Originally published April 14, 2019

In the aftermath of The Avengers making approximately all the dollars, there was a discussion as to whether Marvel had gotten too big to fail. I suppose Disney wanted to find out, because they decided it was time to get real weird with it. And that’s how Guardians of the Galaxy happened.

It was directed by the guy who made Slither. It stars the chubby guy from Parks and Rec and the blue lady from Avatar. Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel are in it, but they play a raccoon and a tree. One of the major characters is played by a wrestler with barely any acting experience, and another is the one-armed white supremacist from The Walking Dead. It had Benicio Del Toro in it specifically to play an eccentric weirdo, and he still wasn’t the weirdest part of the movie. This movie is WEIRD.

Guardians of the Galaxy is also easily one of my ten favorite movies of the decade. I’ll try to be impartial, but I cannot deny that I love this movie.

A Classic Story with New Trappings

Honestly, the basic narrative is very generic. A ragtag bunch of misfits are brought together by circumstance to protect an important artifact (The Orb) from a madman (Ronan the Accuser) and realize they can be better together than they ever were separately. It’s a tried and tested formula, but it would be very bland if it wasn’t held together with a little something special.

That something special is EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE FILM.

Unique Aesthetic

The music is one of the things everybody remembers about this movie. Of course, they mostly remember the liberal sprinkling of licensed tunes. And don’t get me wrong, they’re uniformly great. They’re a huge part of why the film absolutely oozes style. In particular, I’m a huge fan of the scene where Moonage Daydream plays as the Guardians arrive at Knowhere. But there’s also a respectable original score behind it all. The main theme is solid, but I especially appreciated the strings arrangement they used for a couple of important scenes involving Groot.

Visually, this movie is a distillation of a lot of the best science fiction and space opera out there. It owes as much to Farscape and Firefly as it does to Star Wars. Each planet (or more exotic location) has a distinct look. There’s a big difference between the clean, Star Trek-esque Xandar vs. the mining colony built into the severed head of a Celestial. The color palettes are vibrant, but the settings look lived-in.

The action sequences range from good enough to incredible. The hand to hand fights later in the film aren’t spectacular, but the aerial battle happening concurrently is a treat. Generally, the fights work better when they’re more than just a fight. The early scene when Gamora tries to steal the orb and Rocket/Groot try to kidnap Quill is a treat because it’s introducing us to who these characters are via visual storytelling. We’re learning that Gamora is a highly-trained combatant, that Quill is great at improvisation etc. The same is true of the prison escape. The big fights in the finale, while well-choreographed, just aren’t as interesting.

Excellence in Character Development

James Gunn also demonstrates a masterclass in developing an ensemble in a limited run time. These misfits might be ragtag, but they’re also intensely likable. Peter Quill AKA Star-Lord is still grieving the death of his mother (and coping with being ripped away from his home as a child). Drax is grieving his wife and daughter, seeking to fill the void with revenge. Rocket is hiding a lifetime of pain and inferiority complexes. And Gamora is trying to move beyond a cycle of abuse perpetuated upon her by a certain frontrunner for Universe’s Worst Person. The talking tree is the most well-adjusted major character.

Found Family and the Importance of Giving a Shit

The brokenness of the cast is crucial to the thematic development of the film. Guardians of the Galaxy is a movie centered on two themes, both of which I am an absolute sucker for. The first is family. Family, particularly found family, underpins the whole film. These are people who have been hurt, who have either lost their family or been denied one in the first place. The arc of the film is these people moving past their trauma just enough to trust each other. It’s a bunch of losers that realize they don’t have to be alone. Maybe I’m just overly emotional, but the idea that you can still find people who love you even if you’re damaged is really powerful.

The hurt these characters bear is part of what makes the second theme so impactful. To roughly quote the film itself, it’s all about giving a shit. These characters have no incentive to play the hero. They have no positive attachment to the world they’re trying to save. As far as they’re concerned, it’s just the place that threw them in prison. Other than arguably Gamora, they have no lingering guilt driving them to do the right thing either. They already tried and failed to do the right thing by protecting the orb from Ronan. When they risk their lives and their freedom in an insane plan that will almost certainly end in their death, it’s because they believe that life is fundamentally worth saving. In choosing to give a shit, they do one of the most fundamentally heroic things in the entire MCU.

Building a Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy also introduces a fair number of characters and ideas that will come back around in other MCU entries in the future. We get our first full look at Thanos, for one. We also get the first full appearance of the Collector, following up on a cameo in Thor: The Dark World. The Orb AKA the Power Stone is introduced. Nebula debuts in this film, though she won’t become a major character until the sequel. We also get the first (and likely last chronological) appearances of Ronan and Korath, both of whom will later appear in Captain Marvel.

Conclusion

This movie is one of the biggest examples I can recall of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts, even when the parts are already pretty great. You should watch this movie even if you have zero interest in super hero movies normally. It’s just that good. I will be shocked if it isn’t a notably high ranked entry on my overall MCU list.

But the overall list won’t be determined until later. For now, Guardians of the Galaxy is taking second place.

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