Last night I saw Guardians of the Galaxy in IMAX 3D, and it was the most enjoyable experience I've had in theaters this summer, and that's in a summer where I saw Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men Days of Future Past and Godzilla. My hat is off to both Marvel and James Gunn, because Guardians of the Galaxy is not only the film of the summer, but helps ease the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the Cosmic Marvel Universe and proves that you can take a property nobody but comic book readers knows about and still end up with a movie as strong if not better than the other well known properties.
Since I saw the movie last night and it's still barely into opening weekend, I'll keep any spoilers and talk of the movie past the first act to a minimum, just know that you need to see it to understand and my writing wouldn't do it justice.
So Guardians of the Galaxy starts the movie off with our main character, Peter Quill, a human that was captured from earth as a young boy in the '80s and works with a group of people who are essentially outlaw object collector's. They go around planets stealing items that other people want but don't have the means to get themselves. Peter, who insists on going by the name Star Lord, happens to acquire an item wanted by someone named Ronan, played by Lee Pace. Without giving pretty much anything away, the film follows Quill and friends on a mission to keep this item away from Ronan, because it happens to be an infinity gem, a very powerful item that ultimate Bad Guy Thanos from Avengers wants. The Tesseract from The Avengers holds an infinity gem, and the Aether from Thor: The Dark World also contains an infinity gem. If Thanos gets a hold of all six gems he will have god-like powers and total control over the universe. Along the way we have a lot of laughter, some tears and a lot of cool action sequences.
If that seemed like a lot of new concepts to follow well, you're kind of right. One of the only complaints I have about the film is that it tends to front-load the movie with all these alien names, places, events and things that we need to know for the rest of the movie, but I think they did the best with what they had. The truth is that this is the first film truly exploring the Marvel Cosmic Universe, exploring all the other planets and worlds aside from Earth. They have a lot of information they have to get through to set it up, and they do a good job of covering it, it's just a lot to absorb at first. Throughout the film however I think it does a good job of making you understand what all those things mean for the film universe and it works well, it's just a little dense in the first 20-30 minutes or so.
Everyone in the movie gives a great performance, Chris Pratt was a perfect choice for Star Lord, Bradley Cooper was exceptional as Rocket, Zoe Saldana kicks ass as Gamora and even Vin Diesel's limited performance as Groot is wonderful. Everyone here is turning in solid performances, Lee Pace and Karen Gillan as the villains are wonderfully terrifying. Michael Rooker is great, though you could argue that he's so...himself in everything he does that we're just seeing Michael Rooker in space, but that doesn't make it bad, he's just the amount of hammy and badass that the movie needs.
The cinematography and sound direction in this film is absolutely delightful. The film is a much needed contrast to the rest of the Marvel universe in how absurdly colorful it is, both in the world designs and the people themselves, in contrast to how dark and grim the second phase of the MCU has been. There are long takes, excellent depth of field usage and shot selections that make this possibly the best shot Marvel film to date. The sound direction is just as good and plays such an integral part of the story. Choosing to have the soundtrack be a majority of 70's and 80's pop hits brings a level of humanity to the film that it absolutely needed. Basically, it fits the film perfectly even though the film is set entirely on different planets in outer space, and it takes people with true vision to make me believe that works as well as it does.
One of the best things about this film can be I guess considered part of a sci-fi/fantasy trope these days, but it works so well; having Peter Quill have an endless reference base of pop culture knowledge up to the 80's and refusal to stop using it and American idioms when talking to alien races that would have no idea what he's talking about. In a film that stars one earthling and none of the other main characters have been to earth, the audience will endear themselves to the movie to a point that would be unlikely if there were no references to American pop culture. It's a way to both connect ourselves with this crazy, otherworldly, grandiose story and make jokes based on misunderstanding of pop culture or idioms, which comes into play at least twice towards the end of the movie and the theater and myself were busting up laughing. That's another one of the highlights of this film, how funny it was. While I thought both The Dark World and Winter Soldier had a good amount of humor to them, nothing touched the combination of Iron Man 3's comedy and kick-assery, until now. Guardians of the Galaxy is at once hilarious, as well as touching and a kick-ass action-y sci-fi movie.
At this point I think I've gone on long enough about the film, though there are at least another handful of paragraphs I could write about how wonderful this movie is and how great it is an addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The IMAX 3D was a nice addition to the movie, especially in helping with a depth-of-field joke while our main characters are all in prision togerher, however it didn't really add too much to the film. There are certainly some nice shots that translate well to 3D and it never looked bad, it just looked good. So if you're interested in seeing it in IMAX 3D do it, but I don't think you'll miss anything going to a regular screening. Basically, if you're interested at all in seeing this movie, go. Go see it multiple times, which is my plan. I'm already planning on seeing it again tomorrow night.
In summation, I am Groot.
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