Yesterday
I read the somewhat surprising statistic that Guardians Of The Galaxy
had the third highest grossing opening weekend of the year so far,
after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Transformers: Age Of
Extinction. This is both easy to believe and kind of puzzling.
Colour
Me Puzzled
Okay,
so Marvel Studios' offerings are reliably good and even when I've
called one weak (Thor: The Dark World springs to mind) they've been
entertaining. There has always been the suspicion, though, that maybe
their success is partially because they were presented as a serial.
These films are split into phases that culminate in an Avengers film,
the first Captain America movie was subtitled The First Avenger to
stress this and directly lead into Avengers Assemble. Avengers
Assemble was a huge film, Avengers: Age Of Ultron is going to be a
huge film and people now know that they “should” watch Iron Man
3, The Winter Soldier and The Dark World to get the full experience.
Guardians
Of The Galaxy doesn't have that, in theory. Yes, a recurring
MacGuffin introduced in The Dark World makes an appearance, as do
characters from Avengers Assemble and Dark World post-credits teasers
but neither of these was advertised. What's more, the characters in
this film just aren't known in the popular culture. We comic geeks
know the Guardians as quirky fan-favourites but your average man on
the street? Nothing, I'd bet. Captain America? Pop culture icon,
often misunderstood as a character but a famous image. Iron Man and
the Hulk have both had cartoons people my age would remember not to
mention the well-remembered Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk live-action
series. And Thor is, well... a mythological figure practically anyone
in the Western world will have at least heard of.
Hell,
August isn't even a month usually associated with big openings since
most people in the northern hemisphere are too busy enjoying barbecue
weather. This is genuinely the first Marvel Studios film in years
that has had to sell itself purely on the studio's reputation. The
trailers pretty much emphasis three things:
1.
It's Marvel Studios, you know you can trust them.
2.
It's space opera, maybe you like the genre and did we mention how our
parent company has the Star Wars license these days?
3.
Raccoon with a chuff-off big gun.
This
film was trading on the reputation built up by the Marvel films over
the last few years and it totally, totally lives up to that rep.
Come
And Get Your Love
Back
on topic, let's talk about the soundtrack first because it is a
stroke of absolute genius. The initial set-up is that Peter Quill is
abducted by aliens as a child in 1986 on the day his mother dies. His
only real possession at that moment is a cassette walkman and a
mixtape of '60s and '70s hits his mother made for him. We get a
classic action movie suiting up scene for the Guardians set to The
Runaways' Cherry Bomb, a prison break runs to the lyrics of Escape
but not just any old song called “Escape”, its the one better
known as “The Pina Colada Song”. Best of all are the opening
titles because you think you know what you're getting there:
Peter
Quill, now an adult space adventurer in a red leather trenchcoat and
techy accoutrements that John Crichton would envy, walks across a
desolate alien landscape with ruins in the distance. So far, so space
opera, right? Then he takes off his space mask, puts on his earphones
and Redbone's Come And Get Your Love starts up. He dances across the
screen, disco slides, picks up an alien lizard-rat-thing and uses it
as a hair-brush microphone! It is gorgeous.
Every
one of these songs accompanies a scene it is completely unsuited to
on paper and yet fits perfectly in practice.
Character,
Visuals and Spiritual Succession
Star
Wars is an obvious influence and not just because a couple of
Lucasfilm companies were involved in production and we're blatantly
looking at a tech demo for Disney's Episode VII. Guardians Of The
Galaxy cleaves to that classic Star Wars formula of switching
locations every twenty minutes or so to present you with another set
of fantastic visuals and new dangers to fling its character into at
high speed. It's not the only influence, though.
Quill
himself, as a character, owes a lot to Farscape's John Crichton but
he isn't a straight lift. For a start he isn't an entirely modern man
thrust into the fantastic, he's grown up in space and is far more
adjusted to it than Crichton ever was. Also, Crichton was a character
who embodied the One Sane Man trope so he could comment on the
absurdities of his world and here Peter Quill is as crazy and sci-fi
as everyone else. If the film has a One Sane Man it is, without a
doubt, Rocket Raccoon.
No,
I'm perfectly serious. Almost every one of Bradley Cooper's lines is
comedy gold and half of them are exasperated comments on the other
members of the cast. This is clearly a character who lives his life
in a constant state of “Oh God, what now?” but we get enough
evidence of other emotions that he doesn't seem two-dimensional.
Hell, he even has a speech I found emotionally affecting, I was close
to tearing up because it frankly touches on issues of bullying that
are somewhat close to my heart.
I
wasn't actually tearing up, though, that was reserved for a certain
moment in the final act with Groot.
Oh
yes, and if it seemed to you a waste of time and effort on Marvel's
part to employ Vin Diesel to do mo-cap and voice-acting for Groot I
assure you it was money well-spent. I've never been a great believer
in CGI over physical effects but Rocket and Groot are so
well-realised and so well-acted (yes, I am applying the tag of acting
to the process that brings Groot to life) I'm confident they'll be
just as big breakout characters with the film audience as they were
with comic fans.
Talking
of big fellas: Dave Bautista, better known to me as The Monster
Batista of WWE fame. Of all the characters Drax has changed the most
between page and screen: he's no longer an augmented human but an
alien from a very literal-minded race who don't understand metaphors,
similes or anything of the like. The jokes are obvious and you see
almost all of them coming but Bautista plays it so straight and with
such conviction its endearing. And again, there's a speech that
paints him as more than the 2D brawler he might be assumed to be.
Zoe
Saldana rounds out the cast as Gamorra and adding green to the list
of colours she's been in space. She's probably the least served by
the script, if I'm being honest, as unlike the others her character
starts off complex and we don't really get the easy hook for her
before we're plunged into her backstory and the complexities of her
motivations. None of this is bad, exactly, but the other characters
benefit from a more leisurely introduction.
Thrown
together they bicker, they talk at cross purposes, they get on each
others' tits and, of course, they save the universe. Star Wars,
Farscape and Firefly have all used this sort of formula for the
simple reason that it works but none of the comparisons exactly
matches. Starlord might be the obvious Han Solo analogy with his
blaster and imperious female sidekick/boss (it's complicated, in both
cases) but Rocket is as much a Han Solo type, especially since he has
his own incomprehensible strongman alien friend in Groot. You could
also compare Quill to Malcolm Reynolds except that Quill doesn't have
even the dying embers of a cause going into the story. Guardians Of
The Galaxy cribs from a lot of playbooks but doesn't copy any of them
out word-for-word.
A
Whole New Galaxy
The
trailer promised that after the Avengers films we were getting “A
Whole New Galaxy” and that's true: this film sets up the
cornerstones of the cosmic Marvel properties so that even if this
film had done badly there would be things to work on later. There are
so many nods here for the comic fans to smile at: Knowhere makes an
appearance, as does the Kyln penal colony, the Nova Corps (more of
them, please), the Kree Empire, Benecio del Toro's Collector and even
Cosmo the Space Dog in a, sadly, non-speaking role.
Oh,
and NO SPOILERS but this film's post-credits teaser is one of the
most ridiculous in-jokes I've seen in a film ever. Just remember that
Star Wars license Disney now has, *wink wink*.
So,
do you have any actual criticisms or are you just geeking out?
In
all honesty there are only two flaws I see in the production and
those are minor. The first is that there's a romantic subplot that
doesn't quite come off but at least it has the decency to be
underplayed. It's Starlord and Gamora incidentally, not to disappoint
all those Drax/Groot shippers out there, and I don't quite buy the
pairing but Saldana and Pratt have decent chemistry so it isn't
offensive.
The
second is that in a quite crowded film some of the guest actors don't
get a chance to stand out. Glenn Close's Nova Prime shine in her
every scene but is mostly a functional role and I know I'm biased but
Karen Gillan doesn't get nearly enough to do as henchwoman Nebula.
Definite sequel fodder there.
We've
got a long way to go before the sequel (2017 was mentioned) but I
have very high hopes for it.