A cosmic blast

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2014)

My Guardians of the Galaxy Review From the espionage thriller that was Captain America: The Winter Soldier to this colorful and old-school sci-fi epic, the studio behind these movies has earned its name, as a lot of its movies have been marvelously fun and varied experiences.
This year's Guardians of the Galaxy, while being silly and sometimes having its main characters be hilariously oblivious to everything around them, manages to be the most optimistic and funniest of all Marvel movies to date. And that must be something very rewarding for director James Gunn.
So after what may be one of the best title screens and character introductions of this decade, Peter Quill, also known as Star-Lord, retrieves a mysterious sphere that, he later discovers, contains one of the six powerful infinity gems. Quill then arrives on Xandar where, after a quick and conflictive encounter, he and three other criminals, which include the greenish assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a genetically engineered talking raccoon who's great at being a smartass called Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and his more organic "Chewbacca type" companion called Groot (Vin Diesel), all get arrested and sent to the prison facility The Kyln. There they meet Drax (Dave Bautista) and reluctantly form their own personal team of misfits to escape the prison and eventually try to save the galaxy by keeping the infinity gem from falling into the wrong hands, these being Ronan the Accuser's hands.
The main plot may sound very familiar and in a way it kind of is your basic super hero plot. It has the powerful MacGuffin, the evil villain and the hard time adapting team of good guys.
But James Gunn uses these classic plot points as his workbench to build one of the most unique summer blockbusters we've seen in a while. It also surprised me how they dived face first into the Thanos content and I think that will please many people who have been waiting to see what that is all about since his side-nose was shown in The Avengers Like Groot himself, the story branches out and focuses in characterizing the five awesome multifaceted characters that form part of the main team and creates some very unique and sometimes heartwarming bonds and interactions between each of the members. From Rocket's inner struggles to Drax's very literal way of thinking, every single one of the five members gets his or her spotlight through the course of the film.
For example if you said Gamora or Groot where your favorite characters I would totally understand it because of how unique every single one of them is. Aside from how well their archs are written the performances given by their respective actors are all great. Even Rocket's voice-acting by Bradley Cooper was fantastically weird and never did I picture Bradley behind a mic. The same goes for Vin Diesel's Groot who with very few lines felt very present in the mixture.
But the one that surprised me the most may be Batista as Drax the Destroyer. As a wrestler transformed into an actor (you may say his change was a little bit "draxtical" ;) ), I never had many expectations for him, but he delivered every single line with hystericaly perfect timing making me and many others laugh out loud.
Another thing to point out is how perfect the producers used their budget. A balance between CGI and practical effects was well established and the two of them matched perfectly, as both where equally colorful and vivid. Quill's ship, The Milano, looked freaking awesome, and as well as the prison and other various locations it was an actual set which is amazing. It actually feels like a throwback to the more old-school, bright and colorful sci-fi movies of the 70's. But mixing that with the amazing technology they used for the space scenes, the dog fights and the characters of Groot and Rocket, which are so well realized you do see them as being a talking tree and a racoon and not some animated blob hoping around, it's more than we could ever ask for. Good job Marvel.
There is also an amazing scene in the movie, which I won't spoil, that takes place in space and James Gunn used a very special technique for the depiction of zero gravity that I had never seen before and it looked f*cking awesome as hell. Very creative too.
The only gripes I have with it are the secondary characters. They didn't have much relevance in the plot even the main villain was kind of just there to give the characters a cause. The one that I thought had some funny scenes and was relevant aside from the Guardians was Michael Rooker's Yondu. He had a a very funny scene in a shop with James Gunn's brother Sean Gunn who played his kind of sidekick Kraglin. But aside from him everything girates around the Guardians on purpose and they have it well deserved.
Heart-warming, extremely fun and freaking hilarious, Guardians of the Galaxy is one of Marvel's best and for many it may be the best. Not in many summer blockbusters do you get to have this much fun laughing out loud and caring for every single one of the main characters. This movie definitely deserves this 9.5 out of 10.
Stay awesome people!