- Location: Regal Lakewood 15
- James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly is a welcome tonic from the recent spate of superhero films that take themselves far too seriously. I'm thinking especially of the apocalyptic X-Men: Days of Future Past and entirely joyless Man of Steel, although some of the mainstream Marvel offerings like Thor haven't been much better. The fact is, very few superheroes should be as dark and brooding as Batman, and this film takes that idea and runs with it. All the way across the Galaxy, I might add.
- As mandated by the International Superhero Employee's Union, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is an orphan, but that's where the similarities between him and Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man end. Quill is a thief, plain and simple. After a pleasantly concise origin story, the film opens with him stealing a cosmic relic to the strains of Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love." Quill is to be forgiven for his dated-yet-funky taste in music (played on a Sony Walkman, naturally) because he was abducted from Earth sometime in the late 1980's. These days, he seems to spend equal time scavenging for valuable junk, evading the people to whom he owes money, and reminding everyone that he is also known as Star-Lord.
- But his latest stolen treasure, a purple gem known as an Infinity Stone, has gotten Quill a little too much attention. Before he even has a chance to sell the stone, pursuers as varied as a green space assassin named Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a talking raccoon named Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and his stalwart tree sidekick Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), and a blue-faced pirate named Yondu (Michael Rooker) are all hot on his trail. It isn't long before Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and Quill land themselves in jail, where they round out the roster by teaming up to escape with the tattooed, musclebound Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). Of these, you would probably assume that the talking raccoon is the most effective comic relief, but no--it's Drax. Days later, I still find myself chuckling over lines like "Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast, I would catch it."
- I've gotten this far without discussing the villains of the piece, and there's good reason for that. There's about half a dozen of them, each one slightly less interesting than the last. Certainly the biggest threat is posed by the hooded Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) who wants to harness the Infinity Stone to destroy planets for...honestly, I don't remember why. Also present are Gamora's cybernetic half-sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), a small-time enforcer known as Korath (Djimon Hounsou), a truly bizarre space hoarder called the Collector (Benecio del Toro), and the famed mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin), the latter of whom appears entirely as a gratuitous tie-in to future Marvel projects. I think I gave up on complaining about that approach to filmmaking sometime back around Iron Man 2.
- So, are a silly sense of humor and eccentric characters enough to elevate Guardians of the Galaxy above the rest of the seemingly endless stream of superhero summer blockbusters? Certainly its action sequences are considerably less engaging than the truly spectacular Captain America: The Winter Soldier, especially when this film forces characters and objects to move perpendicular to the plane of the screen in an underwhelming concession to the post-process addition of 3D. But really, that's where my complaints should end. Unlike the rest of the Marvel universe and most of superhero and action cinema more generally, this is a film that actually allows its characters to have fun. Only Star-Lord would describe himself as "an A-Hole" but not "100% a dick," and only Groot would repeat his signature line "I Am Groot!" over and over again without it growing tiresome. Simply put, these are gags that more established and iconic superheroes could never pull off. Hopefully the Marvel execs (whom I admittedly imagine sitting in Thanos' jet-powered space chair) realize that, while some comics have legitimately earned artistic respectability, others still work best on the funny pages.
- There aren't many famous SLUH grads, but James Gunn (and brother Sean Gunn, who appears in this film) are two of them.
- The film also features John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Stan Lee, and the voices of Nathan Fillion and Rob Zombie.
- There is a post-credits sequence involving Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green), and I think I like that this film doesn't take such scenes seriously at all.
