Guardians of the Galaxy (Dissenting)

Guardians of the Galaxy has now upped the bar for every Marvel movie to follow. It takes the excitement of Star Wars and, with an all star cast, blends it with comedy and a little more heart than your average summer blockbuster, with a visual feast as dressing. It flies along at breakneck speed and doesn’t disappoint.

For a relatively unheard of franchise Guardians doesn’t waste time with lots of unnecessary backstory like so many other comic book franchises. After a brief but emotional scene showing our hero Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) as a child on Earth, the story begins to unfold, and as new characters are introduced (most of them are hunting down Star-Lord for a bounty), their stories are told by themselves as the group begins to come together. Zoe Zaldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and even Vin Diesel manage to bring their characters to life without the painfully long origin stories that could have been inserted. The film doesn’t even bother with the usual, tedious origin story of the bad guys as well, and I thank them for it. Spiderman screenwriters take note.

Diesel’s one-liner is used to great effect no matter how many ways he said “I am Groot”, the audience ate it up. Cooper’s voice work for Rocket Racoon is also very well done and despite his self-centered demeanor, he quickly became one of the most memorable characters that Marvel has put on the screen. During one scene, Rocket becomes tired of the demeaning comments about being a raccoon and his pain came through as much as if the character was human on screen. Indeed, all of the Guardians get a chance to show multiple dimensions of their characters at one point or another. Not an easy feat, considering there is a lot of action in this film.

Rocket Raccoon may be proactive and in your face, but is no Poochy

While this move was another summer blockbuster converted in post-production, they manage to bring the wonderfully designed planets and rip roaring spacecraft action to life when the 3D effect was used to its full capacity. Those on the fence about 3D will find they get the a good bang for their buck for the most part.

Like in the previews, the music in the movie is mostly brought to us via Star-Lord’s antiquated cassette tape, and the old rock riffs make a great juxtaposition to the film’s ultra futuristic look. I even noticed a few scenes from the previews altered or missing from the movie, whether on purpose or not, it helped the movie stay fresh, despite the assault of Guardians previews every movie-goer has experienced this summer. I wonder how Star-Lord would react if somebody gave him one of today’s portable music players with a few gigs of music.

A rare summer blockbuster that lives up to the hype, right up to the hilarious post-credit scene that hopefully nobody will spoil for you. Be warned though, if you are expecting some big reveal about what is coming next post-credit I am happy to let you down now. That doesn’t mean your butt shouldn’t be parked in that seat until you see it! A worthy outing for any movie-goer. Where some Marvel movies pamper the fans of comics, this one is a franchise that was so unknown they were able to just have fun with it. Guardians has enough wit, emotion and action to keep everybody entertained.

Just in case you have never heard of movies or trailers before and somehow haven’t seen this, here you go!