Jaws hit the floor all over ComicBookMovie.com (and not to mention the internet as a whole) back in 2012 when Feige announced that Marvel's 2014 summer film would bring their most obscure team to the big screen. But as is the typical Marvel Studios fashion, with each of the seemingly endless teasers the film's hype continued to grow and grow. And now that the first of Marvel's big screen risks has hit cinemas, has the hype held up? Read on to find out whether or not Marvel's space opera extraordinaire will hit the big time or crash and burn!
What's the best part about Guardians Of The Galaxy? In short, it's a fun and enjoyable film that will extend Marvel's reach in the market. If Marvel can manage to pull of a film featuring a talking Raccoon and tree, featuring songs that are older than most of the film's audience, then they can do just about anything; not only is this great for Marvel, it should show studios that if you pitch it right, the general audience will buy into just about anything, opening up unlimited possibilities for future films in the genre and breathing new life into the hope that someday fan favorites such as the human rocket, Nova, will make it to Hollywood.
To help bring the galaxy's most obscure group of characters to the general audience the studio have picked the newer of the team's ensembles (with the exception of Iron Man) and as per usual Marvel's creative team have picked a five star cast to give the five main character's life. Just as Robert Downey Jr. was born to play Tony Stark, after watching
Guardians Of The Galaxy all his former roles are forgotten: Chris Pratt is Star-Lord. He manages to show the hero's flaws better than anyone before him in the MCU, turning Quill into a relatable hero while keeping all of his comic book counterpart's charm. Zoe Saldana makes a killer assassin (with a laundry list of character defects) lovable and badass protagonist. The
Star Trek star serves up an incredible performance, conveying Gamora's black and white sense of justice perfectly. She (like Black Widow) provides a welcoming and well needed change to female's roles in comic book films.
The Hangover's Bradley Cooper only improves on the already stellar cast, delivering Rocket's lines to near perfection and providing some of the film's better comedic scenes. While Vin Diesel, voicing Rocket's companion, does little but add some star power to the movie, it's impossible not to love the incredibly animated Groot.
But no film is perfect, right? So where could
Guardians Of The Galaxy have improved? Well, it all starts with Marvel's most enduring weakness: Antagonists. The film does well to avoid the overcrowding problem that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 fell victim to, it once again gives us an underdeveloped villain with weaker motives than
Thor: The Dark World's Malekith. When push comes to shove, Ronan is nothing more than a Kree with a severe hate on for the new peace treaty, going so far as to destroy the entire galaxy because of it. Maybe in another life Ronan could have found a job in Hala's nearest DMV, sociopath like himself would fit right in....
Marvel hit the ball out of the park when it came to casting the Guardians, but the film's supporting cast is... terrible (to put it lightly). Casting
Step Brothers star John C. Reilly as the Nova's Rhomann Dey might be the worst decision Marvel executives have made. Dey could have been a brilliant hero fighting alongside the Guardians in the lead up to a Nova film but instead is used for cheap (and often weak) jokes, turning a character who could have wielded the Nova Prime title into an overweight and under achieving beat cop.
Michael Rooker's Yondu could have (and probably should have) had a larger part to play in the film but instead was relegated to a role that fails to be either interesting or needed for the film's plot to progress. Rather than be part of the action Yondu prefers to turn up after the proceedings and complain.
And remember when we were promised an after credits scene that would bring us "pure joy"? Unfortunately, if you weren't a fan of Stark and Banner's heart to heart at the end of Iron Man's third outing, you might not be too impressed with what Marvel have to offer this time around. That said, it does give us one of the MCU's greatest cameos to date.
Some fans may be disappointed that rumored characters such as Richard Rider and Adam Warlock are nowhere to be found, however
Guardians still sets up a vast and varied cosmic playground for Marvel to stomp through in years to come.
Ultimately, there are two ways to watch
Guardians Of The Galaxy: you can go in looking for an immediate expansion of the Marvel cosmic universe that is nowhere to be found and will end up missing out on the experience the film offers up. Go to watch
Guardians for an excellent romp in space that is both a great film and great fun. It might not be the
best comic book movie of the year but it's certainly the most fun since
The Avengers!
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits–Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand - with the galaxy’s fate in the balance. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is presented by Marvel Studios and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gilian, Djimon Hounsou with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Commander Rael and Benicio del Toro as The Collector. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the film opens August 1, 2014.
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