Guardians Of The Galaxy (Film Review)

When the galaxy is threatened, it's up to five outlaws to buck up, team up and gear up and take responsibility for their actions and learn to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good... their selfishness.

MARVEL have done it again and graced us with another smash-hit blockbuster that in my opinion almost rivals Marvel Avengers Assemble only this one has a bit more comedy and I feel focuses on a more teenage/ adult based audience. See here why Guardians Of The Galaxy is unique in it's own way.

In 1988, little earth boy Peter Quill is abducted by Space Pirates called Ravagers on the night of his mother's death. Twenty-six years later, Peter Quill/ Star-Lord "Chris Pratt" (The LEGO Movie) is a thief on another planet stealing a coveted Orb for a buyer. Soon after an encounter with deadly assassin Gamora "Zoe Saldana" (Avatar, Death At A Funeral) and bounty hunters - wise cracking genetically engineered Raccoon called Rocket "voiced by Bradley Cooper" and tree-like humanoid Groot "voiced by Vin Diesel" (Fast & Furious Films), they all end up on a one-way trip to space prison for their past crimes. There they encounter the vengeful warrior Drax The Destroyer "Dave Bautista" (A Six-Time Heavy-weight Champion with WWE). Now they all must work together to break out of prison and collect their now co-operated bounty for the orb. But their awkward alliance won't be easy and soon they'll find themselves to be the only hope for the galaxy... yeah five criminals are the galaxies last hope.

Back on Friday 8th August, Kurt and another buddy from work, Luke took me to see the film for the first time in IMAX 3D (you gotta see MARVEL/ Sci-Fi films in IMAX, right?!) as they saw the preview screening through special tickets. Pretty soon it'll become a second nature to add Kurt to almost any cinema viewing or film review as we always go together with mates.
This was the first MARVEL film I've been to see where I'm totally unprepared and am totally clueless because I have no knowledge to take with me to feel like I'll understand references or anything. This film made me feel like a non-MARVEL film fan or an adult who knows stuff from the films only, it's thanks to how new and genuine it is, but that didn't ruin the fun at all, it's just the thought in the back of my head I had with me for the first 10 mins then it dispersed as the film went on and got more awesome.

As I've been writing this up and over the weekend, I just want to take a moment to point out and honour a man who passed away on Tuesday 12th August 2014, Robin Williams. That day, I woke up and had to say goodbye to one of the Greats, a man who I idolised as a child for all his brilliant and most of the time hilarious roles that always made me giggle. A man who taught me to be funny and crazy and that's a good thing. A man who named his daughter "Zelda" after one of my all time favourite gaming series The Legend Of Zelda. He was bloody funny on The Graham Norton Show with Elijah Wood and Jennifer Saunders.

The Family Guy episode - "Fatman & Robin" is still funny no matter how many times I watch it. I don't know why he did it, but I hope he finds happiness now! This is gonna take some time to get over... R.I.P Robin Williams, you crazy and talented man! :'(
I had to mention this as it's kept me quiet most of the past days besides these days being very busy and tough at work for my colleagues because of the news and the workload.
This video sums up most of his glorious performances with an unforgettable speech from himself!

But let's not let that news get us down due to what's happened. Sure I'll miss him forever but he had a real good run and will be forever remembered for his humour, work and roles.

Let's get back to the film! The film blew me away and has beaten my expectations before I even had them (if that made sense). The plot, cast, humour, action, everything was just perfect! MARVEL made another masterpiece and another for the MARVEL Cinematic Universe Collection that was Avengers Assemble quality but this one I feel appealed more to a teenage/ adult based audience thanks to the naughty humour and language, obscene gestures and violence and let's not forget the characters who developed slowly but surely along with their attitudes. I had no idea who these people were, what these magical/ high-definition planets were or what was going on for the first 10 minutes.

The characters were all eccentric. Seeing the voice actor for Emmet Brickowski from The LEGO Movie reappear and this time in the flesh, Star-Lord was funny and had the funny personality (especially when people don't understand him so easily or take things he says too literally) despite his troubled past. I will admit that he hardly had a chance in the film to show off his skills enough through my opinion. Although his cheesy music taste and 80's knowledge was his funniest moments. Him and his headphones in the beginning made me and everyone laugh and chuckle as he grooved around on the job and in an awkward/ embarrassing style (like when you see your Dad dancing at a Wedding when his generation music comes on).
Zoe Saldana was just as hot as always like her amazing performance in Avatar and her funny acting in the dark comedy film Death At A Funeral. This time instead of being blue, she was green (she even looked like the MARVEL character, She-Hulk a little) but she was much more experienced with combat and had a real attitude. Drax, I can't say much for as I've never seen Dave Bautista before or even knew who he was (no offence to him, of course), but I know he did well playing the cold tough guy who just wanted vengeance on our main bad guy, I'm glad he warmed up later. Now onto my 2 favourite characters, Rocket was brilliant (well done Bradley), he was a whole new kind of MARVEL character who had a real colourful vocabulary and personality (a little too strong as it is sorta a Kids/ Teenager film) but his gun... Oh My God his gun was super badass and looked beautiful and so identical. He was the coolest thing to have appeared in a MARVEL film thanks to his language and the fact "Size doesn't matter at being a badass", it made him special and different to many super heroes that Stan Lee has ever created. When he said "Oh... Yeah!" in the film (and in the trailer), that's when s*** and carnage went down and him and Groot really took the spotlight and I feel it was the greatest moment in the film too besides almost everything else. Now for our last character Groot, Vin Diesel played the walking Tree perfectly, I hardly recognised it was him because it's nothing like any other film he's done that's made him sweet and loveable, well maybe besides the film The Pacifier. The phrase "I Am Groot" speaks so many words though from the viewers view it's childish and annoying vocabulary error. But that loveable imbecile and is Rocket's muscle is just lovely throughout the whole film, not to mention dangerous and smart. The picture practically sums up why they both look badass and great together.
Another small spoiler is that I had no idea or even recognised "Karen Gillan" as the sadistic Nebula (Thanos's daughter and Gamora's sister). It was pleasant to learn that one of the Time Lord's companions from Doctor Who has returned and this time is on the big screen, sigh I miss her and Rory in Doctor Who. She looked very
menacing and I read online that her make-up took 4 hours every time to apply, gosh that must have been frustrating but I was jealous of her Sclera contact lenses that even I had trouble wearing once for a Cosplay (but that's another story).

We get to see more than a glimpse at the big baddy of the future Avengers Sequel, Thanos who was seen in the secret ending of Avengers Assemble. He made a grand appearance at last in the film and I reckon we haven't seen the last of him either as the Avengers sequel is now in production, Yippee! I can't wait to see what Ultron looks like!

The world's were quite stunning and showed vast and different landscape designs and colours that made them all so identical and creative at the same time as if travelling into new worlds that had no resemblance at all. I liked the skull planet Knowhere, it was fascinating because it's a decapitated head of an unidentified Celestia and looked unbelievable on the inside. Even the ships were highly-detailed and the final battle later reminded me of Star Wars a little (ironic as Disney has now bought MARVEL and Lucas Arts, right?) Star-Lord's ship was a thing of beauty and looked like a Bird-like machine a little (it looked like a S.H.I.E.L.D Quinjet from Avengers Assemble but this one's more outer space style).
The detail I saw when seeing the void of space was eye-raising and showed how it's not all and sorta is black with white stars, it's got a range of colours that make it thrilling and as the camera zoomed around space, you see how beautiful and scary it really is (it reminded me of the space like in the Dead Space Trilogy).

The film's soundtrack and score was a mix up of 70s and 80s classics along with the film score conducted by Tyler Bates. Quill's Walkman (1980s tape-recorder) was the magic box full of nostalgia and was like a unique item that played and stored all the music including songs like Hooked On A Feeling by Blue Swede, Escape (The Piña Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes, Come And Get Your Love by Redbone and let's not forget the classic Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and in the trailer you hear the song Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum (I reckon my parents will recognise all the songs from the Mixtape soundtrack rather than the score ha ha). It was a nice and completely different touch on a film score like the Tron Legacy score which combined electronic with an orchestra (that's another story and favourite film to write up someday).

All my friends from my college group (the lot I mention from past cinema experiences and are my closest friends) had all seen the film a couple times and all couldn't resist gossipping and mentioning that after seeing the movie, they began purchasing the comics and was looking deeper and deeper into the history and future of the Guardians Of The Galaxy comic-book series. I can't really talk too much about this film for all the right reasons as you are all supposed to see for yourself but as I've stated above that I had no clue about this film and still don't. Sure I had a blast watching it, I saw it again on Thursday 14th with Lewis so that's how much I enjoyed it. But this film really is unique as I don't think many people know too much about it, as if this film is so different that it out stands the other MARVEL films as it's the first in something brand new and undiscovered. Who knows what to expect from now but I am curious and hope to see a reference in the next Avengers film! I will admit that looking at the teaser poster I saw around a year ago, that I see something completely different and more satisfying with the new and final poster and film design compared to last years design.

There were some other unique moments in the film such as that amazing and dangerous "whistle arrow" which looked complicated and amazing at the same time. And the film caught me several times by tricking me into thinking twice that several main characters were gonna die. And I did love that little plant at the end, he was adorable.

The ending was funny and escalated very quickly and dramatically! I thought it was perfect and now they could all do anything! I hope a sequel is in development or at least on MARVEL's list for future sequels. I really enjoyed it and hope you all do too. Now I wish I could cosplay Star-Lord at Comic-Con somehow and someday.

I will warn y'all all that being a TRUE MARVEL FAN means staying till the end which I expect everyone who isn't even a hard MARVEL fan does nowadays in order to see the secrets at the end of every film to see what's next in store or get a glimpse of anything else that'll leave us all scratching our heads and spark a curiosity hype until the sequel happens. However, this one had something far more boring and had nothing huge but did show me a character that I only discovered last year when playing The LEGO MARVEL video game. Nothing special but still worth seeing if you wanna know who it is!

Though you should recognise one man "The Collector" from the Thor: The Dark World ending secret as he's very important in this film's plot twist.

So there you have it, not much and not many pictures (thanks a lot Google Images) but I hope my small words have influenced you to go out and watch this years Marvel smash-hit before we wait for 1st May 2015... Avengers Sequel!