[Note to self: moving house, filling it with flat-pack furniture and getting kittens really get in the way of blogging. Apologies for tardiness.]
I don’t know if it was because of the cinema I was in (my first visit to Peckhamplex, the independent multiplex located in Peckham, obviously) or it was the film itself, but Guardians Of The Galaxy was the first film I’ve watched in a cinema in a long while where people spontaneously applauded at the end. I think that’s a pretty good indicator of how enjoyable Guardians Of The Galaxy is, how crowd-pleasing it is, how entertaining it is. It’s the most fun you will have in the cinema this year.
After an Earth-set prologue that shows Peter Quill being abducted by an alien spaceship on the day his mother dies in hospital, the film jumps ahead 26 years later to an adult Quill (Chris Pratt), calling himself ‘Star-Lord’, on an abandoned alien planet snatching an orb from a temple ruin (while dancing to Awesome Mix Tape on his miraculously working Walkman). And the film never stops from then on, throwing you into the middle of events with just enough information so that you know what’s going on but without labouring the point. (Compare this with The Avengers, which had four films to introduce the group, and people knew who the major characters were beforehand – only a small band of comic book readers knew this team introduced back in 2006 in Marvel comics. Director and co-writer James Gunn packs the film with story, characters, different worlds, jokes, action and fun.)
We are introduced to our other protagonists: Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the adopted daughter of Thanos, who was raised as an assassin after Thanos killed her world; Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically modified, cybernetically enhanced raccoon; Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a sentient tree with a limited vocabulary; and Drax (Dave Bautista), a hyper-muscled green man with red markings who doesn’t understand metaphors. After meeting in and escaping from prison, they try to sell the orb to the Collector (Benicio Del Toro), but they discover its true nature and things go even more wrong, when Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) and another adopted daughter of Thanos, Nebula (Karen Gillan), turn up to get the orb for world-destroying reasons.
The main selling point in this film is fun: it is goofy, crazy, offbeat, outrageous (the joke about black light and Jackson Pollock) but with a warmth that captivates. The film channels a lot of films (Star Wars [particularly the cross-cutting between the focal points of the climactic action scenes], Serenity, Star Trek) and has a B-movie charm that harkens back to films from 30 years ago, but it still exists in its own universe that you want to visit again and again (the news of the sequel before the film arrived in cinemas seemed overconfident, but it’s heart-warming to know that there is more on the way – ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy will return’ was a welcome sight, just before the joyous CGI dance to I Want You Back by the Jackson 5 leaves you smiling from ear to ear).
Pratt is great as Quill, charismatic, comedic, swaggering but also moving; Saldana is solid as usual, Cooper gets all the sass as the sarcastic and aggressive racoon, Diesel manages his best performance with a range in intonation for his catchphrase, and even former wrestler Bautista doesn’t embarrass himself. What’s strange is the heavyweight bit-players: Oscar winner Del Toro is barely in it; Oscar-nominated Glenn Close as Nova Prime has very few lines; Oscar-nominated John C Reilly has a few more scenes; Oscar-nominated Djimon Hounsou is barely noticeable as Korath, top henchman to Ronan. How did Gunn get these people into a sci-fi comic book adventure with no pedigree? Ronan is a fairly one-note villain but it’s difficult to have great villains all the time; I thought Gillan was very good as Nebula and she should have had more screen time, if only to justify shaving her hair off for the part.
A few in-jokes (the Dark Elf in the Collector’s collection, the space dog, the post-credit sting), a brilliant soundtrack, great banter, some moments of sublime beauty (Groot releasing the luminous pollen), using a reference to ‘hero’ Kevin Bacon – Guardians Of The Galaxy will knock your socks off with its charm. There is some cheesiness to the comic book nature of the ending but you won’t care because the film will have totally endeared you that you go with it. The film takes itself seriously but also knows when to mock itself. It’s got lots of little things that could niggle (the Walkman is a technical impossibility, the joke about metaphor-missing Drax is ignored later on, the silliness of the Nova Corps defensive net) but you completely let it go because you will be enjoying it too much to care. Guardians Of The Galaxy shows that Marvel can make a comic book sci-fi action comedy film with unknown characters into a genuinely great blockbuster.
Rating: DAVE
