Guardians of the Galaxy - film review: 'Chris Pratt is like a young Harrison Ford'

Marvel’s team of jokey superheroes, played by Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Zoe Saldana, Glenn Close, Benicio del Toro and Karen Gillan revamp Star Wars so well it’ll be much harder for the real thing to make a convincing comeback. LOLs in space are practically guaranteed
Super-endearing: Groot and Rocket Raccoon are the R2-D2/C-3PO duo of Guardians
Pic: Allstar
David Sexton5 October 2014

Finally, some jokey superheroes. Most Marvel movies are enslaved by their own mythology, jealously guarded by fans as zealous and unforgiving as medieval inquisitors in detecting any heretical deviation from orthodoxy. But Guardians of the Galaxy is, even to the faithful, a little-known component of the vast Marvel myth-kitty, so liberties can and have been taken.

First appearing in 1969, the Guardians of the Galaxy were always a team of misfits, each of them, in the 31st century, the last of their kind. This film is based mainly on a 2008 iteration of the story — but the director James Gunn (Slither, Super, new to this game on this scale) has seized the chance to make a big in-house production that nonetheless has only tangential connections to the known Marvel universe, creating some great new characters without worrying too much about how they will eventually fit into The Avengers franchise. He’s responding just as much to other movies, most notably the original Star Wars, as to the sacred comic books, and it’s to the film’s advantage.

Our hero, Peter Quill, is a big kid, a cheery combo of Hans Solo and Indiana Jones. Abducted from Earth as a boy by piratical aliens, the self-styled “Star-Lord” is now, 25 years later, an intergalactic rascal, thieving away to the sound of Eighties anthems on his treasured Walkman, giving the film a daftly enjoyable vibe, all the way from I’m Not in Love to Spirit in the Sky, not forgetting David Bowie (Moonage Daydream). To play him, Chris Pratt (previously in Parks and Rec on TV, a Navy Seal in Zero Dark Thirty) has impressively revised his chubby physique and his charm holds the whole movie together as both action and comedy. He’s the young Harrison Ford all over again. What more could you ask?

To set the ball rolling, Quill steals the Orb, a little metal sphere of immense power and value which our main villain, Ronan, a less asthmatic Darth Vader (Lee Pace), wants to use to destroy the Earth-like planet of Xandar (Earth-like only up to a point since it resembles Dubai).

He sends green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) after Quill. The fanboy’s delight, Saldana (Neytiri in Avatar, Uhura in Star Trek) is so slender and long-limbed, she doesn’t especially need a paint job to seem otherworldly, but never mind. Perhaps at some level being a different colour helps superhero fans come to terms with the peculiarity of the opposite sex? That would also explain why the film’s other totty-offer, her step-sister and rival assassin Nebula (Karen Gillan, Amy Pond from Doctor Who) is blue, as well as bald. Inevitably, the pair end up having a ladies-only tussle (as I think it is known?). We’d feel robbed if they didn’t.

Gamora soon finds that Quill has already been targeted by a pair of freelance bounty hunters, a super-endearing pair, the R2-D2/C-3PO duo of Guardians. Rocket Raccoon is — but you guessed it? — a raccoon that’s been genetically altered and cybernetically enhanced to be a lethal warrior with a snitty attitude. “Ain’t no thing like me except me,” he says grumpily. Tricky and fast-talking, Rocket is brilliantly voiced by Bradley Cooper: great casting. But so was choosing Vin Diesel as the voice of his sidekick Groot: a tree that moves and talks a bit. Actually all Groot says is “I am Groot”, in Vin Diesel’s deep, cultured voice, always a surprising production from a muscleman; here he gives such different inflections to these three words that they mean whatever he wants them to mean.

Banged up together in a space-prison called the Kyln, so full of freaky miscreants it makes the Star Wars bar scene look suburban, our heroes Quill, Rocket, Groot and a re-purposed Gamora, make a final recruit to their gang. Drax the Destroyer is a great big brute who has overdone the tattoos a little, played by Dave Bautista, a crossover from professional wrestling, like The Rock, having been the longest reigning World Heavyweight Champion in one or other of its leagues. Drax is a comic literalist. “Nothing goes over my head — my reflexes are too fast,” he boasts. Sarcastically called a walking thesaurus, he is offended: “Do not call me a thesaurus.” Let alone a princess…So these are our Guardians — and Ronan is coming to relieve them of the Orb in his monster spaceship, not the Death Star but the Dark Aster…

Guardians of the Galaxy is quick, knowing and indulgent about what its audience will enjoy most. I’ve rarely seen a preview audience as responsive and delighted, so much on the same page, as at the screening I attended. The retro design is great, the CGI well-integrated, the 3D effective. Star Wars has been so zingily spoofed and revamped here that it’s going to be much harder for the real thing to make a convincing comeback.

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