There are many ways in which Guardians of the Galaxy is a high watermark for the Marvel moviemaking machine. To those hindered by the visual sameness of previous pictures, you’re given colorful sci-fi landscapes one after another and gorgeously-rendered spaceships that look as though they were pulled straight off the cover of a vintage A.E. van Vogt paperback. If you feel like the previous films relied too much on one another and felt like they needed an annotated edition to keep up with all of the interconnectivity, this movie (more so than most of its predecessors) succeeds largely on its own merits. But for those who already are wholly in the bag for Marvel movies so far such as myself (even their most narratively sloppy stories have such a firm handle on character development that they shame other blockbuster entertainments), Guardians of the Galaxy is just another step toward world domination for this moviemaking monolith, opening up an entire universe of possibility for their storytelling through this entertaining spectacle filled with lovably bizarre characters.
And they are bizarre to be sure, as motley a crew of misfits as you’re ever likely to see headlining a film. The team is led by Peter “Star-Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt), a rakish Han Solo type who was abducted from Earth at a young age and raised by a group of space mercenaries called The Ravagers led by the blue-skinned, red-mohawked Yondu (Michael Rooker, delightful). Pratt is a movie star here, using the everyman tools he sharpened with his work on Parks and Recreation despite looking like a matinee idol (true to form, Marvel continues my beloved tradition of gratuitous abs shot from its leads). Along for the ride with him is the deadly assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the lovable brute Drax the Destroyer (WWE wrestler Dave Batista, deadpan hilarious and stealer of multiple scenes), and the duo that runs away with the film, the bounty-hunting odd couple Rocket Raccoon and Groot (voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, respectively). This pairing is dynamite, as it has to be considered a gamble to rely on a motor-mouthed Raccoon with a penchant for handling large firearms and his giant tree sidekick for much of anything over the course of the feature-length film. That they get both the biggest laughs as well as the most genuine emotional beats is a credit to the special effects work and performances that helped bring them to life. Vin Diesel deserves special credit for taking a character who only speaks five words (three of which are “I am Groot,” over and over again) through the course of the entire movie and finding nuance in this repetition.
For all of the things that delineate this from the previous Marvel films there remain plenty of similarities as well. Once again the plot revolves around a profoundly evil person (here, Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace playing to the rafters as Ronan the Accuser, along with Doctor Who’s Karen Gillan as the incredibly cool-looking Nebula) seeking out an all-powerful whatzit to ensure world domination. Granted, any comic book fan worth one’s salt has known since the end credits of The Avengers where all of these MacGuffins are leading (and this endgame is made more explicit in Guardians), but in an era where the pleasures of the comic book reading life are being passed on to the world in cinematic form (a shared universe with characters interacting across multiple movies) it’s a shame they also are being shown that comics can sometimes operate as a pale echo of one another. This film also suffers a bit from Avengeritis, where the mechanics involved to get all of these characters together in one place are a little creaky and make the first act wheeze before it works itself into shape.
The place where this film has it all over any previous Marvel film is in terms of heart. From the opening sequence where we see Peter Quill recoil in fear from his dying mother, the film makes explicit that it is telling a story about a group of people whose circumstances alone have made finding strength and family in one another. James Gunn has made a career out of jarring tonal shifts (Super, Slither) so it comes as no surprise that he navigates the action/comedy balance these films strike so adroitly (and make no mistake, the comedy and action on display here are both top-notch), but where I did not expect him to excel was in creating something so emotionally resonant. On more than one occasion I found myself choking up as these broken people connect with one another, and that’s entirely due to the stellar character development, finely calibrated performances and deft weaving of this notion of this family into the fabric of the story. When your climactic action sequence can simultaneously pay off viscerally and subtextually that’s when you know you’ve put the work in to make something special. This is a major accomplishment, creating an entire universe whole cloth and making it feel lived in and populated with fascinating characters at every turn. Guardians of the Galaxy is the type of film that is going to mean the world to kids who are tuned in to its equal portions snark-and-heart wavelength. As a 30-year-old man who was brought to tears by a sentient giant tree’s character arc, chances are that it meant a lot to me, too.
