I am SO FUCKING GLAD my eye is better.
New Marvel movie, new slobbering BJ of a post about a new Marvel movie.
The first thing I'm going to say is that the stinger at the end of this one - I want to spoil it so bad. There's a reason it didn't get shown to critics. I roared when I saw it. Jumped out of my seat.
Guardians of the Galaxy is a flat-out comedy. After the Marvel logo, there isn't a two-minute span in the whole movie that something funny doesn't happen. It's also the movie with the most deep cuts to Marvel Comics backstory: Not only do the cosmic progenitors, the Celestials, make an on-screen appearance, but a good quarter of the action takes place on Knowhere, the hollowed out skull of a dead one. We have the Kree and the Xandarian Nova Corps, we have Thanos. The words "Infinity Gem" are finally said aloud. Cosmo the Soviet Space Dog even shows up for a minute or so.
None of the main characters have been established in any other Marvel movie. Instead, GotG is tied to the other movies by Thor 2's stinger, which introduced the audience to The Collector. And it's fair to say that the characters are more obscure: most of them were created in the 1970s or 1980s (yes, even the talking tree and homicidal raccoon are more than 30 year old characters) and have only been in mainstream Marvel comics since the mid-2000s.
I loved this movie. Lots and lots of aliens get killed, but in the sort of cartoonish way as Star Wars movies (also: this movie may be the best use of 3D since Tron Legacy). There's also a healthy dollop of Indiana Jones; "Swashbuckling" is a term that's entirely applicable. But above all, it's funny. Still believably a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, but also so completely different that we can see the shared world that allows a suspenseful spy thriller set in the same world that has Thor taking a tube back to fight the big bad AND John C. Reilly as a workaday moron (who happens to be a space cop).
This movie has a ton of energy. There's not really a slow spot or a good time for a bathroom break. It's two hours long and I'd say that it's pretty close to perfect in terms of its pacing. I do wish we had more time to see the villains on-screen, but I also suspect that would've made the movie drag had those extra moments been added. I saw the movie with someone who had never even seen The Avengers. She laughed through the whole thing and says she's going to go back and try to catch up on the other Marvel films.
I'd like to say that one character stole the movie, but I can't even decide which one: Chris "Star Lord" Pratt pretty much plays Andy Dwyer as a super hero, with every bit of the charm he has on Parks and Rec. Vin Diesel doesn't have THAT much to do in his vocal performance, but Groot the CGI tree occupies the same sort of physical space as a good night at Blue Man Group. He just sort of... does things. And they're all fantastic. Rocket Raccoon gets an awful lot of the best lines. I'm sure he'll be the personal favorite of every 10 year old boy in the English Speaking world in another couple weeks. And then there's Drax, played by a wrestler named Dave Bautista. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's the ultimate straight man to everything else that happens in the movie (there's a sequence during the credits that actually crosses over in to downright charming).
Huge, great fun all the way around.