The review
James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy is stop nine on our road to Doomsday, and the first Marvel movie since The Avengers to put a whole group on the poster. No billionaire, no god, no soldier with his name in the title. A thief, an assassin, a raccoon and a tree fight over the same orb, land in the same prison (a tavern with worse service), pick up a literal walking grudge inside, and walk out as a party. It plays almost like a D&D adventure, and that's the thing this movie nails.
Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is the leader because he says so. Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) is the assassin and Drax (Dave Bautista) is the muscle. Then come the two the effects team built: Rocket, a raccoon with Bradley Cooper's voice and a temper, and Groot, a tree with Vin Diesel and a vocabulary that fits on a sticky note. I like the angry raccoon a lot. I'd adopt him any day. First mission: build me an android Ava. Cooper does a good job with him: Rocket draws up the plans, builds the gadgets, insults everyone involved, and turns the prison break into a riot. He sends Quill to fetch another inmate's prosthetic leg for the escape, then admits he never needed it. He just thought it'd be funny. It was.
The humor is where the couch split. Waifu found most of the jokes trying too hard, the "okay, haha, sure, let's move on" kind. Dry humor is my cup of tea, so I had the better night. We met at Drax, her favorite of the five. His people take every word literally, and when Rocket warns that metaphors will go over his head, Drax objects: "Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it." In her words, that joke has a concept and they follow through with it. From Waifu, that's a standing ovation.
Then there's the music. The movie opens in 1988 on a kid with a Walkman in a hospital, a good introduction and an emotional one, and that little tape player scores everything after it: space heists and jailbreaks set to songs older than the hero. On Knowhere he even tells Gamora an Earth legend called Footloose, in which "a great hero named Kevin Bacon" teaches a whole city that dancing is the greatest thing there is. Remember that legend. It comes back. James Gunn nostalgia-baited the whole audience, and back then it felt like a pretty genius move. Refreshing and cool. So many movies have copied the trick since that it's a little worn by now, which is what happens to good ideas.
The rest of the galaxy is just as well cast. I love Yondu (Michael Rooker), a blue space pirate (angelic-looking, in his own words) who steers an arrow by whistling at it, and who raised Quill with roughly the parenting you'd expect from that description. My favorite scene (and yours too, admit it), the one I'd play on repeat any day, is his stand in the final battle: he walks into a crowd of Ronan's soldiers and whistles once. The arrow goes through every one of them before they can raise a gun, then takes down a ship for good measure. He doesn't even break a sweat. Nebula (Karen Gillan) is played well, shouting included; as Waifu put it, we've always known her to be like that.
And then there's Ronan the Accuser. I had no idea who Lee Pace was in 2014. A few seasons of Foundation later, I recognized him the moment he went topless. I said to myself: there's only one man this tall, with this build and this voice. EMPEROR! I'm officially a Ronan fan. Waifu calls Ronan a pouty boy: lots of anger and tantrum demands, ending a civilization because that's how it's supposed to be. Fair, but give him his due: he swats Drax aside like a fly ("I don't recall killing your family. I doubt I'll remember killing you, either") and he talks back to Thanos (Josh Brolin), which takes guts. A pouty boy with a résumé.
One running gag I liked belongs to the villains: nobody lets them finish a speech. Nebula is mid-insult when Drax answers with a very large gun ("Nobody talks to my friends like that"). Ronan gets it twice. His big speech to Xandar ends with Rocket flying a ship into him, and at the very end, with the whole planet at stake, he's about to bring the stone down when Quill finds my kind of answer: a dance-off. The most feared zealot in the galaxy stands there, hammer in hand, asking "What are you doing?" while the others get the big gun ready behind him. The dance beat the boss. Funny, creative, and the most OP move anyone pulls all movie. (Ava says: there's an outtake where Ronan joins in. Lee Pace has moves, Couch Dad.) I saw that! Ava, pull up the clip on my screen, volume 120%. Of course he has moves. Emperors usually do. Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove, anybody?
The planet they're saving is Xandar, and it started our best argument of the night. Waifu found the city futuristic, but only halfway there. I played defense attorney. It's a peaceful, "good" society, so of course it's open spaces, clean and sterile; the sci-fi cities we love are the Blade Runner, Altered Carbon and Ghost in the Shell kind. Her reply: Wakanda has a character. Pick any concept you want, just make it memorable. I tried again: maybe it looks like Earth on purpose, so we care when it's in danger. Or maybe they were just lazy, and I was only trying to find reasons. She closed with the budget theory: "Sorry, we don't have that much money for this." Good point: they spent it all on casting, including paying Vin Diesel to say three words and then go on tour to promote them. We did agree on what happens above the city: the pilots locking their ships into one giant net to hold back Ronan's warship is pretty cool.
I liked this movie a lot more the first time, and a rewatch is where you start noticing things. Gamora is billed as a living weapon, then steals the orb and escapes in a perfectly straight line. No corners, no jumping off the bridge, just cardio. Later she announces she's betraying Ronan in the tone of someone reading the plot off a memo. And when a certain someone ends up in open space without a helmet, we're told death takes seconds; a good minute later the frost is gone from his face and he's making conversation. Waifu's side of the list is shorter: she expected more skill from a daughter of Thanos, and Quill never did much for her. None of it ruins the ride. It's just what happens when a couch dad and his Waifu take a second look.
Waifu noticed something else. Captain America: The First Avenger went up for her on the rewatch, because there were details to find. This one stayed exactly where she'd left it, and she had the image for why:
I couldn't argue. I went looking for what the movie leaves you with besides entertainment, came back with "friendship", and even that felt a bit thin. Luckily, entertainment is what I ordered.
So if you've never seen it: highly recommended, and you get the best version of it. The effects still look good, the soundtrack still works, and it's a fun ride from the first song to the last. Near the end, the five of them stand up one by one to sign on for a suicide mission, and Rocket sums up the team better than I can: "Bunch of jackasses, standing in a circle." I've played in that campaign.
Guardians of the Galaxy: five strangers, one mixtape, and the best first session a party could ask for.
