Another summer, another Marvel superhero festival is heading straight into the multiplexes.
This one is being billed as different to the standard Marvel Cinematic Universe, with emphasis more on reluctant conmen forced into being superheroes than those for whom superheroics is their job.
It also aspires to be different from that narrative of the standard superhero, with dreams of bringing together a more offbeat playbill than the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk et all. This recipe has proved to be successful in America, where the film enjoys absurdly high critical support, even if early buzz in the UK film press hasn't quite been so unanimously positive.
The problem with this film is that it is marketed as being different to the remainder of the Marvel canon, yet it just feels like a formulaic extension of it. This film follows a broadly similar narrative to those in the other Marvel films - in fact, it almost feels like straight-up recreations of most of the other films, but with different faces and locales - and is the set-up for an extension of canon, backstory and a wider range of villains, the latter of whom get split-second explanations for their being.
The main thing different, naturally, is the characters, and the shifting from a "save Planet Earth" plot to a "save the universe" plot. Indeed, the only piece of this film set on Earth is a bleak opening set in 1988 that sees a little boy lose his mum to cancer, and in his grief, gets abducted by aliens in a scene that is tonally at odds with the rest of the movie.
Some 26 years further down the line, running concurrently to the present day, the boy has grown into Peter Quill, aka Starlord (Chris Pratt) - a self-styled outlaw running across the galaxy.
Early on, he steals a mystic orb from an abandoned planet and after evading a troupe of bad guys, heads off to try and sell the orb, only to find it has mystic powers and he can't shift it to someone disturbed by these powers.
This leads into a dicey situation, where green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and talking super-raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper), completed with humanoid tree Groot (Vin Diesel) as assistant, try and take pot-shots at him.
Of the troupe that becomes the Guardians, Rocket and Groot are definitely the most entertaining and provide an intriguing counterpoint to another. The cynical sarcastic raccoon and the life-loving tree certainly make an entertaining couplet, even if the tree only knows the words "I am Groot".
The orb, meanwhile, is of attention to Ronan (Lee Pace) and Thanos (Josh Brolin) - the former of whom wants it for the latter, who hasn't appeared since being spied in a post-credit scene at the end of 2012's Avengers and only appears in four scenes here. Thanos certainly has potential and will no doubt surface at some point in Marvel's continuously expanding canon.
Ronan, meanwhile, has previously adopted/tortured the orphaned Gamora, and created a step-sibling rivalry with her multi-blue skinned bald step-sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), who also could have used more explanation behind their motivation.
But they provide the film's seriousness, which leads to two interesting tonal shifts. The villains provide a malicious menace stronger than a lot of those in Marvel's other film works, yet the heroes are certainly its least serious so far, with plenty of bizarre comic attempts from them.
Some of it does work, although not everything flies, which is about the same that can be said for the majority of comedy movies. Marvel have certainly got the fun side of the comic book debate, as anyone who has watched the wise-cracker extraordinaire Iron Man run around multiplexes over the last six years can attest. This film is certainly not as chokingly serious as a lot of the DC output, but it needs a better alliance between its very serious villains and its more unwitting wisecracking superheroes.
When Quill, Gamora, Rocket and Groot find themselves in jail, we're introduced to the 5th cog from the promo material in the form of Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). He is an odd bag, but by and large, gets away with it, and is certainly one of the big beneficiaries of this film's outstanding make-up and SFX budget.
The make-up here is very extensive - Gillan's make-up for Nebula took 4 1/2 hours to apply, for example - but the SFX work is extremely impressive. Granted $170million probably buys you a lot of SFX and make-up, and CGI imagery has become ubiquitous to the point of fatigue over the last few years, but this is a very good looking movie, with plenty of impressive colours, looks, world creation and more throughout.
There's also a very nice jukebox soundtrack, pilfered from 1970s and 1980s rock/pop radio, and plenty of bizarre dance moves across abandoned planets - and even one during the final showdown. It certainly makes a change from the standard bombastic rock/string combinations of recent weeks. The soundtrack is very nice, and there's a few amusing gags about Kevin Bacon in Footloose.
There's a Star Wars quality as well to the plotting, which at times has the air of the "rag-tag misfits vs Galaxy straddling dominaters" plotline from A New Hope. This is not the only film it feels similar to, given the broad basic beats - especially those near the end - feel similar to those in other recent Marvel works.
It would be unnecessarily contrarian to say this is a film to avoid. The public buzz means people will definitely be enticed through the multiplex doors and despite having a fairly basic plot, like origins films in previous years have tended to, there are still good bits that provide justification for seeing it. But even despite the wealth of new characters and worlds, it feels strangely formulaic in a way that it just shouldn't.
Still, confirmation of plans for an Avengers vs Guardians meeting, as trailed by Marvel at San Diego Comic Con last week, would be interesting, and presumably would bring something boldly different to the party.
3.5/5
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