Guardians of the Galaxy is the Casablanca of Talking Raccoon Movies

{S P O I L E R   A L E R T}

The Avengers was funny and charming and an overall good time, and while I understood the process leading up to it, it doesn't mean I had to like that process. Because Thor and Captain America didn't feel like movies unto themselves so much as pieces of a larger puzzle. So I'm grateful to not have had a Star-Lord: The First Guardian or The Adventures of Rocket and Groot to sit through. The film begins in 1988 with an eight-year-old Peter Quill in a hospital waiting room listening to "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc on his Walkman. The most unbelievable thing about Guardians of the Galaxy isn't the talking, gun-toting raccoon or the sentient tree. It's that an eight-year-old kid in '88 would be listening to 70s era English soft pop. We later learn he's in the hospital to see his dying mother and she's the one who made the mixtape he's listening to. "Awesome Mix #1." My mom's mixtape to me would've been chock full of Engelbert Humperdinck and Barry Manilow. Thankfully, Mrs. Quill's musical tastes are more palatable and we get a pretty cool soundtrack (the Quicksilver scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past set to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" remains the highlight of the summer movie season). She gives one final gift to her son, which he does not open. Like the old adage goes, show an unopened gift in Act I, that gift had better be unwrapped by Act III. So how does an eight-year-old earthling become an intergalactic obtainer of space antiquities? Why, by getting abducted by aliens whose leader is Blue Merle Dixon, of course.

Cut to a nice homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark and a now grown-up Peter Quill, the self-appointed Star-Lord, having to navigate alien booby traps to steal some sort of blue orb. Star-Lord employs all kinds of neat technology like rocket thrusters on his boots and a mask which allows him to breathe in any kind of atmosphere. So he steals the orb, but is soon intercepted by Kree soldiers. The Kree are a race of blue alien baddies (so much blue!). One of the Kree, Ronan, wants the orb because of its power to… destroy? … make him all-powerful?... something. Suffice it to say, Ronan getting the orb is bad news for the good guys. Ronan dispatches sisters Gamora (green Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (blue Amy Pond; so much blue!), who just happen to be Thanos' daughters, to collect the orb. Thanos has a cameo in Guardians, and the theater I was in went nuts when he appeared! My friend and I looked at each other like, "Really? Thanos? Cheered?" To paraphrase Ben from Parks and Rec, nerd culture truly is a part of the zeitgeist. Star-Lord takes the orb to an orb broker, because this is the kind of movie where being an orb broker is a thing, but Star-Lord's turned away when said broker finds out Ronan wants the orb. I told you that dude's bad! You know just how bad because he makes beef jerky of the scenery with dialogue like, "Send necrocraft to every section of the quadrant." What are you even talking about, Ronan?

But back to Star-Lord. Gamora tracks him down to Planet Nova and attempts to take the orb from him. She's not without cool dialogue of her own. "Whatever nightmares the future holds are dreams compared to what's behind me." I'm guessing she's got a lot of Mazzy Star on her Walkman mixtape. But she ain't the only one after them. Groot (tree) and Rocket (raccoon) are after the bounty on Star-Lord. These two are easily the best part of the movie, and it's the most enjoyable Bradley Cooper's ever been. For real! The jokes don't always land, but when they're coming as quick as the rounds from Rocket's weapons, that's okay. The four are quickly rounded up for being public menaces by the Nova Corps (the planetary police force) and shipped off to the prison space station of Kyln. There's no mention of a trial so I can only assume Kyln is some sort of interstellar Guantanamo where prisoners are sent without due process. Inside, they meet Drax the Destroyer. He's got a personal beef with Ronan and wants revenge. The team now being assembled, the prison break can commence, and it's the movie's best set piece. Once aboard Star-Lord's ship, the team plans their next step, which is to visit a mining colony and meet with The Collector.

These moments on board the ship offer a respite between the action and provide opportunities for the actors to play off one another. Like when Gamora tells Star-Lord his ship is filthy, he responds that under a blacklight it looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. You mothers of teenage boys can take this joke to its natural conclusion. So they approach the mining colony set to David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream." I'd have gone with "Starman" off the same album, but maybe the former song held more importance to Mrs. Quill, playing the first time she tripped acid at the laser light show at the planetarium. Who knows? Another big set piece in the mining colony. Bad guys show up, take the orb, and the heroes have to recover the orb to save humanity. Always with the saving humanity. If us regular folk only knew…

Ronan and the Kree attack Planet Nova, and it's up to the Guardians, the Nova Corps, and blue Merle and his people to save it. This is the biggest set piece in the film, intercutting between aerial dogfights, action in the Kree ship, and reactions of the people on the ground. Guardians sets the new standard for spaceship dogfights, and in 3D it's gorgeous. The 3D here is crisp, fine details like Rocket's fur looking sharp. Many times, one's eyes have to perpetually readjust to the screen in 3D in other films. Not so here. Didn't happen once. The good guys eventually confront Ronan, and Ronan destroys the Guardians… and, if you believe that, you've never seen a comic book movie. So does Peter Quill finally open Mom's present? Well, all I'll say is her tastes shifted from English pop/glam-rock to Motown, with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back."

So should you see it? What do you want in a summer movie? Action? Check. Laughs? Check. Something the kids will enjoy? Check. See it on the big screen too. It's not one of those wait till Redbox deals. And with Marvel now seemingly pouring resources into every one of its projects, it's more Avengers than Fantastic Four. It's the Casablanca of talking raccoon movies.

OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE:

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team—the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel's “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits—Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand—with the galaxy's fate in the balance.

Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which first appeared in comic books in Marvel Super-Heroes, Issue #18 (Jan. 1969), stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, featuring Vin Diesel as Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Nova Prime and Benicio Del Toro as The Collector.

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GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY opens in theaters everywhere on August 1st!