Guardians of the Galaxy – review

Guardians of the Galaxy is the tenth of the Marvel cinematic universe franchise films. It is both entertaining and funny, for the most part. While being a very watchable film, there are still a few things that it could have improved upon. For example, the villain was fairly one-dimensional and some of the air battle scenes made it difficult to see what was happening.

Peter Quill/Star-Lord, played by Christ Pratt, steals an orb that draws the attention of all manner of bounty hunter and mercenary in the galaxy.  Starlord is eventually arrested while fighting off a few of these attackers. While in prison, he teams up with a rag-tag group of misfits including a living tree-man, an anthropomorphic raccoon man, a green skinned assassin woman, and psychotic thug who understands the English language in a purely literal way.  Together they must stop an alien creature from obtaining an object that could spell doom for many planets.

The protagonists in Guardians of the Galaxy are a lot of fun. They are basically space pirates and each have interesting quirks and traits that make them memorable and dynamic characters.  The only problem I found was that the main villain was not given a lot of screen time. His costume and make-up look great but that was not enough to make me feel that he was an unstoppable threat. I thought Ronan’s lackey, Nebula, played by Karen Gillian, was much more intimidating.

The action itself is fun to watch. Some of the space battles did leave me wondering exactly what it was I was looking at. This is the sort of movie that will give you hope for when Disney finally gets Star Wars ready for a theatrical release.  I expected to see much more of Benicio Del Toro’s character, The Collector, but his screen time was really bare bones. The special effects are good and the soundtrack is even better.

As a whole I’d say Guardians of the Galaxy is worth checking out.  The mood is fun and the movie doesn’t take itself as seriously as other superhero movies tend to do.  See it if you can.  Make sure you stay until after the credits in order to see the silliest reveal of a character in a long time.