Review: "Guardians of the Galaxy"

In a perfect world, Marvel Studios would be thrilling us with their own versions of Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men, combining them into the same incredible onscreen world as The Avengers. Unfortunately, the rights to those other characters are tied up at competing studios (X-Men and Fantastic Four with 20th Century Fox, Spider-man at Sony), thanks to deals that were made long ago. Not having those characters in their cinematic stable forced Marvel to get creative, to reach into the not-so mainstream corners of their comics for characters and stories with cinematic potential. And it seems those limitations have turned out to be a benefit to the studio. Because if that "perfect" world existed, Marvel might not have had the creative or financial need for a movie about a strange band of alien misfits known as the Guardians of the Galaxy, and moviegoers would be all the poorer for it.

That's not to say that Guardians is a perfect movie. At times, it's guilty of trying too hard to be cool or charming or funny, but if you are in tune with its sense of humor and its overt nostalgia for 1980's Americana -- we'll come back to that idea in a moment -- it will win you over in spite of that. Plus, I'll take 'trying too hard' or 'too busy' over a bland, by-the-numbers approach any day.

Director James Gunn (Slither, Super) has delivered a movie that fits the modern blockbuster mold, complete with characters that could only have been brought to life with cutting edge computer technology -- specifically, Rocket, a talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper, and a walking tree called Groot, whom Vin Diesel performed via motion capture. Yet, aside from Rocket and Groot, who are a package deal, most of the other aliens in the film are portrayed by actors with makeup or prosthetics applied, but still recognizably humanoid. There's an unmistakable effort to recapture the look and feel of old-school science fiction movies of the post-Star Trek/Star Wars era. And it works because the nostalgia is directly tied to the only human character of the group, Peter Quill, played with equal parts roguish and dopey charm by Chris Pratt.

Taken from Earth as a boy, Quill holds onto the memories of his childhood through music. The movie's soundtrack is a toe-tapping mixtape made for him by his dying mother, which he listens to via a Walkman. What could be more eighties than that? Not only is this a great playlist of songs that will have you bopping along in your seat, but each one is beautifully woven into the story to give just the right 'umff' during the scene it plays over. The film's score by Tyler Bates is very good as well, but it's the songs -- such as "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways and "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 -- that you'll remember as you leave the theater. Quill, whose nom de voyage Star-Lord hasn't caught on as well as he would like, also spends a lot of time explaining the idioms and pop-culture references that no one but the audience could possibly understand (there's a recurring joke about Footloose that got great reactions from the crowd I saw the movie with).

I should back up a bit and divulge a few plot details. Quill travels to a distant planet to recover a special orb, which he has arranged to sell for a big payday. His efforts are met with some resistance, in the form of Rocket and Groot, who want to capture him for a bounty, and Gamora, a green-skinned alien played by Zoe Saldana. She also wants the orb in order to sell it, and in doing so would be double-crossing her sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan); her current employer, Ronan (Lee Pace); and her father, Thanos (Josh Brolin). The fighting between Quill, Rocket and Groot, and Gamora draws the attention of the Nova Corps and gets them all tossed into a space prison called The Kyln where they encounter Drax The Destroyer. This imposing alien, played by Dave Bautista, has vowed to avenge the death of his family at the hands of Ronan. Making a long story short, the orb contains one of the powerful Infinity Stones, like the Tesseract in The Avengers and the Aether in Thor: The Dark World. Once Ronan gets his hands on it, these misfit criminals will need to band together to save an entire planet from being destroyed.

As you can probably tell, there's quite a bit of world building and set-up for future installments, but Marvel's gotten better at doing this organically. It doesn't take away from the strength of Guardians, which is the characters. While I would certainly agree that these movies haven't really given us a great villain yet -- Ronan is pretty generic -- I like what they're doing with Thanos; he fits in nicely here. And, the interplay between our main characters is just terrific. There's a surprising vulnerability to each of them, which gives weight to the emotional moments, but Gunn and his co-writer, Nicole Perlman, do a great job keeping things snappy and moving at a brisk pace. Everyone gets multiple moments to shine, both in and out of the action, without sacrificing the energy level. An entire planet may be in jeopardy, with billions of lives in the balance, but this still is a laugh-out-loud, feel-good Marvel movie.

So, in an attempt to bring this thing full-circle, I would absolutely love it if Marvel was able to reacquire the rights to Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men. Undeniably, it would be epic! But when I think of a Marvel Cinematic Universe where the Guardians of the Galaxy are major players, and with an upcoming slate of films that mixes in characters like Ant Man and Doctor Strange, the future of Marvel Studios seems arguably more interesting and varied without those other properties.