The Visuals are So Much Fun

Rating: 8/10 (7 September 2018)

This year's Best Picture Oscar winner, The Shape of Water, cost a little over $19 million dollars to make. (It has already grossed ten times that.). Most of the other Best Picture nominees came in with budgets far less. Get Out, for example, cost just $5 million dollars to make and has returned revenue of more than a quarter billion dollars. Dunkirk, probably the most expensive best picture contender, cost quite a bit more to make, with a budget of around $100 million dollars. (Not surprisingly, it too is turning a profit with revenue of more than $500 million.). The point here is that it doesn't take a block-buster budget to make a good movie.
When you look at the movies nominated for Visual Effects, however, there is an entirely different economic system at work. I couldn't find budget numbers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but it has already grossed more than $1.3 billion dollars. Blade Runner 2049 cost $150 million to make and, as the least successful of these five movies, it has only grossed $259 million, still returning a profit of more than $100 million to the studio. War for the Planet of the Apes also cost $150 million to make and has grossed more than three times that amount. Kong: Skull Island was a little more than expensive, coming in at $185 million but has grossed almost $569 million.
So Visual effects are expensive to produce, but almost always reward the risk with hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. But the most expensive movie of the entire year, or at least of this year's crop of Oscar-nominated movies is this one, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. With a budget of more than $200 million dollars, it has a world-wide gross at this point of more than $863 million dollars. Guardians invested heavily in special effects and has been handsomely rewarded.
And where, exactly, does that kind of money go? Well if you can't tell by watching the movie, then just study the credits (which are kind of fun in their own right). They list 1533 people spread among multiple companies all dedicated to providing the mostly computer-generated graphics that make up the bulk of the movie. (There are another 49 people credited for 'special effects' and, to be honest, I don't know what the difference is). Most movies don't have that many people making up the entire crew and here they are all producing the stunning visuals.
And they are spectacular. In fact, I would say this is a must-see movie just because of those visuals. There is a set of scenes taking place at the core of a rather special planet that is reputed to be the most complex computer-generated sequence ever brought to film with scenes composed of several million polygons, a measure of CGI complexity. The result is a set of moving images that is stunningly real and strikingly beautiful as well. And that is just one scenario out of many in this movie. And large numbers of this team worked on the Oscar-nominated visual effects for the first Guardians movie, but also for all three Iron Man movies, Captain America, the Avengers, Master and Commander, and War of the Worlds. This is an experienced and accomplished team with lots of successful, mostly comic-based, movies under their visual effects tool belt.
This is, as the title conveys, episode 2 of the franchise, and I'm sure there will be more coming down the pike. The main characters in this one are the same as in the first one and portrayed by the same actors. Chris Pratt plays Peter Quill, whose parentage is the subject of this movie. In addition to this role in two movies, he also played in the TV series Parks and Recreation, and the movies Jurassic World and the Lego Movie. Zoe Saldana plays the green female Gamora (one of my favorite characters). Saldana also played Uhuru in a Star Trek movie and is best known as Neytiri in the CGI classic, Avatar. My favorite character, though, is Drax, a philosophical brute (as contradictory as that sounds) with a terrific sense of humor. Drax is played by Dave Bautista who has also performed in this year's Blade Runner movie as well as the Avengers. Vin Diesel provides the voice for Baby Groot, a CGI character that is cute in this movie, but will likely be more central in future movies as he grows up. Diesel is more of an action star, famous for roles in the Fast and Furious franchise. Finally, Michael Rooker plays Yondu, one of the more interesting, and important, characters in this movie, but I haven't seen anything he's played in before these two Guardian movies. The point is that this cast of characters is not exactly known for their acting ability, but they do have credentials in the comic book and action movie worlds - talents that help infuse their performances here, but will not likely get them any Oscar nods.
The only major actor who does have Oscar pedigree, is Bradley Cooper. Cooper, a serious dramatic actor, was nominated for roles in Silver Linings Playbook, American Sniper, and American Hustle, all of which were terrific. In Guardians, though, we never see Cooper. Rather he provides the voice for the intelligent raccoon, Rocket - the genius engineer with a heart of gold who really saves the Guardians, as well as the Galaxy!
Both Guardians movies were directed by James Gunn who, along with some twenty other writers, mostly of Marvel comic books, was also responsible for the script for both Guardian movies. He has written and directed a few other movies, none of which I have seen and none of which received any Oscar mentions.
So the acting, directing, and writing are not exactly Oscar level - this isn't a movie to see if that is what you want. But, in addition to the Visual Effects, there is also Oscar awards to be found in the Cinematography, Film Editing, Costumes, and Makeup Teams, with many of those credits for comic book type movies like the Guardians, or the Avenger series. There is talent at work in this movie, even if it is 'below-the-line'.
In the end, though, this movie should be seen for two reasons. First are the spectacular visual effects - in my opinion, the best of the year and the most visually exciting of any movie in this year's crop. Secondly, though, is that this is a funny movie. The movie pokes fun at itself, and all comic book movies, without crossing the line into parody. Drax's subtle humor is almost painful, and yet he has an infectious laugh. Baby Groot, like his predecessor in the previous movie, has a single line 'I Am Groot', but it is in the inflections that he communicates and by the end of the movie, you can almost understand him; and he's cute. Gamora and Peter provide the romantic interest, although Drax starts to get it on with another female character and those scenes too are an interesting mix of tenderness and fun. The themes it explores are obvious, and sometimes trite, but the movie brings a level of humor to the mix that makes it fun to explore, even if you know it won't be real deep.
But the visuals - yes, the visuals are outrageous.