Opinion

Characters the real marvels in Marvel's 'Guardians'

Thursday, August 7, 2014

"Guardians of the Galaxy," the latest movie out of the Marvel Studios pipeline, is that company's biggest risk since the first "Iron Man," and much like that movie, it's a giant, delightful surprise -- maybe the most purely entertaining blockbuster of the entire summer. It also features a true movie star-making performance from its leading man, tremendous laughs throughout and lots of great action sequences. But the thing that grabbed my attention is how it manages to be the rare blockbuster that has core characters that are actually allowed to grow and develop.

The story is a relatively straight-forward one (for a sci-fi/western, anyway): Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) -- or "Starlord," as he likes to call himself -- is a former resident of Earth who now travels the deepest ranges of space as a professional thief/ladies' man/wiseguy. He has stolen an ornate orb from deep within the ruins of a former civilization with the hopes of making a major score. But such as these situations tend to unfold, Quill's possession of the orb makes him a target for his fellow thieves, the Ravagers, led by Yondu (a blue-skinned, metallic-Mohawked Michael Rooker), as well as a vicious humanoid baddie named Ronan (Lee Pace), who wants to destroy a peaceful planet called Xandar using the orb.

After failing to fence his stolen item on Xandar, he soon crosses paths -- and swords -- with Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who volunteered her services to Ronan to retrieve the orb. While those two are locked in hand-to-hand combat, Quill is identified as a wanted fugitive by a bounty-hunting cybernetically-enhanced raccoon named Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and his bodyguard Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a tree-like creature whose vocabulary has more -- or perhaps less -- words in it than you might expect ("He knows three words," Rocket tells the others. "'I' and 'am' and 'Groot,' usually in that order.").

The foursome causes enough of a public ruckus to end up behind bars, where Gamora -- known throughout these worlds as an associate of Ronan's -- is rescued by Quill from death at the hands of Drax (Dave Bautista), who is seeking revenge against Ronan for the murder of his wife and daughter. After the now-a-quintet makes a daring prison break, Gamora reveals that while she wanted to steal the orb from Quill, she had not intended to return to Ronan, because she knows that it is a weapon of immense power, and he was intending to use it against Xandar. Now this very definition of "a ragtag group of misfits" must work together if they want to prevent Ronan from completing his genocidal mission. (Like I said, straight-forward.)

My not-so-brief description doesn't do justice to the movie, though. The script by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman is rough-and-tumble fun, with nods to the "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" movies, while remaining very much its own animal. Gunn directs his actors with a great deal of confidence, and the performances at the center of the movie are uniformly excellent, even the ones that were created in computers and recording booths. Specifically, though, if Chris Pratt's movie career doesn't take off like a shot after this, I'd be shocked; he's sharp and funny and more than fits the mold of a modern leading man. And Dave Bautista, a former pro wrestler, is the surprise of the cast -- he delivers a surprisingly layered performance as the overly-literal Drax.

Yes, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is a bright-and-shiny thrill ride, action-packed and full of laughs, but it's the character development that truly puts this movie over the top. These strange creatures are all wounded in one way or another, and as they discover that everybody needs somebody to care for and about, the movie gains an emotional momentum. It's hard to believe that a movie this big can sneak up on you, but does it ever.

Content advisory: "Guardians of the Galaxy" is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language. There are some scary creatures doing scary things in this movie, a potentially upsetting scene near the climax of the film, and a fleeting sexual reference in a dialogue passage, so parents of very young children might want to keep them out of the theater for now.

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