Guardians of the Galaxy
Why did the people have sticks up their butts?
+: funny, original (apart from all those other space films with talking trees and raccoons), generally compelling, worldbuilding
-: slightly dubious gender politics, plot is technically very meandering
Guardians of the Galaxy takes about an hour to get to the actual point of its plot. It features a scene in which one character gives a small girl a flower, and it has an absolute buttload of nakedly expository dialogue. It completely wastes Lee Pace, kinda wastes Karen Gillan, and underuses Zoe Saldana, in addition to reducing Glenn Close to a bit part. And there’s a somewhat dubious and seemingly unironic — albeit not too heavy — strain of sexism running through it.
In short, Guardians of the Galaxy gets away with a lot of shit.
In his Really That Good entry for The Avengers, Bob Chipman outlines the theory that said film works because it conflates plot and metaplot: rooting for the Avengers to win becomes identical to wanting the film to be good. Guardians of the Galaxy basically has a similar trick to pull off, and if it’s not quite as good, that’s probably because it faces a steeper climb: we don’t know any of these characters, and haven’t had five films of buildup.
The first means of turbo-boosting this effort, then, is to run through the basics of the Avengers arc — title-card to circle-pan moment — in 37 minutes. Rocket and Groot arrive as a pair, Gamora with a nice piece of understated irony (“you seem like a man of honour”, she says, seconds before stealing the orb from him), and Drax is already in the Kyln. Add a prison riot and the whole thing is a wrap.
But then the actual plot needs to happen, which means another 20 minutes establishing what the orb is. By the time this happens, and the consequences of that are over, it’s pretty much time for the climax. Bam — three-act structure done, albeit in an odd, flabby sort of way.
The plot, though, is almost irrelevant, for all I’ve been talking about it. What makes this film is character and worldbuilding, two elements which are in fact inseparable. The talking raccoon, the (kinda) talking tree and the daughter of an omnicidal space tyrant are all of a piece with the space prison and the giant alien head which is both headquarters and product for the corporation inside it.
And of course, it’s funny. It’s funny in various, odd and idiosyncratic ways tied to character (it’s remarkable what you can wring out of “I am Groot” and the odd facial expression). Even so, I can’t quite praise Guardians of the Galaxy to the highest degree; it has the slightest element of a whistling dog to it. That Marvel could sell characters unknown even to many fans of actual comic books was and remains impressive, but there needed to be slightly more to it for have classic status. Luckily, Marvel announced a sequel before the film even released.
High Points: entrance to Knowhere, the standing in a circle, and Peter opening the letter, a scene which manages to retroactively justify —
Low Points: — the opening scene, which aims for a level of tragedy it literally hasn’t done any work for.
Curios: as in so many works, the ‘unit’ is the standard currency in the galaxy. How much does a unit buy? Fuck if I know. Rocket reckons he’s rich if he gains 50,000 of them, but Peter transfers 30,000 for a leg and seems to regard it as akin to paying twenty bucks for a sandwich — too much, but not crippling. On the other hand, 4 billion units is definitely enough to be set up for life.
Flagrant Product Placement: the Sony Walkman, which makes up somewhat for all the lack of branding otherwise on show. The Tivan Group also shows up, but Disney consumers rarely go for giant-cosmic-entity head anatomy.
Connections to Elsewhere: Thanos and the Infinity Stones, but otherwise very few. The Nova Corps and the Eternals might appear in later films, but not as of the end of 2017.
Stan Lee Cameo: Rocket gets judge-y about Stan talking to a younger woman. We don’t really see much of Stan, really — he only asks her if she likes art. (7/10)
End Credits: Baby Groot dances to the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”, although this feels more a part of the film than anything (7/10). The for-real end scene has James Gunn troll us, especially the theatre audience, with Howard the Duck. Funny, although the impact’s gone a little now the MCU’s moved onwards (6/10).
7
Next: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
