Guardians of the Galaxy is way better than people are giving it credit for, and it’s starting to wear my patience thin.
Thin is one of the major issues Guardians has, if any, and people on my personal Twitter feed are blasting it for being a touch trite, and also being incredible similir to Star Wars (from the characters to the arc). The fact of the matter is, Star Wars isn’t original, either. In fact, the work of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, especially his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” directly influenced Lucas, and was what drove him to create the ‘modern myth’ of Star Wars. (Wiki)
This isn’t a problem for me, mostly because a film’s structure being similar to another isn’t a strike against it. These days, nearly every film is pitched as “so and so meets so and so.” It’s wholly impossible to be 100% original; everyone’s a poser (sorry, kids).
Now that you understand Guardians IS thin on story, and carried many similar themes and structires to Star Wars, it’s time to get over it. What’s most important to me, an extremely harsh critic (in other people’s eyes, at least), is that I’m entertained. There’s nothing worse in entertainment than feeling like you have to skip a song, or fast forward a movie. If a theater starts lighting up with cellphones, that’s a sign that the filmmakers are losing their audience. Personlly, when I’m bored, I start thinking about how badly I want to start tweeting about it. The second I think about my phone, I’ve been lost, at least until something interesting pulls me back in.
Guardians is one of the best – if not THE best – superhero movie in the past decade. It’s impossible to measure it against films like Tim Burton’s Batman or Blade because that was a different time that had an extremely different kind of storytelling. Now, we expect something grand, exceptional, and me personally, I want my films grounded in reality. Even fantasy flicks should have some sort of anchor in the real world to tell our mind, “hey, this is on Earth, and it’s happening for real!”
James Gunn, who wrote the final draft of Guardians, and directed the Marvel Comics adaptation, brilliantly opens with Star Lord’s (Chris Pratt) origins. It’s a tearjerker moment that easily broke the record for how quickly it had the audience weeping. When Star Lord’s mother dies of cancer, its a heartwarming/crushing moment that the entire audience can relate to; everyone has lost something/someone imprtant to them. This entire prelude takes place on Earh, clearly, until he’s abducted by aliens. Now, when Gunn heads to space, the film is already grounded in reality, and our brains can move forward subconciously thinking, “hey, Star Lord is human. Cool.” It’s the kind of thing you wish took place in Star Wars, especially considering how many human-like Lucas’ characters are…this is one of the major issues with modern Star Wars sequels, not to mention the awful, bloated visual effects work.
On a technical level, Guardians avoids this by not allowing the visual art department to overdo it; there’s serious restraint shown. The alien worlds have a human-like structure to them, adding to our believalilty to the situation. And the fact that Gunn took the time to populate these different set pierces with extras is what truly adds to the realism (see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow for an example of poor polulation in an CGI environment). Even the character’s costume design – which better be nominated for an Oscar or I’m coming for someone’s head – was far superior to any film of its ilk. Suprisingly, a movie about an intergalactiv battle, didnt look cheesy. Probably for the firt time since Star Wars.
All of this works together to make Guardians a technically sound movie, but it’s not what makes it tick. Gunn has put his mark on the film, injecting it with strategically placed humor and payoffs. He clearly understands what an audience want from a movie – escapism. I’m so sick of all of these movies, spawned by the success of Batman Begins, that take themselves too seriously. There’s a bit of 90′s in Guardians, which isn’t all worked up about the science of space, and more focused on how it’s going to make you smile (whether it’s from Rocket Racoon adjusting his crotch or a dancing baby Groot). The soundtrack is the most import device in Guardians as it’s a constant callback to Earth, a cue to our brains to accept this realism, and also an instant mental ejeculation of endorphins.
There’s never a dull moment in Guardians, a masterpiece, yes, a mother-fucking masterpiece of sci-fi/comic cinema. From the moment Star Lord is introduced to the hilarious and uplifting end credit sequence, the audience will be continually engaged with a fury of action-packed fun that, by the final crawl, should have you emotionally locked in to these characters for life. If most films are about entertainment – at least that’s why I go to the theater – Guardians of the Galaxy is cinematic nirvana.