August 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy

The Month in Review: August 2014

The last Friday of every month I’m going to do a wrap-up of the nerd related things that, well, frankly … that I cared about. So August 2014... this is the month that was. This month I’m going to focus on one of the best films I’ve seen recently. It’s a film that as a Marvel I’ve been been dreading since I first heard about it: Guardians of the Galaxy.


First: let’s get this out of the way: 20OnTheDie has sided with House Marvel, specifically with Marvel Studios “cinematic universe,” in the Great Comic Book Movie Wars. If you’re looking for DC support, head over to Vorpal Chainsword. However, consider that there may be evidence of the owner of that blog wearing a Tony Stark mustache to one Iron Man 3. Someone I know may have the photos… I’m just sayin.’ If you want support for X-Men or Spider Man, well, can’t help you there.

So as a Marvel, when I heard that they were making a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, I was … surprised is too small a word. I was shocked. I had an old-timey face distorting moment that ended with me saying “zoinks!” and shaking my head rapidly to shake it off.

As a Marvel, and a child of the 80s, I knew about the Guardians, and, what I knew wasn't pretty, bub. The team has a raccoon in it. It has a foul-mouthed angry raccoon in it named Rocket. Gee Marvel, let’s go back and think about going in that direction worked out for you before … hmmmmn? If you click on that link, you may actually get a desperate plea from George Lucas not to look, actually. For those of you not brave enough to click the link, it was <spoilers>Howard the Duck<spoilers>. This, not the made for TV Captain America, THIS, not the Roger Corman Fantastic Four, no THIS was Marvel’s darkest hour. It was terrible, unwatchable, and had George Lucas’ name attached.

So it was with an initial sense of disbelief that I heard this movie was coming.

Let’s take a step back: to get to where we are with the Marvel Cinematic Universe is something that occurred against all odds. I’m confident in saying that at least half of the comic book movies that have come out in the last few years have been bad. A quarter of them have been unwatchable (Jonah Hex, I’m looking at you). To get to Joss Whedon’s Avengers, you had to go through FIVE other movies. A big enough mistake along the line would kill the whole project. Heck, If The Incredible Hulk was much worse, it might have done it.

But against all odds, you have The Avengers, which I would stack up against any movie in the action genre. This movie is one of my all-time favorites, and one I actually own.

So now you’re going to do a round two, you have a new Thor movie (The Dark World), new Captain America (Winter Soldier) and then you have … Guardians of the Galaxy. Excuse me?

Shut the front door. The next thing you’re going to tell me is that an Ant Man movie has been green-lit. Wait, what? It has. With Michael Douglas? Well, crap.

The thing about the Guardians is that the comic does not fit at all with the tone and look of the earlier Marvel projects: it’s weirdly colored for one thing, and is pretty much farcical.

Not to say that farce doesn’t have a place in comic book movies. It does. The genre doesn’t take much work to make fun of, does it? The thing is, for all the humor and the jokes in the Marvel Cinematic films, they’re playing it straight with us. Robert Downey Junior is very funny as Tony Stark, but his films are all about him coming to terms with when it’s time to be a joker and when it’s not.

The Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, are something that I thought it would be impossible to play straight. The jokes are there, but the underlying story is too Tim Burton-esque for me.

When I saw The Dark World, a lot of my fears were confirmed. The end of that film has a scene with the Collector in it, and it’s shot in a completely different style than the rest of the movie. The color scheme is the thing that you catch immediately. A lot of people commented that they had no idea what the deal was with that scene and that it made no sense. I knew what it meant: it’s actually a very good translation of the comics and their style. That worried me.

The thing is, comics and movies have very different styles to them because they’re entirely different mediums. The best comic films really blend the two styles together, and you get a movie like Sin City.

The Marvel films, for the most part, have not been like that. The directors have taken the characters and adapted everything about them for the big screen. That makes sense, because the things that work well in a comic book: bright, garish colors, bold artwork and so on, don’t always translate well to the big screen (see The Spirit).

The Avengers is a great movie, period. It’s not just a comic book brought to life, it’s a great film in its own right. I doesn't do a lot of the things you see in comic books, because Joss knew that he had a different medium to work with, one with motion and movement built into it.

So coming to Guardians of the Galaxy, I saw it on a Saturday morning matinee. This is a new thing for me that I recommend all of you cheapskates out there do: a movie that opens on a Friday will likely have a cheap matinee on Saturday morning in the same theater with the same great sound and picture, and you’ll pay half price or even less. I’ll be writing a rant about how movies work soon and will explore this in more detail, but if you want to see a movie in the best way possible, and without the annoying crowd, the weekend matinee is the place to do it.

I went with fellow blogger Cory, and I was expecting some major payback from him. Cory’s a DC, so when we went to see Green Lantern, the DC movie this is the closest to, I was witness to his … less than happy … shall we say, reaction to the movie. This was going to be a payback, since it had all the ingredients for the same kind of disaster as that movie.

And then a funny thing happened: Guardians of the Galaxy was a good movie. In fact, it was one of the best films I expect I’ll see all year. It has a raccoon in it, and it’s one of the best films I've seen all year.

DC is in trouble.

Here’s what I liked about it

Casting. I was very unsure about this part. Chris Pratt was from Parks and Recreation. He is not what I picture as an actor capable of playing an action hero and the main character in this kind of film. If I ran into him while playing D&D I’d expect him to join in and want to play a cleric right off the bat. Not action movie star. Hearing about the crazy regimen he went through to get into shape for this film frankly embarrasses me. What’s my excuse, exactly?

Chris Pratt brings exactly the sense of fun to this movie that it needs. He is obviously having a blast with the role, and has about a dozen fantastic one-liners that I still remember after the movie ended. If 13 year-old Steve saw this film, he’d be quoting it like I do Ghostbusters. Stop poking me, ninja turtle, indeed.

The film has Vin Diesel in it, which in nerd parlance means it’s going to be awesome, I mean, you've got Riddick signed on, right? Oh what, he’s playing a character that will be entirely CG and has three (four)lines? Okay…

Now that I've seen it, Groot is definitely one of the best parts of the film. He actually has a pretty strong moral compass to him if you pay attention to his face at key moments, so that worked for me as well.

And then there’s Rocket, voiced by Bradley Cooper. I like Bradley Cooper, and think he would have been good in this film in many different roles, but we just get his voice. This is the hardest thing for me to say, but it … works. The character is funny and sarcastic in exactly the way that Howard the Duck was … not.

Then we've got Drax and Gamora, and they’re also done exceptionally well. We have a whole team of characters that have great interplay and banter. This film gets the 12 Pack Productions seal of approval for it’s banter going on behind the scenes. Especially the banter with Drax, who has more than a little trouble with metaphors.

Last, we have John C. Reilly, one of my favorite comic actors. He has a very small part here, but it's funny. That was actually my first sense that the movie was in good hands: if he's in a project, I'm likely going to enjoy it.

It also had Merle in it, AKA Michael Rooker, which made me realize how much I've missed Walking Dead these last few months.

Style: There’s so much more to talk about and like in this movie. It looks so much like a comic book on the big screen, and it’s bold and colorful in ways that could absolutely have gone wrong if they weren't done right. I would say it’s Marvel’s most comic book looking movie yet.

It has a Celestial in it, that looks like one from the 1960s in all their glory. Wow.

It also has Thanos in it. Thanos is a huge badguy, and I'm resisting the urge to link to his profile on the Marvel wiki since it will spoil several movies for you. If you want to find out about him, well, there's always bing!, the official search engine of 20 On The Die.

The thing is, Thanos looks like Thanos from the comic books: big purple and gold guy. Remember in X-Men where they joke about all the black leather everyone wears, and Wolverine says "what should I wear, yellow spandex?" Well, that's what he wears in the comics...

They took a big risk in making Thanos look like he does in the comics instead of making him all in black with dozens of skulls all over him like something out of Warhammer.

Remember: comics and movies are two different mediums entirely, so ... wow, a comic character who looks the same on the big screen? Really? Big and purple? It's not grape ape, right?

If you look at the scenes with the Collector, you see the glorious mess that is the Guardians of the Galaxy. You also see about half a dozen Easter eggs for other Marvel projects. Some folks are saying that there's a shot of Beta Ray Bill in it. Yeah, DC: Beta Ray Bill made it to the big screen before Wonder Woman. But I digress.

The movie is motion and color and action without being a Michael Bay film: I could actually tell what's going on in the action scenes, even with the explosions.

I've spoken with a lot of people about Guardians and they're almost all loved it. My reaction is that the film was balanced on the head of a knife: if it would have strayed even a little from where they went with it, it would have been terrible. Despite what some folks have said, this is a big, bold decision from Marvel, and it bodes well for them.

What I didn't like

While I find it hard to criticize this film, I do have one thing to talk about. The opening scene.

The movie opens with Peter Quill’s mother dying. The movie is so big and loud and larger-than-life that I found this part of the film … disquieting. It was actually pretty raw.

Man is it difficult to be a relative of a superhero. Seems like your life expectancy is about 0, actually. The Uncle Bens of the world have to perish so that our hero can learn Stan Lee’s legendary bit of philosophy: with great power comes great responsibility. I get that. Superhero films beat you over the head with that. Bruce Wayne’s parents have to die, I get that.

We don’t get Peter’s Amazing Mix Tape if his mother doesn't die. I get that. And yet ...  I have to say that this UP opening might have spoiled the film for some people. We go right from that scene to Peter singing and dancing some 25 years later. It’s kind of jarring.

Now I know that story-line that Guardians is following, so it’s likely that Death will take on an important role here (that’s a spoiler, there: with that capital D I've implied that Death might be an actual character in the story) and if you interpret a later scene a certain way, Peter has to make a choice between life and death, but man, don’t make me go through that scene in UP ever again.

The Surprise Stan Lee (Second) Cameo

As all nerds know, Stan Lee does a cameo in the first movie in a series. What you probably don't know is that he has a special second cameo at the end of this one. I am going to spoil it for you now.

This is Stan Lee. I hope you liked my movie ... what's it called? Oh yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy. Here is a special comment for my friends over at DC. I understand you're concerned about the viability of a movie based on Wonder Woman, one of your most popular characters. That's too bad. Hope you liked our movie with a talking raccoon and a ... plant guy ... I guess in it. 

Oh and just one more thing: Howard. The. Duck. Heh. What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am. 

Links you can Use

As part of my writing this blog I take a look at some memes I’m particularly fond of, and give you links to them. What’s more fun than a dated meme, reference, right?

The fun thing about this is that I find out that some of the old memes I enjoyed are still out there making new content. So in this case, when I wrote “I’m a Marvel,” I was immediately reminded of the old “I’m a Marvel/ I’m a DC” videos. These were a spin-off of the even older “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” thing from about eight years ago. Wow, has it been so long?

So I noted that the “Marvel/PC” videos still exist and they’re still making them today. Answer the question of what would happen if Bryan Singer had directed X-Men 3 right here.

Wrap Up

That’s my movie of the month. I’m not going to lie to you: I had intended to write about some other topics for August as well (Comic Con, Gen Con) but Guardians kind of stole my writing thunder.
See you next time where I talk about games, specifically about Shadows of Brimstone.

Spoiler alert: I’m also going to bag on Game’s Workshop in a rant as well, so until then, Make Mine 20!