{"id":6149,"date":"2014-08-22T23:39:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T05:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=6149"},"modified":"2014-08-22T23:39:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-23T05:39:01","slug":"guardians-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/22\/guardians-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"guardians-of-the-galaxy-one-sheet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This entry is far beyond its window of relevance, considering there’s now probably only about a dozen people left on the planet who haven’t seen it yet, but for whatever it’s worth, I really, really<\/em> enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>, the latest entry in the interconnected film franchise that’s come to be known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was everything I hoped it would be, and everything I’ve been craving for a while: a feel-good space adventure with likable<\/em> heroes — hey, remember those?! — and a healthy sense of humor, balanced with just enough pathos and epic scope to keep the whole thing from tilting over the edge into outright comedy.<\/p>\n

While I enjoyed the story and characters, honestly, a lot of the appeal for me was the environment<\/em> of this movie. Like its distant ancestor, the original Star Wars<\/em>, Guardians<\/em> drops the viewer into a fully realized, busy<\/em>, populated universe where it feels as if every individual on the screen has some life off<\/em> the screen. We get the feeling that there are a billion stories in this universe and we’re only focusing on this one handful of characters for a while, that we could easily shift our focus to those guys over there<\/em> and it would turn out to be just as entertaining. That sounds like no big deal, but it’s a trick very few sci-fi movies — very few movies in general, when you think about it — manage to pull off. I found myself really appreciating the sensation of verisimilitude, the feeling that I could crawl inside this movie and walk around and meet people. And since I had absolutely no background with this property going in, I also had the pleasure of discovering something entirely new. As much as I’ve enjoyed the other Marvel films — Iron Man<\/em>, Thor<\/em>, and Captain America, <\/em>as well as the X-Men <\/em>movies (same comic-book publisher, different movie studio) — I already knew who those characters were and the rough outlines of their most famous adventures, so the pleasure I felt with those movies came from seeing how successfully they brought life to the familiar. Guardians<\/em>, on the other hand, was a clean slate for me, and I dug the things it filled up with.<\/p>\n

In addition, I liked the overall look<\/em> of Guardians<\/em>. <\/em> It’s kind of a weird observation, but I was deeply struck by the way one of the main locations, the planet Xandar, was such a bright and sunny place, where the police aircraft are a shining gold and citizens wear brightly colored clothing. Such a refreshing change from the desaturated, grayscale visuals and perpetual nighttime setting of so many science fiction films in recent years.<\/p>\n

I have to mention the soundtrack<\/a>, naturally, which consists mostly of upbeat, bubblegum-flavored pop tunes from the 1970s. Kudos to director James Gunn for choosing just the right songs to evoke a mood, and for working with<\/em> that old music I love so much instead of ironically mocking it.<\/p>\n

About the only complaint I have with Guardians<\/em> is one you’ve heard before, which is that the big action scenes are unfortunately cut in the jittery, zoom-in\/zoom-out, lots-of-crap-flying-around, which-way-am-I-supposed-to-look style that’s been the vogue for the past decade or so, ever since those damned Bourne<\/em> movies. I hate to admit this, because I’m fairly certain it’s a sign I’m getting old, but I simply can’t tell what the hell is going on in action scenes these days. Guardians<\/em> wasn’t as bad in this regard as other flicks I’ve seen, but there were a couple of shots (mostly in the segment involving a dogfight in and around a place called Knowhere) that I had a lot of difficulty following.<\/p>\n

Still, that’s nitpicking compared to the overall level of joy I received from this film. Honestly, how could I not<\/em> love a space movie that references the Kevin Bacon classic Footloose<\/em>? Am I right? And of course the cameo everybody’s been talking about absolutely made my night. Whoever thought we’d see that guy<\/em> on the big screen again, in any form?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry is far beyond its window of relevance, considering there’s now probably only about a dozen people left on the planet who haven’t seen it yet, but for whatever it’s worth, I really, really enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest entry in the interconnected film franchise that’s come to be known as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}