic of Rocket and Groot (appropriately voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel respectively). Perhaps most surprisingly though, it is Bautista’s Drax that steals most of the group scenes with his painfully literal understanding of symbols and metaphors and his dangerously narrow focus on attaining revenge.
With James Gunn directing, it’s no surprise that Guardians pokes fun at the superhero genre. Quill comically fumbles throughout the film, while his relationship with Gamora steers safely clear of cheesy romance. Rocket cleverly stands in for the cynical viewer tired of over-the-top altruism and grandiose speeches. There’s no doubt that the director behind 2010’s Super could have gone a bit further though. Where that film lampooned the inherent arrogance and entitlement of superheroes and the patriarchal, Christian morality of the genre, Guardians largely fits in with its fellow action blockbusters. Our handsome, cocky hero is not out of place, but he certainly doesn’t challenge the status quo of superhero cinema. And the film’s climax is a drawn-out action montage with spaceships blowing each other out of the sky for what feels like more than their fair share of the feature’s running time.
One of the most disappointing elements of Guardians is Gamora’s sparse screen time. With Marvel’s increasingly conspicuous lack of female-centred films, one would expect that the estranged daughter of an enigmatic villain, skilled in combat, and with mortal enemies across the galaxy, would provide an ideal excuse for more focused character development. Of everyone on the team, her motivations are the least well established, and her presence on the team feels half-baked.
With nods to Star Wars‘ Emperor Palpatine and constant reminders that this is a fully-formed universe, with a colourful underworld and obnoxious bureaucratic stooges, Guardians does a wonderful job of blending the superhero genre to the broader history of science fiction, bumping elbows with Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, and the above-mentioned Hitchhiker “trilogy.” While not exactly groundbreaking, it’s a welcome addition to the landscape and worth a watch.