As the picture above suggests, Guardians of the Galaxy is a bit reminiscent of such films as Seven Samurai (and its remake, The Magnificent Seven) and The Dirty Dozen. An unlikely bunch of misfits come together to fight something or somebody. Hatred and tension within the group leads to respect and friendship. Victory is achieved, albeit at some loss. This is not to undersell Guardians, though. It's a fun film with many things to like about it. It reminded me of Firefly and Serenity, especially the costumes and the design of the spaceships and planet vistas - the giant floating skull of 'Knowhere' is a stand-out.
It's also a nice coincidence that Nathan Fillion (Mal in Firefly) has a pretty funny cameo. Most of the humour in Guardians works. Not too esoteric (though I missed the joke about 'baby gravy') or American focussed, even the 1980s cultural references fit the lead character's situation. The lines are played straight and Chris Pratt has an easy charm that clicks with the rest of his 'gang'. Zoe Saldana is fine again and is fast becoming the Sci-fi actress of our generation. It's actually getting a bit silly now. She's not in fucking Star Wars VII, is she? Groot is very watchable and Rocket Raccoon has a speech in the prison which could have been uttered by Rorschach in Watchmen. The soundtrack is full of cheesy goodness, epitomised by a cracking opening credits sequence with Pratt miming to a song called 'Come and Get Your Love' by Redbone. Nope, me neither.
Some things don't work with this film, namely a few of the minor characters. The ones played by Glenn Close and John C. Reilly are two-dimensional and could have been aided by a longer running time to enable the writers to flesh them out a bit more. They're pretty incidental though, so no mind. The bigger issue of character would be the fact that the 'wrong'uns' also suffer from similar failings - not enough light and shade, just a lot of pantomime eeeeeeevvveeeeel, especially the main (?) scenery-chewer, Ronan, overplayed by Lee Pace.
Slightly more worrying for Marvel as a whole is the similarity to other films' climaxes. I won't go into it too much, suffice to say that Star Trek Into Darkness, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World have fairly carbon copy 'event' finales. See Dan Jolin's review at Empire Magazine for more spoilery detail on this.
Apes next. Night.
