Roaring with explosive action, wicked character chemistry, and a killer soundtrack that brings it all together; Guardians of the Galaxy stands solidly as one of, if not the best that the MCU has to offer in terms of sheer entertainment value. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why.
Guardians of the Galaxy follows the story of a rag-tag group of space-faring people who join forces to simply, guard the galaxy. Lead by Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) they must face the deadly extremist Ronan.
The characters and their chemistry together is ultimately where this films core strength resides, with a nice balance between anti-heroes and a rag-tag group of criminals simply trying to make a buck, we are confronted with tightly paced action comedy with all the bells and whistles that left audiences pleasantly surprised at just how well it worked. Guardian’s works primarily at balancing its comedy and emotion in a few ways, there are however some moments in its comedy that become questionable as to whether it went one step too far, luckily the film often makes up for this by developing some raw emotions or distracting us elsewhere. This film is in essence a group of characters that are all loners and how they come together to make something better of themselves. While the villain may not fill the void that an antagonist should in any superhero film, the Guardians themselves do.
Chris Pratt plays the goofy space ravager named Star Lord; Pratt kills it in this role, with his improvisational humour and consistent personable characteristics it makes most scenes with him fun to watch despite what they are about. We get Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, his husky and temperamental attitude works brilliantly with Dave Bautista as Drax; his dim and often ignorant attitude makes for some unexpected comedy in places you couldn’t have imagined. Then we have Zoe Saldana as Gamora, while she’s less compelling and slightly more serious as a character she still worked as a great addition to the team.
Visually this film stands right at the top and not just in CGI quality but in almost every facet, from some neat camera-work to the exceptional makeup and hairstyling that built up these unique characters.
Audiences can witness beautiful sets and vibrant lighting that brings it all together, this film struck all the right cords in its overall visual design for the MCU and it’s not hard to understand why it still looks like it could be released today. The soundtrack is this film’s most defining feature and rightly so, it has all the right songs in all the right places.
Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t layer thought-provoking heavy themes on the audience, but it creates a sense of family and unity between its characters, and it stands as an example of how to create a truly entertaining film without a rich storyline to be based off of.
8.3/10
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