03/08/2014

What a bunch of a-holes….



This is pretty much spoiler free... 

So I just came from Guardians of the galaxy, here is the short version… Go see it… it is the best fucking movie you will see all year.

It has been said that Marvel studios do not make superhero movies per se, they make movies that are set in a super hero universe. The meaning of this is of course that each movie can have its own tone. GotG is a comedy, a very good comedy that get most of the timing right even if the pace is a bit shaky in the start in my opinion. But once the movie get going it has a very nice flow. It does not take it self all that serious, rather choosing to play with our expectations. And of course if you are a child, or rather a teenager of the 80´s the shameless flirting with your nostalgia will have you smiling and nodding along several times. Like the Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy this movie do not make any excuses for the humour nor does it try to play it of as sarcasm, it simply love what it does and expect you to love it too. A love letter to the 1980´s and it just works.

So… The guardians them self is one of these marvel teams that I know of but have not followed very close, in fact as far as the roster goes I do from time to time get them mixed up with Starjammers. If you like to know the detailed backstory of either group I recommend that you do a wiki search. But this lineup of the team that comes form it´s second reboot consist of Star-Lord, a Han Solo like scoundrel with a heart of... well... maybe not gold but at least copper or brass. After opening on a good solid gut punch in the feels we get introduced to an adult star-Lord acting like the man-child he is and rocking out to some sweet 80´s pop music. If you by some act of tremendous willpower or other act of your deity of choice missed the original trailer for GotG I can tell you that 80´s pop play a key role, almost being a character on its own. Setting up moods and offering some nice twists along the way. On Star-Lords crew we have Gamorra a living weapon that serve Ronan the Accuser, a very angry Kree, and I will go in to what a Kree is a bit later. Any way Gamorra have had some serious upgrades and in essence serve as the gruff counterpoint to the outwardly care free Star-Lord. Next up is Drax the Destroyer a homicidal maniac that has one goal… vengeance… This rather one note character is given some much needed… maybe not depth but at least dimension by a surprisingly good Batista who normally spend his days as a WWE pro wrestler.  He even get in a good chuckle or two and that was A LOT more then what I expected going in to this movie. Interestingly Drax is not the muscle of the operation, for that we have Groot, a sentient plant who looks like the Ent´s after they got a good nip and tuck. He is one of two full CG characters and his voice actor is no other then Vin Diesel. Now I have say I am massively impressed by Vin´s work on Groot. You see Groot only say three words… I... Am… Groot. In that exclusive order. Even with such a limited vocabulary Groot has a lot of emotion and give a serious Chewbacca vibe, you actually get invested in what happens to him. Kudos to both Vin and the Marvel studio animators. So we come to the last member of the crew and the second full CG character Rocket (aka Rocket Raccoon) a character who in my mind was this movies breaking point, if they did him badly it would be a silly walking Raccoon… The next Jar Jar Binks… Fortunately he is one of the best CG characters I have seen so far, not only in a Marvel movie but in general. While the fact that he is a anthropomorphic raccoon keep me from fully accepting him as a “real” character I think this is as close as it gets. Wonderfully animated and stacked full of attitude thanks to brilliant voice acting Rocket in a way is the glue that holds it together, not so much in regards to the story as in regards to the dynamic within the group and how it plays out on the screen. So as I mentioned earlier Rocket is a half a meter tall talking raccoon that walks upright and swings a mean gun most of the time. Thanks to some old fact sheets Rocket was actually the member of the GotG that I was the most familiar with and this version actually stack up pretty well with what I remember. Some of the weirder parts of his origin have been left out but all in all he is the same.
So what did I not like… Well it is a small detail and it has to do with the Nova corps but in order to keep this mostly spoiler free I am not going in to it and in the end it is not enough to blemish the movie as a whole. Just a small nitpick as I said.
So the Kree… They are an ancient race of blue skinned humanoid aliens that see the earth as an unimportant backwater for most of the time. In the comics they are usually at war with the shape-shifting Skrulls and rarely get involved with earth apart from when their war spill over to our part of the woods. In the Marvel movie/tv universe they have not made much noise at all until GotG but there is an indication that they might have been guests on earth in the past. But no absolute proof have been put forward.

So to sum this up. Guardians of the Galaxy is perhaps not as good as Avengers but it is still one of the absolut best Marvel studio movies to come out so far and if they can make a bottom of the barrel team as the GotG look this good I am really looking forward to Avengers 2. With cap Am 2 and this one Marvel is on a roll that I have a hard time seeing DC or anyone else slow down, even if Batfleck looks bloody awesome.

See it even if you are not a fan of superhero movies.

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