Guardians of the Galaxy Review

Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy
By: Maniac E
Date: August 13, 2014

When things get bad, they'll do their worst.

Ever since Marvel wanted to make a movie of Guardians of the Galaxy I was wondering "how the hell will they make this over the top comic into a decent movie". Well, they did ending up making the movie and it really took me by surprise. Marvel created a new universe to work in and they will market the crap out of it. Let's see if this will be a bad thing or not.

Peter Quill, a man of the '80s, finds himself caught in the middle of a conflict spanning the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe attempting to earn his title of Star-Lord with a team of ex-cons that includes a genetically engineered raccoon (Rocket Raccoon), a sentient alien tree of royal descent (Groot), a human who died and came back a killing machine (Drax the Destroyer), and powerful assassin who vows revenge against her master (Gamora). Together they bring the fight to Ronan the Accuser for their own varied personal reasons, Nebula and her pirates, and their grandmaster, Thanos.

When the movie first trailer came out I was under the impression it's overly slapstick with just joke after joke. I actually found out that the movie has a nice balance to it. The humor is there and the audience was laughing a lot with Rocket's jokes and sneers to his fellow actors. The settings of the movie seem like a big mix of The Fifth Element meets the cheesiness of Red Dwarf. Which in my book is a good thing since it shows that it isn't taking itself too seriously. The movie tries to really create its own entity, which will make sure there will be a rich new environment to put new stories in. But where the movie really shines is with the action parts the movie is fast paced and only falls a bit short in the dialogue department and actual story telling. But their flaws are to be overseen by all the digital CGI madness that is being thrown at you.

Visually the movie looks stunning the CGI is top notch as what you can expect from a 170 million dollar motion picture movie. What really sticks out for me was how colorful everything was looking. Everything was saturated to such a point you saw all the purple pop off the screen and the whole movie is nice and bright to look at. They really took everything to the point that dark and gritty wasn't necessary. Some would say this will top The Avengers movie for me it didn't Guardians of the Galaxy did set a great tone but is not to taken too seriously where The Avengers was like the other Marvel movies a lot more compelling and deeper character build ups. Everything is nicely done with this movie and feels mainly refreshing to the already big overflow of comic adaptions. This one really hit the right spot for me.

What Marvel gave us here is a light and easy to chew on movie which takes a step into a whole different part of the Marvel universe. This actually saves Guardians of the Galaxy to be more than just another Marvel movie, it gives the movie its own character because it is so light to absorb for anyone. It is unusual that a company like Marvel really wanted to take a different approach with this movie. For me it turned out like a pleasant surprise and it shows the comic book love a movie like this should deserve.