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There's a lot riding on Guardians of the Galaxy. While even Iron Man was effectively a cultural unknown back in 2008, Marvel could afford to be cavalier while it established itself as a premier studio. Fast forward six years, nine movies, and roughly $6.5bn (£3.83bn) in box office, and Marvel movies are events unto themselves. Rocking that money ship with any unfamiliar brand is a risk now, let alone one based on a team that -- unlike

Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers -- hasn't even had its own animated series before.


Luckily, the risk has paid off -- James Gunn's approach to Marvel's cosmic superheroes results in one of, if not the best movies in the cinematic universe. And yes, that does mean it's better than Avengers.

Walking out of Guardians, there's a very real sense that you've just seen this generation's Star Wars

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That's no easy achievement. Joss Whedon's team-up movie was a remarkable piece of comic book cinema, though it benefitted from audiences knowing the cast from their preceding solo films. Gunn has the tougher task of introducing the Guardians as a collective while also producing two hours of entertainment that stands on its own merits. He succeeds brilliantly, establishing the team and crafting a rollicking adventure movie that veers between origin story, heist flick, and epic space fantasy, with plenty of humour thrown in. On top of all that, each of the members gets enough focus to establish their histories and personalities in viewers' minds, without resorting to lazy exposition. It's a remarkable achievement.

While the entire cast does a sterling job of bringing rounded and engaging characters to the screen, the focus is on Chris Pratt's portrayal of Peter Quill, Star-Lord. Taken into space as a child following his mother's death and raised by a band of interplanetary pirates, he's the sole link to Earth and humanity, something needed in a movie as otherworldly as Guardians.


Pratt steals the show with his cocky, swaggering, yet essentially vulnerable turn as Quill, presenting him as a fundamentally broken man-child raised apart from reality. It's not until he gets drawn in with the rest of his soon-to-be-team than he starts to mature, becoming the hero he imagines himself to be.

The gathering of the team is masterfully done too, with Quill tracked by Bradley Cooper's Rocket Raccoon and Vin Diesel's tree-like Groot, both seeking the bounty placed on his head.

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Meanwhile, Zoe Saldana's Gamora is hunting the macguffin Quill is seen stealing in the trailer, leading to the four of them crossing paths naturally, albeit at cross purposes. Dave Bautista's Drax the Destroyer comes later, when the others are inevitably sent to the brutal Kyln prison, eventually aiding their equally inevitable escape. It's the first time the film's perfect pacing stands out, holding fire on getting the whole band together until it makes sense.


The Kyln is one of the stand out sequences, delivering one of the most impressive jailbreaks you'll see on screen, some genuinely hilarious moments, and the first glimmers of teamwork between the fractious allies. The friction between the characters is almost palpable, yet the script is smart enough to let them show how they support and complement each other. From there, the film kicks into overdrive with a rapid-fire jaunt across the galaxy, taking in the likes of Knowhere (the severed head of a Celestial, used as Guardians' answer to Mos Eisley) and Xandar (home of the peacekeeping Nova Corps, lead by Glenn Close's Nova Prime), all as the neophyte team strives to stay one step ahead of Lee Pace's terrifying Ronan the Accuser -- out to destroy Xandar and anything else in his way -- and Thanos, the Marvel Universe's ultimate evil.

Guardians is a fantastically weird film, with the Knowhere sequence in particular channelling the strangeness of The Fifth Element, full of bizarre creatures and avant-garde fashions. Gunn presents a universe that is truly alien in places, and unsettling in the best way. Yet even its oddest elements -- including half the team -- have an emotionally-resonant edge to them. Rocket and Groot stand out on this front, transcending being CG characters and feeling as real as any of the physical cast.

Diesel makes Groot's repeated refrain of "I am Groot!" surprisingly varied, while Cooper manages to take Rocket as far from being a

'funny animal' as it's possible to get. At his lowest point, Rocket shows a moment of almost existential despair.

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Dave Bautista even elevates Drax from mere muscle-bound fighty-man thanks to his beautifully deadpan delivery throughout, reinforcing the film's comedic chops. Guardians is a supremely funny film, deliberately so, the cast perfectly landing each joke and nailing every bit of physical comedy. Importantly, it never delves into slapstick though -- this is first and foremost an action film, and fully delivers on that front. The sheer scale of the movie is breathtaking to behold, with ships the size of small cities, planet-wide destruction, and a final, awe-inspiring battle involving entire fleets of fighters as Ronan makes his ultimate assault on Xandar.

Gunn and co-writer Nicole Perlman do take some liberties with the comic book source material though, which may irk hardcore fans.

Yondu, the vicious leader of the Ravager pirates (played by Michael Rooker), is a wild departure from his peaceful comic equivalent, while the background to Bautista's Drax is left ambiguous enough that he could eventually mirror his print origins or continue to be seemingly unrelated in all but name and powers. However, the core of most of the characters remains unchanged. The continuity linking Guardians to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe is subtler than the Earth-bound films, but geek-pleasing hints are there to be found -- notably callouts to Thor: The Dark World's invading Dark Elves and The Avengers' Chitauri aliens, but also in further establishing the growing threat of Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Stones. A cameo by Cosmo the telepathic Russian space dog will please comics fans, too.


Few flaws linger on the mind after seeing Guardians, and those there are can easily be forgiven. The weakest element is Gamora's rivalry with pseudo-sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), seeming little more than sibling rivalry. Gillan elevates it on her part by pouring such venom into her role that the animosity seeps from the screen. The phenomenally choreographed fight scene between the two also helps. The soundtrack, peppered with 70s and 80s classics and so clever in the trailers, proves a little twee in full but is essential to Star-Lord's personality, so that too can be accepted.

When those are about the only problems you have left, you can say a film has done its job well.

Walking out of Guardians, there's a very real sense that you've just seen this generation's Star Wars. It single-handedly expands the scope of the Marvel Universe into, well, the wider universe, showing there's far more going on than just what happens on our pale blue speck. When the first posters for the movie came out, they carried the simple tagline "You're Welcome". In response, we offer a much-belated "Thank You". It's the shot in the arm no-one knew the film series needed, and a modern masterpiece of popcorn cinema in its own right.