Director: James Gunn
Writers: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Gunn
Runtime: 121 mins.
2014
First the numbers.
Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $94 million in its opening weekend. The only 2014 movies to have bigger opening weekends were Transformers: Age of Extinction at $100 million and Captain America: The Winter Soldier at $95 million. More notable is the fact that Guardians managed to accomplish these numbers in August; compared to the triad of May-June-July, August box office numbers are usually slight. In fact, Guardians shattered the previous August opening weekend record, which belonged to The Bourne Ultimatum at $69.3 million. That's a solid $25 million margin.
Perhaps most notable of all, Guardians managed to achieve these astronomical numbers despite not being a sequel or a well-known property. Ticket buyers generally flock to the familiar. Take a look at all the other movies mentioned in the previous paragraph: The Winter Soldier, Ultimatum, and Age of Extinction are the second, third, and fourth movies of their respective franchises. Not only that, but two of them feature well-known protagonists who have achieved widespread cultural penetration over the course of decades, and the third features the protagonist of a series of very popular Ludlum novels. My point is that this cume represents an unprecedented level of financial success for a movie starring characters that almost nobody (including myself) had heard of a year ago. Even The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made less opening weekend cash despite featuring one of the most recognizable characters in pop culture. Part of that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand, and part of it is Disney's (impressive) marketing campaign. But I have to believe that a lot of this bottled magic has to do with the movie itself. Guardians of the Galaxy has energy, and it has soul; these qualities bleed through the advertisements, critical acclaim, and word-of-mouth.
So now that we are finished parsing the soulless numbers, let's talk about soul.
How best to talk about soul, though? There's the soundtrack--composed entirely of pop music from the '60s and '70s, deftly incorporated into the plot despite GOTG taking place across the galaxy. There's the special effects--from the damaged, angry eyes of Rocket to the goofy grace of Groot to the intricate space battles with far clearer and more interesting tactics than just about any other sci-fi movie out there. And of course there's the opening scene, a favorite of mine--a scene that I will not spoil with description, but that manages to anchor this comic book movie in the most effective way since X-Men's Holocaust opener. It manages to be the least comedic and action-y scene I've ever encountered in an action-comedy. Once you've seen the movie, we should talk about it.
I would love to go in depth about any of that, but really this movie is all about its raucous, damaged, desperate, fragile, irreverent, unbreakable, charming, multifaceted characters. So let's talk about those losers.
1. DRAX THE DESTROYER
Drax is the surprise of the movie. Casting professional wrestler Dave Bautista as a burly, revenge-driven brute makes a lot of sense. He should be able to pull off agile fight choreography (and he does). He should be able to physically dominate the frame (and he does). He should be able to intimidate a cast of characters filled with pirates, miscreants, etc. (and he does).
What nobody could have expected was the sad, quiet gentleness coupled with rich playfulness that Bautista brings to the brute. When he's not blustering about Ronan's impending death at his hands, his screentime is packed with moments of vulnerability. He admits defeat, he accepts mistakes, he reaches out to others, and he has the charming quirk of an incapacity for metaphor. A character who takes everything literally could swiftly become a tired schtick, but Bautista delivers his lines with such honesty that you really believe that Drax has missed out on any and all subtext.
Professional wrestling has a storied history of larger-than-life figures swaggering their way through soap opera conflicts. Bautista manages to translate this style into a real character with emotional highs and lows, a character rife with pain and exhilaration. I am continually impressed by Marvel's often surprising and always insightful casting choices. Look to Drax. This is how it's done.
2 & 3. ROCKET RACCOON and GROOT
Rocket and Groot are the surprise of the movie. Aren't we tired of sassy talking animals? Aren't we tired of one-note joke characters who "communicate" through a single phrase alone? Aren't we tired of overabundant CGI characters lifelessly interacting with their live action human counterparts? If you're not tired of that, just watch this trailer and feel the weariness set in.
Yet these characters transcend all of that.
In fact, Rocket feels like the successfully sassy talking animal from which all other sassy talking animals are derivative. He is the sassy talking animal urtext.
Despite his diminutive stature, Rocket steals every scene he's in--often literally. The character crackles, thanks to a confluence of several necessary factors. One of these is the CGI. Between the technology behind Rocket and the technology behind this summer's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (which I totally meant to review but couldn't think of much better to say than "my god are those monkeys amazing to watch"), we're entering an exciting time for computer generated imagery in film. Namely a time in which well-done CGI--which is still rare--can be Convincing with a capital C. I'm not suggesting that Rocket looks exactly like an anthropomorphic raccoon would look in our world. I am suggesting that Rocket's embodiment, movement set, and facial expressions allow him to feel just as real and expressive as a live action actor, a possibility that arguably began with Gollum in 2002 and may be approaching its apex. At any rate, the amazing thing about Rocket is not that when he is angry, he looks angry--it's that when he looks angry, you can also read the buried emotions behind his facade.
Much of that is owing to another big factor in Rocket's success: James Gunn's excellent screenplay. Gunn's previous two writer-directorial efforts, Super and Slither, also feature perpetually entertaining dialogue with frequent tonal shifts and subversion of familiar tropes, so the craft on display in Guardians is not exactly a surprise (Gunn also wrote the live action Scooby-Doo movies, but let's not talk about that). Nevertheless, Gunn really takes a shine to Rocket, throwing him standout moment after standout moment. Again, it would feel wrong to ruin anything for you folks who haven't seen the movie yet, but one of the funniest things I've seen in recent memory is the way that Rocket puts other people's prosthetic body parts to use. Yes, that is something that comes up more than once.
Finally, Rocket works because he is a character that you care about. I don't just mean you would prefer him to live rather than die. I mean that you care for his well-being. You want to hang out with him, get to know him, comfort him. Rocket is a damaged creature. Created through an inhumane series of genetic and cybernetic experiments, as well as ridiculed and dismiss by all of those around him (except Groot...), Rocket is an angry, alcoholic, overcompensating genius who just wants to be taken seriously. Kudos to Bradley Cooper and his voicework here. Coming off of two straight Oscar nominations, Cooper is at the top of his game, selling the jokes like nobody's business. But the beauty of his performance comes in the cracking of Rocket's voice during vulnerable moments. That's what will stick with you. All this from a sassy CGI raccoon.
Most of what I just said about the comedic and dramatic effectiveness of Rocket also applies to Groot, which is all the more impressive considering that he does not benefit from catchy dialogue--not to mention that his CGI is purposefully wooden (pun intended?). Groot only says one phrase: "I am Groot." Yet Vin Diesel manages to get maximum mileage from this sentence in what turns out to be a rather subtle performance. Incidentally, if this surprises you, you ought to go back and check out Diesel's voicework in The Iron Giant.
Where these characters really shine, though, is their relationship. They couldn't be more different, yet it's impossible to think of them apart from each other. They're like that pair of best friends who you would never even think to wonder about how they met--you just assume they have always been together. Rocket acts as the conduit through which we can understand Groot intellectually, a tactic that evokes Han and Chewie. Meanwhile, Groot provides a conduit through which we can understand Rocket emotionally, an extra step that Han and Chewie's relationship rarely took.
Rocket and Groot are both amazing characters on their own, but when they are trading barbs and tag-teaming enemies, they become something... special.
4. GAMORA
Gamora is the surprise of the movie. Sci-fi films and action blockbusters are notorious for churning out uninteresting, caricatured, or nonexistent roles for women, so it would be reasonable to expect Gamora to be the least interesting of the Guardians. And that may be the case, as this article insightfully articulates. She doesn't quite transcend the unfairly gendered limitations of her genre like Rita Vrataski in the outstanding Edge of Tomorrow. But she comes awfully close.
It's true that Gamora is given far fewer choice lines of dialogue than her compatriots. In fact, she is the character most often saddled with clunky exposition--the kinds of "Hey, this character is doing this thing for this reason!" lines that are so hard to deliver with dignity. All of which makes Zoe Saldana's performance all the more impressive.
For how few moments she is given to shine, Saldana manages to be constantly engaging. She never grabs at the limelight, and she never fades into the background. She is always an important presence. And the moments she does have? She nails them. My second favorite Gamora moments are those when she is slicing through the air to flip-kick enemies into unconsciousness. But my favorite Gamora moments are small, intimate, blink-and-you'll-miss-them moments. They may not be the funniest, or coolest, or most bombastic, but they are moments to cherish nonetheless.
Guardians is a movie that treats every aspect of itself with respect and intelligence, and the romance between Gamora and Peter Quill is no exception. Their arc together feels earned every bit of the way. They squabble, they cooperate, they respect each other, and they generate an immense amount of chemistry. The best part of that chemistry is that--and here's a novel idea--it's not entirely sexual! In fact, all of the sexual moments between them are immediately undercut. Instead, the relationship that we witness is one of burgeoning friendship that will inevitably turn to romance. Isn't that refreshing? After all, didn't most of the romantic relationships you're aware of begin with a friendship that became something more? That's a key aspect of romance that Hollywood disregards with astounding constancy. Not to throw stones, but when Superman and Lois Lane make out at the end of Man of Steel, it means nothing more than: "Superman is hot, Lois Lane is hot, of course they are going to make out." Even the superhero movies that give women more prominent roles generally reduce the dynamic to: "He saved her life, so she kind of has to make out with him now!" Guardians is something different, fresh, and long overdue.
And people are taking notice of this. I have anecdotal evidence--after seeing the movie with my family, my mom commented on how much she liked Gamora, and how refreshing it was to see a woman in an action movie who wasn't an emptyheaded object that needs to be saved (partially her words, partially mine). Then we talked for a bit about her interesting relationship with her sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), who is a compelling character in her own right. It was a good conversation.
I also have, you know, numbers evidence. About 44% of the audience for Guardians were women. That may not seem like a high number, but for a superhero movie it's huge. The previous lady leader in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was The Avengers, and that audience came in at 40% female.
Gamora may not be perfect, but she represents a step in the right direction. I can't wait to see where her character goes from here--I expect good things.
5. PETER QUILL, aka STAR-LORD
This may not surprise you, but... Star-Lord is the surprise of the movie. How does he avoid getting lost in the shuffle of larger-than-life CGI characters, aliens, space battles, ancient artifacts, etc. etc.? He plays the type of cocksure douchebag (is that an oxymoron?) who we expect to grate on our nerves. Perhaps he could be salvaged as a competent straight man in juxtaposition with the rest of his crew, but what more can the audience stand-in accomplish?
A lot more, as it turns out. Quill is the beating heart of this movie. Part of that is the aforementioned opening scene, part of that is his stubborn insistence on making pop culture references that fall on deaf ears, part of that is his affinity for his tape recorder, part of that is his sheer earnestness. The way he straddles self-awareness without getting bogged down in the mire on either side of that fence is a testament to Chris Pratt's ability to imbue humanity in the most egotistical of characters. Peter Quill shows that self-delusion is never without its flaws.
Not only does Quill have a full and satisfying arc over the course of the film, but we as an audience also change with respect to how we understand Quill's actions. Why does he behave the way he does? For a while we assume that it's just because he's an a-hole. But with each new reveal of information about his past, we understand more and more how a person like this could come to exist. That's called empathy, and it is the force at the core of just about any meaningful cinematic experience.
Also, Pratt is freaking hilarious.
CONCLUSION: EVERYBODY!
The excellent characters don't end there--Guardians is bursting at the seams with them. Yondu (Michael Rooker) was a blast to watch, and I wish there was more for Corpsman Dey to do, because John C. Reilly absolutely killed every line he was given.
But Guardians isn't a movie about any one character. It's about everybody together. This is the sort of movie that makes you wonder why there aren't movies about groups anymore. Sure, we get the occasional The Avengers and Ocean's Eleven (also exhilarating movies), but it's been a while since ensemble casts were the norm. Sure, there's nothing wrong with the Die Hard model of a solitary hero fighting against all odds to save the day, but group movies offer something that those movies cannot. They offer community.
It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that the major themes of Guardians are all about community. Family, friendship, and even nationalism are dealt with. We see the present absence of lost relatives, and we see the fallout from multiple abusive relationships, but we also see the healthy relationships that sprout up to help relieve that trauma. If Guardians teaches us one thing, it's that people hurt other people--but people help other people, too. And we have to open ourselves up to the possibility of both.
4 / 5 BLOBS
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