Guardians of the Galaxy

It’s quite hard to write a second movie review right after the first.

It’s also hard to write a review of film in the Marvel/Avengers franchise.  Basically, each film has to stand alone be good in its own right, but you cannot avoid the fact that each film is serving a much larger and grander storyline that, we all assume, ends with Avengers 3.  In a sense then, phase 2 of the avengers story has a lot of work to do to be good.  Phase 1 launched it and we didn’t know about phase 2 or 3 at that point.  We all thought it would culminate in Avengers.  Then we discovered it wouldn’t.  So phase 2 has to add to the story without really concluding it.  This inevitably leads to a problem with villains.  This has been Marvel’s problem in phase 2.  You can’t keep using the old ones, it gets dull and if the heroes don’t actually properly beat them, they aren’t doing their job.  You can’t bring in the new ones in all their fullness too soon as we need to save them for Avengers 3.  So we have to introduce villains that you kind of know aren’t really all that bad.

So there’s the melty guy in Iron Man 3, the Winter Soldier in Cap 2, the elf dude in Thor 2 and Ronan the Accuser in GotG.  None of them have been the kind of epic villains you expect.

Introductions aside, let’s move right along.  I really enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy for 4 reasons.  Star Lord, Rocket Racoon, Groot and Drax the Destroyer.  The 4 of them and the 4 of them together is a very entertaining mix.  They are all skilled and they all bring an element of humour to the film which keeps it light hearted and just fun all the way through.

Chris Pratt is excellent as Star Lord, the character we’ve never heard of, but apparently no one has so that’s fine.  Rocket is pretty funny and Drax is too in his own way.  Groot also has a few one liners, which despite being all the same, made me laugh a number of times.

It’s very funny at points, but not a comedy.  It’s a light hearted, space action adventure that is just a lot of fun.  It feels a bit like having a water fight with your best mates on a hot, sunny day in a massive field and throw in some HUGE super soakers!  Every one has a good time.

The story is hard to comment on.  It is clearly paving the way for Avengers 3 and so the purpose of the film is really to introduce people and objects into the bigger storyline that began with Iron Man 1.  As such, it is a necessary part of an epic story.  On it’s own, it could hold it’s weight, but it is slightly formulaic if you boil it down to it’s bare bones plot.  I don’t mind that, it’s a pretty good formula and the way the characters all meet is really a master stroke.  The villain does suffer from the above problem.  He is strong, in his way, but he doesn’t really do anything except loom menacingly.  In terms of it’s place in the wider story, without giving too much away, the Avengers are going to have to seriously up their game if they are to survive Avengers 3.  It introduces a world that none of them are prepared or equipped to face, alone or together, and so introduces threats that, at the moment, we have no obvious solution to.  It also develops The Collector a bit, but we still don’t really know who he is or what his agenda is.  Will the Guardians of the Galaxy ever meet or interact with the Avengers?  The post credits scene was a huge surprise and most people won’t get it.  Whether there is any significance to it, I couldn’t say.

Overall, this was a lot of fun, contributed well to the grander story and was well done so I am going to give it 85/100 .