The first thing I noticed about Marvel’s latest big blockbuster, “Guardians Of The Galaxy” is, there is a ton of stuff happening up on the screen. There’s so much going on in the background, that there’s no way you’d be able to take it all in without multiple viewings.
My Non-Spoiler thoughts on the film:
If you’re a Marvel comics fan like me, and have any knowledge of some history of the more “cosmic” corners of the Marvel Universe, you’re going to love this movie. Just the fact that we’re seeing out-there characters like Rocket Raccoon and Groot on the big screen is fantastic enough, but who would ever have thought that we’d be seeing Ronan The Accuser, or the Nova Corps, or any of the other obscure characters and alien races that have appeared in the most remote corners of the comic book pages.
There isn’t a minute of screen time wasted here, from the scenery-chewing villains, to the heroes’ backstories, all the characters have their time to shine. Chris Pratt is great as Starlord, and Zoe Saldana ( Gamora ) and Dave Bautista ( Drax ) carry their own amongst the alien creatures they’re sharing the screen with. As amazing as the CG characters are, and they ARE amazing, the human characters actually held my interest a little more.
Rocket Raccoon, as expected, stole the show. What I didn’t count on was how much heart this completely-rendered-by-a-computer character would have. Same thing goes for Groot. Talking Raccoon? Sure, who wouldn’t love that? But a talking tree? Even if he did only say the same three words over and over again, he was still charming and lovable. Like a wooden Chewbacca.
The soundtrack is, well, “Awesome”. I challenge anyone who sees this movie to walk away not humming “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, or even “Ooh Child”. I can’t say enough about the special effects either. The first couple of scenes with Rocket, he looked a little too “CG” for me, if that makes any sense. The scene from the trailer with the introduction of the characters in the line-up stands out to me as an example where the movement seems a little less “natural”, I know I’m nit-picking here. But a few minutes into it, especially with some close-ups I was completely convinced by the effects. After that I never even gave it a second thought.
Kudos to Marvel for accomplishing a miracle here. They’ve proven that with their special brand of movie magic, they can present even their lesser known characters on the big screen in a compelling enough way that people will flock to see them. 95 million dollars is what this movie made in its opening weekend, blowing all expectations out of the water. Not too shabby for relative unknowns.
My only complaint is, these movies are starting to feel a little repetitive. In “Avengers” you had everyone after a cube, here it’s an orb. I get it, these elements are part of a bigger picture, but that story isn’t over yet, so they need to come up with different ways to incorporate the MacGuffin-Quest aspect of these movies, or run the risk of becoming derivative of their own history. So, I was a little disappointed with that detail of the plot, but that’s a minor quibble.
Now on to the spoilery stuff…. DON’T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN “GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY” YET, AND YOU WANT TO REMAIN AS SPOILER FREE AS POSSIBLE GOING IN.
There were two moments in this movie that gave me a major geek-gasm right there in my theater seat. The first was seeing a Celestial on screen in all its Kirby-esque glory. For everyone that said that a movie Galactus would look silly if he appeared closer to how he does in the comics, they were wrong. WRONG, I tells ya’! It was just a quick shot, an image appearing on a video screen, but damn it was sweet. Like it stepped right out of a comic.
And the second huge geek-out moment? Can you believe it? Who would ever think we would be watching HOWARD the FREAKING DUCK on the big screen EVER AGAIN? This is a great character, created by Steve Gerber once upon a time in the 1970’s, that was turned into a punchline with George Lucas’ cinematic abortion back in 1986, and has now been given a second chance. It may have just been a one-off joke in an after-credits scene, but I really hope they do something more with this favorite fowl and finally do him justice. He ain’t about to be plucked!
I wasn’t as enthusiastic about Thanos as some people apparently were. I mean, they announced a few months ago that he was in the movie, played by Josh Brolin, so it wasn’t a big surprise to me. He was bad-ass, don’t get me wrong, looking all ominous sitting on his cosmic throne. Once he’s done sitting on the sideIines and starts doing his Thanos thing, he'll be huge. I think the big surprises with this character are still to come.
Another sort of blah-moment for me was the Collector’s, well, collection. It wasn’t on screen long enough for me to really pick out anything of significance. When we first got a glimpse of it at the end of Thor: A Dark World, I read online something about Adam Warlock in a cocoon… I’ll have to take their word for it. Admittedly, I don’t know enough about Adam Warlock to even know what to look for.
Ultimately, this is a major feather in Marvel’s cap. If they can turn “A-Holes” like the Guardians Of The Galaxy into cinematic gold, they are way ahead in the game. Let’s just hope they can pull off “Ant-Man”.
