My Guardians of the Galaxy Review:
As far as summer blockbusters go....this movie is likely the most fun movie released this summer.
I had never heard of Guardians until I heard the announcement sometime back. Honestly it looked too wierd to work in film and I doubted that the studio would throw much money or effort towards making it any good.
But....they did. It is obvious that a huge amount of effort has been put into this movie. It also broke off from the new tradition of dark and serious by simply making the darn thing fun. The theater here was rolling with laughter, so loud that you could barely hear parts of the movie. And in my city usually audience participation is very low. So to hear the theater in an uproar was a first for me!
The special effects. were very nice. Colorful and a place called "knowhere" was just gorgeous. The movie has two main characters that are not real. Yet you never realize that the actors are essentially talking to nothing and easily accept them as part of the movie. For instance gollum which was a fantastic example didn't quite get upto the ability of being accepted as a "real" actor. Neither did any of the CGI villains in the hobbit.
The 3d was used in full swing and used effectively. HOWEVER, this isn't necessarily a must see in 3d though it was definitely utilized.
The costumes of the villains were surprisingly slightly cheesy and cheap looking - obvious costumes. But in the silliness, it worked.
The sound was powerful. The theater we went to was a good one and the sound was loud, the 3d audio was immersive and best of all the 3d was plenty bright. No problems with the look. I got lucky that I didn't notice any obvious blurring in fast action scenes.
Cinematography was also done well and there were definitely touches of artistic flair to some of the angles.
All the good guy characters were entertaining with groot and the racoon taking the most of the laughs with Chris Pratt coming a close second.
The cons:
Thanos - looked a little iffy. I felt they could have made him look a bit more real.
His residing place was also a little unrealistic. Just on a floating asteroid with nobody around but him. What was he doing there all alone lounging? He didn't have a book.
The storyline was also not terribly complex. And if you can look past the good ocmedy every character is completely one note. Drax is a musclebound dumb guy. Groot is a quirky tree but terrific fun. The Racoon is somewhat dimensional and probably the only one with some interesting qurik to it. Gamora doesn't like her dad. Starlord is the goofy funny good guy.
The villains are much much worse.
Ronyn the main baddie simply wants to destroy something big - no idea why. And that's it. THat's the entire driving point of the movie.
Nebula does not like her sister. Nothing deeper to those characters than that.
Anytime they did anything it was completely related to that singular description with nothing deeper explored.
Some parts were a little confusing but I think that was the point of the movie, you encounter all kinds of things that are simply not explained. You just sort of absorb it and come up with YOUR idea of how or why it works which I thought was a pretty neat way to do it imo.
For instance: who the heck is Drax. Why is he invincible?
The movie has an eighties and 70's feel to it. It also takes us out of the earthbound avengers world and shows just how small earth is and how much stuff is happening outside it. It keeps your interest the whole time with no downtime to it.
It was exactly what a good summer movie should be and its propensity for fun was very infectious. It wasn't by the book at all and a good time was definitely had! Nobody I was with thought it was anything but fun.
