A lot of that comes from having the most freeing, breezy sense of its own unimportance: four months after Captain America: The Winter Soldier tried to have its brainy political thriller cake and eat its mindless CGI action extravaganza too, GotG arrives with much less weighty thoughts, something on the order of "hey, so wants to watch people firing ray guns and saying sarcastic things?" And it feels a bit odd to find oneself being grateful for a completely shallow adventure movie that just wants to provide a momentary sense of entertainment and pleasure, but better something which achieves that modest goal with energy and a clear personality than yet another movie in Marvel's ongoing game of trying out a new genre with every film, only to retrench in a third-act lightshow of explosions and things falling out of the sky. GotG has one of those endings, of course, but it feels justified by the rest of the film - as transparently as the whole thing wants to be a Star Wars picture, it makes sense for it to pilfer the "three tiers of action on the ground, in the spaceship, and in the air" structure of the final acts of Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace.
Adapted from the most obscure property yet turned into a major comic book movie, GotG takes place in some wildly far-off corner of the galaxy, where human Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), abducted by aliens as a child in 1988, on the day his mother died of cancer, works as a member of a treasure-hunting group of space thieves. He's gotten it into his head to break away from his boss and surrogate father, Yondu (Michael Rooker), but that proves to be a terrible decision: when he absconds with a round artifact collected in a cheerful pastiche of the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark (instead of skulking through ancient ruins while John Williams's score creeps and crawls on the soundtrack, he boogies past a bunch of squawking lizard-creatures while listening to the 1974 R&B song "Come and Get Your Love" on his Walkman). Now he has virtually everyone in the galaxy after him: Yondu and his thugs, as well as the enforcers of a much bigger thug named Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), and an assassin named Gamora (Zoe Saldana), on loan to Ronan, and the adopted daughter of the biggest thug of all, space-dictator Thanos (Josh Brolin). He end up thrown into prison along with Gamora, as well as a pair of bounty hunters who'd been trying to track him down: Rocket (Bradley Cooper), an angry super-intelligent raccoon made in a genetics lab, and his plant bodyguard Groot (Vin Diesel). They make their escape along with a hugely literal strongman named Drax (Dave Bautista), and are off on a MacGuffin hunt.
Despite the word salad of all that, the most wonderful thing about Guardians of the Galaxy is that it's almost annoying in its simplicity: five outlaws have to find The Thing before The Bad Guy gets it to destroy The Planet. And despite a few scenes that try a bit too hard to tie things in with the rest of the giant mythology-building exercise that has made most of the Marvel films to date feel as much like homework as like big splashy escapism (the big Thanos scene is a complete fizzle, and the film makes sure to leave a couple of questions open at the end, regarding Quill's backstory, and the future of the other MacGuffin Stones), that's all it wants to be, as well. Unlike literally every other comic book movie released so far in 2014, it doesn't really feel like a commercial for future movies, or a bit of fanservice to pay off earlier movies: it's completely satisfying within itself, which feels like a horrible thing to have to praise a movie for being. But that's where we are.
And within itself, it's mostly a collection of pleasantly straightforward popcorn movie characterisations ruined only somewhat by the film's inability to make its women anywhere near as much fun as its men (or its live-action characters as much fun as its cartoons: the facial animation alone is enough to make Groot the most appealing and fun of the five central heroes, and Rocket hogs all the best lines). Director James Gunn, who also co-wrote (Nicole Perlman also receives credit), knows exactly what kind of movie he wanted to make, and he makes it: the film is yet another of those "let's pay homage to the blockbusters of the early '80s" exercises, but unlike most of them, it's not content to simply copy the aesthetics of a Spielberg picture and call it a day. For as much as he plainly loves that kind of movie, Gunn also has an obvious affection for the medium of comic books: the way that the detailed and colorful but deliberately pulp-ish sets are framed and lit feels more like something from a magazine than anything else out there, and the cutting between immense wide shots, medium shots, and emphatic close-ups resembles the way that a superhero comic uses its frames as much as it resembles the language of Lucas, Spielberg, and their many acolytes. So thanks to be to production designer Charles Wood, to cinematographer Ben Davis (who, as far as I can tell, just came out of bloody well nowhere to shoot the year's second-best-looking tentpole, after Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), and to the trio of editors, Fred Raskin, Hughes Winborne, and Craig Wood; together with Gunn, they've made a movie that looks and acts perfectly like a fusion of pulp space opera and graphic literature, building a world that feels like all the daydreams of all the preteen boys of 1979 made flesh; and to people it, they've used two Han Solos instead of any Luke Skywalkers, with a funnier and more personable Chewbacca (the Leia is still pretty much a cardboard stand-in for a real character, but preteen boys don't know shit about women, anyway).
It is, oh my God, such junk food: there's none of the whisper of something more knowledgeable and artistic that sneakily made Raiders a legitimately great work of cinema on top of being a tremendous piece of escapist fare. It has the color and scope and sense of wonder of Return of the Jedi, but that is, after all, the first overtly juvenile Star Wars. While the film's very Gunnian sense of humor and lack of unnecessary seriousness are a relief from too many straitlaced comic book movies and a good fit for the material, there's always a sense that the movie is always more amused by itself than it expects us to be; and some stakes might have been appreciated (more than any other Marvel film, the utter feebleness of the villains is a problem here, rather than just an annoyance - Pace tries, but Ronan is a total dud). But there's much more to love about it than not: the characters have enough depth to be distinct without it getting in the way of the fun, and while I understand that there are complaints about how confusing the writing is, it strikes me as a model of disciplined, clear storytelling, with beats setting up details to be paid off later, and every new concept getting explained twice, once as a plot note and once as a character detail. I have no reason to assume that the inevitable 2 Guardians 2 Galaxy will be nearly as good (it's going to need to explicitly connect to the Marvel Universe, and not doing that is this film's biggest strength), nor do I suppose that the obvious touches that Gunn and only Gunn could have brought to the table represents a new auteur-friendly attitude at the company that just showily fired Edgar Wright. But for all its limitations, they definitely got one right, making the first movie in ages that makes me really wish I was a kid again and could appreciate it to the fullest.
8/10
Reviews in this series
Iron Man (Favreau, 2008)
The Incredible Hulk (Leterrier, 2008)
Iron Man 2 (Favreau, 2010)
Thor (Branagh, 2011)
Captain America: The First Avenger (Johnston, 2011)
The Avengers (Whedon, 2012)
Iron Man 3 (Black, 2013)
Thor: The Dark World (Taylor, 2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Russo Brothers, 2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)
Ant-Man (Reed, 2015)
Captain America: Civil War (Russo Brothers, 2016)
"...the facial animation alone is enough to make Groot the most appealing and fun of the five central heroes...."
ReplyDeleteI actually feel like Rocket might win out for me here too. Sometimes it's just for sheer clarity (his vicious glee at getting a big ol' gun to shoot during the Big Breakout, most especially), but other times it's for the impressive nuance and attention to detail the animators put into it. I'm thinking in particular of his drunken rant about his own creation; he winds up making a face at Starlord that feels like it clearly expresses the human emotion of sadness, but in a way that is entirely honest to the animal he is. It really stood out to me, and it solidified Rocket's already-strong bid for Number One Character To My Heart.
This is otherwise yet another case of being on more or less the same wavelength, though I would disagree a little on two key points.
* The Thanos stuff is horrifically stilted, on this we agree, but I actually thought Ronan ultimately worked as a villain. He has a perfectly understandable motive, a VERY striking design (the crusted blood on his face combined with the rigid slope of the hood make him almost look like a cobra at times), and a pretty nice performance from Pace. One of the all-time greats? No, but more successful by far than, say, last year's General Zod or "Iron Man 3"'s Aldrich Killian.
* Gamora, to me, doesn't feel flat so much as out of place. Saldana does her usual strong work, and I found a lot of the elements of her character and backstory genuinely interesting...in theory. The problem is that the movie's tone and structure simply do not abide those elements the exploration they need in order to thrive, and so Gamora winds up being the least-successful member of team, less because she is in fact a Bad Character and more because it feels like she needed to be in a different overall movie.
Still and all, I saw this with my kid cousins, and we both had more or less the same reaction. This movie is eminently fun, and funny, and memorable, and it definitely stands strong as one of Marvel Studios' best overall films to date. It also introduced the young'uns to "Hooked On A Feeling", which they sang incessantly for the remainder of their visit.
A better Star Wars film than Return of the Jedi? Come now; Return of the Jedi may not be perfect, but some of the criticism it gets strikes me as a tad overblown
ReplyDeleteReturn of the Jedi has better select scenes than Guardians(I'm thinking mainly the wonderful confrontation/space opera between Vader/Palpatine/Luke), but its pretty mediocre overall, sad to say.
ReplyDeleteI was on the edge of my seat during the Thanos scene, but granted that was mainly because I couldn't believe how well he was realized. I also think Ronan was a good villain, he was the straight man to the goofy GotG crew, and it worked in the context of the larger scene.
ReplyDeleteThe Gamora love-interest plot came out of fucking nowhere and felt super out of place, though. And who thought Bautista could actually act?
Surprisingly great flick overall, I was not a fan of the trailers at all, but the movie itself delivered. AND HOWARD THE DUCK BITCHES!
This sits comfortably alongside Days of Future Past for me as being like, "yeah, it's good and all, but I don't really get where all the adulation's coming from." It's the kind of film where it's easy to get caught up in the headlong rush of glitzy pulp sci-fi imagery, nifty gadgets and outlandish characters quipping, so that it's only a few hours later that you go "well that wasn't much of anything, was it?" Don't get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate its ambitions to be nothing more than a funny, charming thrill-ride, and I enjoyed being in the company of the characters' distinctive and charismatic personalities for a couple of hours. I went in expecting Rocket and Groot to be liabilities, and instead they turned out to be an absolute delight. I loved the environments brimming with life and detail, and the comedy was frequently very funny (the Jackson Pollock line almost had me falling out of my chair), although not quite as sharp as Joss Whedon's (I just don't get what's meant to be amusing about the oft-quoted "what a bunch of a-holes" line).
ReplyDeleteMy problem, as with most of Marvel's lesser outings, is just that the central conflict feels so perfunctory, and the story doesn't impress the stakes upon us as much as much as it should. The final battle, when Ronan is gearing up to destroy Xandar, expects us to be all like "oh no! Not Xandar!", when my reaction's more along the lines of "um... what's a Xandar?" Outside of one brief scene in the opening, I have no personal familiarity with the place beyond the abstract that lots of people live there. The original Thor did this too, in that movie with the incipient destruction of Niflheim, and I didn't care then either.
Furthermore, the villains are boring and have boring motivations, and the heroes seem to be treating the whole thing as a lark, which undercuts any tension that might otherwise exist. They're meant to be interstellar fugitives, but they casually prance and joke their way through scenes like they know fine and well they'll emerge victorious by the time the credits roll. The Winter Soldier is and remains my favourite superhero movie of the last several years, in no small part because it avoids that trap - the heroes there have a sense of humour, sure, but there's also real tension as they're shown scurrying about underfoot, avoiding an enemy who've actually been shown to be ruthless, lethal and highly organised, rather than simply stated to be. Even if we're never really worried that Cap, Falcon, Black Widow or Nick Fury will die, it at least creates the impression that it's on the cards, and that they think it's on the cards. By contrast, when Quill, Rocket, Gamora and Drax ruminate on the possibility that they might die at the end of Guardians' second act, it rings hollow - partly because of the bravado with which they've faced down lethal danger thus far, and partly because the film keeps giving them get-out-of-jail-free cards (Quill and Gamora are right in the middle of The Collector's lair when it explodes... and emerge unscathed. Drax gets a spaceship dropped on him... and emerges unscathed). Say what you will about Return of the Jedi: when Palpatine is frying Luke alive with force lightning at the climax, there's more genuine dramatic tension than there is to be found anywhere in Guardians.
@The.Watcher: You're objectively wrong. :P The Thanos scene was kinda stupid: the movie would be a *lot* tighter if Ronan was just straight-up the villain. Correct about the love interest, though, which was entirely out of place. Also Howard the Duck: I was so afraid that Thanos or Samuel L Jackson would show up after the credits, but instead we got a scene that was exactly what the movie deserved.
ReplyDelete@Thrash Til' Death: But then you run into the Thor 2 Problem, where characters who don't much know and don't much care about Earth, go to Earth to blow it up, just to give the audience "stakes". Which is even more stupid in a different way.