Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy [2014]

This is, perhaps, one of the biggest gamble that Disney/Marvel had taken during its tenure. After the huge success of The Avengers and a bunch of sequel movies, the fandom was eagerly anticipating what's to come next... and it felt like Marvel was simply just going to adapt the prominent or practical parts of their repertoire. The likes of Ant-Man, Black Panther, Ghost Rider, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and all that. And while it was exciting, it also meant that all we're going to expect is a bunch of well-known A-listers and B-listers from Marvel comics all adapted to the movie screen, and sometimes they crossover in an Avengers or Captain America movie. Which, admittedly, still would be a pretty successful franchise. 

But in 2014, Marvel took a gloriously off-the-wall gamble with Guardians of the Galaxy. Perhaps echoed most perfectly with the memetic delivery of 'Who?' by Djimon Honsou's Korath, the Guardians... they aren't a particularly super-prominent group in Marvel lore. This isn't even the original group known as the "Guardians", but are a newer incarnation of the group that appeared far more recently in 2004-ish! Or at least, I haven't encountered or even heard of them before. But then again, perhaps the lack of recognizability made them even more interesting to the public. This also gives the studios some free rein to actually build up the wild and wacky 'cosmic' side of Marvel comics without interfering too much in the more grounded and down-to-earth stories told by heroes like Captain America, Iron Man or the Hulk. We get the first real hints of who the enigmatic Thanos is from the post-credits scene of The Avengers, and this movie also sets up the plotline of the Infinity Stones, which would be the driving force behind the Phase 2 and a majority of the Phase 3 movies. 

And to top it off, Guardians of the Galaxy is just a really, really fun movie. None of the other Marvel movies (even the more drab Thor: The Dark World) are all that serious, but Guardians is perhaps the movie that truly solidified the Marvel formula. James Gunn's direction takes all of the oddities and wackiness of comic-book nonsense and plays it at face value, and that ends up with a movie that feels like it's truly respecting the roots of these characters while also being a fun ride. Sure, there's a raccoon running around cursing and shooting oversized space cannons, and he pals around with a giant tree-human whose only vocabulary consists of tree three words. The movie does sometimes lampshade this a bit, but they don't do it too far that they are making fun of the very concept that the movie is trying to adapt. It's just something weird that happens in this part of the galaxy, and... well, it's wacky comic-book space! It's gloriously weird, and I love it. 

The direction is very great as well -- obviously no sort of real sci-fi rules are really going to apply here, so, just like Star Wars, they decide to make everything as colourful and vibrant as possible. Which, after a decade of looking at sci-fi video games and movies that try too hard to take themselves super-seriously, is definitely a breath of fresh air. And not to mention the soundtrack! I'd be remiss to do so. Filled with 60's and 70's music that also ties in to main character Star-Lord's own love for the genre, I absolutely love the energy that beams from the soundtrack of this movie. 

The story itself is, again, pretty basic. It's something we've all seen before! It's basically Star Wars or Avengers, but with assholes as their protagonists (it's a smart move that they actually got rid of perhaps one of the more famous comic-book character associated with this team, the very heroic Nova). I've compared this a lot to what's basically your average Dungeons & Dragons campaign, where a half-dozen characters, each with their own basic tragic backstories, meet each other, get into trouble, and have to band together to fight the evil villain. All the characters are, to some degree, developed pretty well in this movie and we learn just enough about them, and each of them get a fair bit of resolution.

Our main character -- or the primary one, anyway -- is Peter Quill, and our first scene shows a young him being abducted from Earth by a group of aliens after his mother's death. And then we cut to the now-iconic opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy, where we get to see Peter Quill grown up -- a man in a badass jacket and a very cool-looking mask with glowing eyes... and he starts singing and dancing to Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling". That's the kind of movie this is, and while the movie doesn't milk it all that much, it also makes it clear that Peter's only ties to his previous human life is the walkman that happens to be in his bag when he was abducted by the Ravagers.

The movie doesn't really waste too much time introducing the plot device, too -- arguably one of the reasons why Thor: The Dark World plodded on so badly in its first half. Star-Lord pillages a strange-looking metallic orb from a typical booby-trapped fortress in the planet of Morag, which is our plot device in this movie. He is quickly stopped by Korath, leading to the aforementioned 'Who' scene, one of my all-time favourite scenes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In-between Star-Lord's action scene as he uses his gravity mines to elude Korath, the movie is pretty quick in world-building this part of space. Star-Lord's a renegade member of a group of thieves called the Ravagers, led by the blue-skinned alien Yondu Udonta -- who abducted him in the past. Korath is working for a particularly fanatical religious zealot from the Kree people, Ronan the Accuser. And Star-Lord buggers off, intending to sell the orb on his own... leading Yondu to put a bounty out for Peter's capture. It's pretty clever how this exposition happens, too, with Yondu calling Peter to admonish him for betraying the Ravagers, and we're hinted to Ronan's nature when the black market fence refuses to deal with Peter because he stole the orb from Ronan. 

Peter then shows up on the planet Xandar, a typical bustling metropolis, where we're pretty quickly introduced to the other members of the main cast. Gamora, the 'most dangerous woman in the galaxy', is hunting down Peter's orb because she's working with Ronan. Meanwhile, Rocket Raccoon and his giant tree companion Groot is trying to cash in on the bounty the Ravagers put out. We get a brief action sequence that shows off these characters' personalities and what they can do -- Gamora is an assassin; Rocket has lots of huge cannons; and the absolutely charming Groot is simple-minded but can grow massive tree-vines. However, shooting each other in the middle of a city ends up leading to them being captured by the space policemen -- the Nova Corps.

And then our heroes are all tossed in the Kyln, a space prison... and it's pretty fun how they interact there. The movie quickly establishes Groot as being simple-minded, and both Peter and Rocket are very much greedy bastards and they quickly forge an alliance to split the money from selling the orb with each other. In the prison, too, they meet the final member of the main cast -- the literal-minded Drax the Destroyer, who is a known badass in this part of the galaxy, and someone with a gigantic desire for vengeance against Ronan and his master Thanos, who are responsible for the destruction of his planet and his family. We also learn a bit more about Gamora, who's planning to betray Ronan because she doesn't want to allow the Accuser to abuse the orb's powers. 

This leads to one of my favourite action sequences in the movie -- the prison breakout. Everything is so utterly chaotic and all the dialogue are snippy... and I don't think I'm able to describe just how fun this part of the movie is without being too verbose about it. And while the team is mostly held together by their common enemy (or common desire for money, in the case of Peter and Rocket), we have the Guardians of the Galaxy escaping the prison on their ship.

Around this point we keep cutting away to see Ronan the Accuser, and... he's remembered as a pretty one-dimensional character. And he is! All he wants is to destroy Xandar because he's angry that it had entered a peace treaty with his homeworld of Kree. He's a zealot continuing a war that has been resolved. He has a big-ass hammer! We learn this in the very first scene Ronan shows up in, where he murders some Xandarian and bathes in his blood. But what I forgot was how absolutely entertaining Lee Pace's performance as Ronan is, with his absolutely killer delivery of Ronan's grandiose monologues. This single factor elevates Ronan so much more beyond the likes of less memorable villains like Malekith or Alexander Pierce. And, you know, fits into the whole 'this is a D&D campaign' description pretty well. 

Ronan is in cahoots with the enigmatic Thanos, who's just sitting on a throne. The audience probably is able to recognize Thanos from The Avengers, but the movie doesn't need you to know this to understand that Thanos is just an uber-warlord that is super-duper dangerous. Thanos lends Ronan another one of his adoptive children, the cyborg Nebula, in order to reclaim the orb.

Meanwhile, the Guardians arrive in Knowhere -- the moon-sized hollowed-out head of some sort of ancient alien. They enter the realm of the Collector, itself such a fun location where he's got a massive museum of trapped alien beings. The Collector also deigns to finally explain what the true nature of the plot device is -- it's an Infinity Stone, one of six very powerful artifacts that are created during the dawn of time. It's very cool backstory that builds up the tapestry of future movies, while in itself doesn't really change too much of this movie. The Collector's assistant then proceeds to blow herself up, showing off just how dangerous merely touching the Infinity Stone is. 

The Knowhere scene is pretty great, too, at showing just how frayed everyone is. Peter tries to flirt with Gamora, only to discover that having been raised as an assassin since birth, Gamora isn't really someone accustomed with emotions. Drax, being literal-minded, accidentally insults Rocket Raccoon, who, despite his huge ego and bluster, has a massive inferiority complex relating to how everyone keeps seeing him as either an animal or a lab rat. And we also get Drax, who, in drunken anger, gets tired of how everyone isn't interested in immediate revenge against Ronan, causing him to drunkenly and stupidly make a call to Ronan, challenging him in the middle of Knowhere's streets. 

With the Guardians split up, they're easily dispatched off by the villains. Ronan beats Drax almost effortlessly and seems even confused with just who Drax is. Nebula and Gamora confront each other and they show off their little rivalry, and in the subsequent space battle, Nebula leaves Gamora for dead in space and steals the orb. Star-Lord, desperate to save Gamora, gives his helmet to her and surrenders himself to Yondu, the leader of the Ravagers. Again, I really do like how all the antagonists of the movie is somehow tied to the backstory to one of the heroes. 

Yondu is less of a true villain, though, and more of a wild-card. Clearly having a soft spot for Peter even though he has a pretty aggressive temperament, Peter quickly manages to give Yondu a counter-offer, telling him of how they could turn this around into a heist to get the orb. Meanwhile, Rocket and Groot rescue Drax from drowning, and we get a pretty short but neat scene of Rocket and Drax, in their own unique ways, acknowledging that they fucked up and they apologize. Obviously, their subsequent plan of trying to blow up the Ravager ship to force them to give up Peter and Gamora isn't very smart, but at least they tried!

And then, in the Ravager ship, Peter gives a bit of a rousing speech to the Guardians of the Galaxy... and it's an interesting twist. None of these guys are really the hero type. They're not soldiers like Captain America or gods charged with protecting weaker beings like Thor, which is what, I feel, makes their decision to band together and to, in Peter's words, "give a shit" because they "are assholes, but not 100% a dick", feels pretty neat. And, of course, we get the hilarious scene that parodies most action movies showing the heroes suiting up and getting their equipment... but our heroes are yawning and scratching their backs and crotches and stuff. 

Ronan himself has also betrayed Thanos. He embeds the Infinity Stone onto his giant warhammer, and tells Thanos to screw off, before going off to destroy the planet Xandar. We've also learned of the mistreatment done to both Gamora and Nebula when Thanos groomed them up into being assassins, and Nebula betrays Thanos at the drop of a hat, believing that Ronan with the Power Stone is a match for Thanos. 

The final battle is... well, it definitely is a pretty cool final battle. We get a space portion of the battle with Peter managing to rally not only the Ravagers, but also the Nova Corps and their very cool beehive-forcefield ships. As the Nova Corps and the Ravagers hold back Ronan's giant ship, most of the heroes get individual times to shine. We even get to see Yondu show off his power -- manipulating an arrow to instantly slay a dozen of Ronan's minions with a flying arrow. Gamora and Nebula get a confrontation as well, fighting on a different part of the ship before Gamora ultimately wins -- but Nebula refuses to be shown mercy by Gamora, instead preferring to fall off. In this conflict, Korath fights Star-Lord before ultimately getting killed by Drax, while Ronan kills a significant portion of the Nova Corps, including one that resolved his previous enmity with Peter. 

However, Ronan is still too powerful for mere daggers, guns and cannons to stop, and as the Dark Aster crashes down on Xandar's surface, Groot transforms into a massive ball to protect his friends, sacrificing himself in the process. It's surprisingly poignant -- Groot isn't a character who is developed much beyond being a gentle giant, and being everyone's friend... but the fact that he is so lovable and gets incinerated by the explosion does make it pretty sad. Groot does come back, but still. 

The way that Ronan gets defeated is... well, it's a subversion in and of itself, and it's kind of a cheesy one. But I do really feel that this movie did earn it. Distracting Ronan with a dance-off, Star-Lord manages to get Ronan off-guard before Rocket blows up the warhammer. Peter grabs the stone, and while the stone was established to be 'too powerful for a single person to hold', everyone holds hands and shares the burden of the stone, surviving and vaporizing Ronan in the process. Super-cheesy, admittedly, but a subsequent movie would actually offer a less-cheesy explanation. 

In the aftermath, Peter tricks Yondu into getting an empty container, which earns the older Ravager's respect when he realizes the trick done by his protégé. Peter also earns the respect of the representatives of the Nova Corps -- Nova Prime and Rhomann Dey, who treat them as heroes. And the Guardians of the Galaxy blast off into space, with one of the sticks left behind from Groot's destruction growing into a tiny, potted-plant baby Groot. 

And... and as I have noted early on, the plot really isn't all that complex. A bunch of colourful characters meet each other, band together and defeat the villain. That applies to easily most of fantasy or sci-fi stories out there. But it's not just the comedy, the tone and the soundtrack that works. I really do feel that Guardians of the Galaxy's greatest strength is to give all the characters, even more minor ones like Nebula or Yondu, a fair amount of backstory and characterization. Small scenes like Yondu being a dick to the broker, or Drax being unable to understand metaphors, or Rocket being a dick that tells Peter to steal someone's prosthetic leg in the middle of a tense breakout... all of them are fun, but they also add up to building up these characters as actual people. I really could do a long analysis for a lot of these characters just by what we see in this movie!

And, yes, with the limited screentime of a single movie some characters are built up a bit less than others (this movie definitely prefers Peter and Rocket). But ultimately? Ultimately the movie is absolutely fun, and, more importantly, while being a very fun adventure it also lays the groundwork for a lot of the world-building for the MCU's cosmic, space side of things. And it does so in a way that doesn't diminish the primary story it's trying to tell -- something that other MCU movies like Iron Man 2, Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron are guilty of doing. 

Anyway, an absolutely fun movie. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 
  Post-Credits Scene: The Collector mourns his broken collection while Howard the Duck, who has been freed from captivity, talks to him. 
• Stan the Man: Stan Lee is a 'pervy old man' that Rocket observes trying to pick up alien ladies in Xandar. 
• Future Movies Foreshadowing: This movie basically lays down the main plotline of the MCU up until Avengers: Endgame, establishing the creation of the six Infinity Stones and what they are. This movie also has Thanos show up in a minor role as the one pulling the strings not only for Ronan, but also for Loki in The Avengers. Yondu also briefly notes that Peter's real dad was a complete asshole, foreshadowing the plot of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.
• Past Movie Continuity: The Tesseract (Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers) and the Aether (Thor: The Dark World) appear in the Collector's little monologue. Collector himself has also appeared before in the post-credits of Thor: The Dark World. Thanos and his minion, the Other, return from the post-credits of The Avengers. From those two movies, too, the Collector's collection also has a Dark Elf from Thor: The Dark World and a Chitauri from Avengers. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Most of the characters in this movie, being aliens, actually have their real names as what's essentially their superhero codename. It's played up with Star-Lord, though, where he tries to enforce his 'Star-Lord' moniker, but everyone either ignores it or mis-pronounces it as 'Space Lord' or 'Star Prince'. The team name 'Guardians of the Galaxy' is only spoken once by Ronan at the end in a mocking fashion. 
• Favourite Action Scene: I don't really have any preference in this one. I guess Groot and Rocket shooting up the Kyln?
• Funniest Line: Too many to choose from, mostly on Drax and Rocket's part. My favourite is probably Drax talking Peter up as a valuable ally against Ronan... before going "you are an imbecile." in the most perfect delivery ever. 
• Rhomann Dey is the Nova Prime that would recruit Richard Rider, the main Nova, in the comics. Gaarthan Saul is a Nova that would become the supervillain Supernova. The Nova Prime in this movie is Irani Rael, another minor Nova Corps character in the comics. 
• The alien girl that was in Star-Lord's ship at the beginning of the movie is Bereet, an actually important recurring character in the Hulk comics. Cozmo, the dog in an astronaut suit, is a member of several incarnations of the comic-book version of the Guardians. Marvel's talking duck character, Howard the Duck makes a cameo in the background and a more pronounced one in the post-credits scene. The Celestial known as Eson the Searcher shows up in the video that the Collector shows the Guardians. A Korbinite (Beta Ray Bill's race in the comics) also shows up in the Collector's collection. 
• While it's probably invalidated with Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Adam Warlock's cocoon can be glimpsed in the background of the Collector's collection, and it's opened in the post-credits scene.