Guardians of the Galaxy (round 2)
Okay, so this one is gonna have spoilers...
It really is a pretty great movie, holding an atmosphere of joyous adventure behind some big, cliché, sometimes tragic moments. Watching it the second time, I laughed aloud less, but still smiled just about as much.
I'm convinced the music is a solid part of the experience. Coming into cosmic venues like Knowhere, it provides a grounding effect. When Quill is being roughed up at the jail, it provides a contrast to the brutality. That could be a dangerous thing in some cases, but I feel it's part of what makes the movie work. I wonder if it has the same effect on people who weren't around for the 80's...
I've seen reviews about how the movie is "post-plot," yet not a good explanation of what that's even supposed to mean. That it doesn't have a plot? Well, that's untrue. Admittedly, I wouldn't call the plot particularly unique or especially awesome. Protagonists are drawn together around a McGuffin that turns out to be much more than what they expect, so they have to overcome their differences and greed to do the right thing and get it from the bad guy. It's been done. A lot. Double-so if you're a roleplayer. But (and this is coming from someone largely drawn to materials for the benefits of seeing new stories) that absolutely doesn't drag this movie down. Maybe a more novel story would make it even better, but it's awesome as it is.
Why? Well, there's the atmosphere. Music, as said, influences that in a lot of scenes. The pacing is pretty good, with only a scene or two standing out to me as "questionable." Really, even during the second viewing, the movie held my attention. That's important. There's a huge difference from a movie you walk out of and start going "this part made no sense" and a movie you're thinking the same thing while watching it. Are there some holes in the plot? Sure. But they just don't jump out and grab me. Even after the fact, I really have to think on it. There are a lot of people at the Dark Aster crash site for a city that "has been evacuated," for instance. Even so, none of them are big enough to bother me afterward even.
Perhaps the best part, in my mind, is the characters. Individually, most of them wouldn't be all that well developed, but as a group they come together well. The interplay is good. The dialog feels pretty natural - it's easy to ignore the feeling that gives, but watch the banter and dialog in A New Hope and compare that to Revenge of the Sith. In the latter case, everyone feels like they're just reading lines, emotion is forced and flat. In Guardians, the banter is believable. And the characters in specific?
Peter "Star Lord" Quill is our point of view character - the human in space to give us the perspective of someone not born among the stars. He's also charismatic and playful, even if a bit of an "a-hole." He's set up as someone who may not be native to space, but he's having fun there. His morals are pretty loose, with lots of flings and his trying to swipe a score out from under Yondu. What does he value at this point? Probably freedom and money. He's not evil by any stretch, but the law gets in the way.
By the end, it looks like he might have come to terms to some degree with his mom's death. More importantly, though, he's forged a bond with the other Guardians. I do see an arc there, and I feel he's become more heroic. I think Quill at the beginning would have agreed with Rocket and fled, just hoping to stay out of Ronan's way. But he's had a lot to think about along the way, and that's been enough to develop a slightly stricter moral code. Stealing from someone may be okay, but standing by and letting a planet be wiped out is not.
Rocket absolutely steals the show for me. Maybe I'm a sucker for a raccoon. He parallels Quill as far as development goes, starting out as a bounty hunter whose only apparent connection is to Groot, his muscle. By the end, his morals may not have undergone quite the same transformation, but actions speak, and he puts himself on the line to 1) fly vanguard against a massive ship, 2) directly provide cover for civilians fleeing the scene, and 3) plow his ship strain into Ronan. Part of that's sticking with Groot, but it also looks like he's letting the others in and accepting them as friends as well. He's probably got the same sense of self-preservation he did in the beginning, but now it extends to that handful of others as well.
His attitude and banter is simply awesome - especially his picking on cybernetics for amusement. He's also the brains in a lot of ways, being a mechanical genius and weapon-builder. And he really does make you feel for what he's been through on his drunken tirade.
Groot is an odd one. He gets a lot of situational humor since his only line is "I am Groot" (well, except the one "We are Groot"). He's Rocket's tough and positively capable of throwing down physically, but he's also got the soft side portrayed by the flower he gives to the girl on Knowhere. In a way, he's probably the moral balance for Rocket, keeping him from committing any crime too atrocious. It's hard to give a character like this an arc, and other than the blatantly physical destruction and rebirth, he doesn't really have one - but he still provides a sense of levity in places in addition to being muscle.
Drax is a fairly one-note character. He's out to destroy those responsible for killing his family. Rawr! He's the totally literal one, which makes him the straight man who shows how silly a lot of our jargon is (I wonder how well all that translates into other languages around the globe). He too finds friendship among the group, becoming slightly less single-minded in his focus.
Gamora is a bit more complicated to analyze. In spite of being an assassin with a reputation, she's the one that offers moral grounding and guidance to Quill. She provides some straight man "you are an idiot" commentary before Drax takes that place over. She's got knowledge of what's going on, but she isn't the planner that Rocket is. Really, in an RPG group, she'd be the PC who generalized - not ending up bad, yet somehow overshadowed in basically every area by someone else in the party.
She isn't given much of an arc, as she seems to be the only person dedicated to the cause of keeping the orb/stone from Ronan and Thanos from the outset. Like the others, she forms from friendships and trust among the group, and provides a sort of loose romantic interest for Quill. It's slightly refreshing to see that she's singled out at the prison not for being a woman, but for being an assassin connected with some really bad, genocidal folks.
So, taken individually, I think Rocket and Quill are the only ones who have enough development, maybe, for a movie. But the movie is about the group. And it works. They fight (in slightly better than regular comic book fashion), they are thrown together, they work together, they become friends and see the benefit of relying on one another, and they make their big stand together.
And in the end, it's a fun ride.
Theoretically, it could be better. The characters could have developed more. The plot could have had some more interesting, possibly surprising, elements.
Practically, though, I'm not sure how much better you can do with 2-3 hours of screen time. And if you did, that might foul the pacing of everything else. Instead, you get a good, solid adventure with a certain joyous atmosphere. And I love it.
It really is a pretty great movie, holding an atmosphere of joyous adventure behind some big, cliché, sometimes tragic moments. Watching it the second time, I laughed aloud less, but still smiled just about as much.
I'm convinced the music is a solid part of the experience. Coming into cosmic venues like Knowhere, it provides a grounding effect. When Quill is being roughed up at the jail, it provides a contrast to the brutality. That could be a dangerous thing in some cases, but I feel it's part of what makes the movie work. I wonder if it has the same effect on people who weren't around for the 80's...
I've seen reviews about how the movie is "post-plot," yet not a good explanation of what that's even supposed to mean. That it doesn't have a plot? Well, that's untrue. Admittedly, I wouldn't call the plot particularly unique or especially awesome. Protagonists are drawn together around a McGuffin that turns out to be much more than what they expect, so they have to overcome their differences and greed to do the right thing and get it from the bad guy. It's been done. A lot. Double-so if you're a roleplayer. But (and this is coming from someone largely drawn to materials for the benefits of seeing new stories) that absolutely doesn't drag this movie down. Maybe a more novel story would make it even better, but it's awesome as it is.
Why? Well, there's the atmosphere. Music, as said, influences that in a lot of scenes. The pacing is pretty good, with only a scene or two standing out to me as "questionable." Really, even during the second viewing, the movie held my attention. That's important. There's a huge difference from a movie you walk out of and start going "this part made no sense" and a movie you're thinking the same thing while watching it. Are there some holes in the plot? Sure. But they just don't jump out and grab me. Even after the fact, I really have to think on it. There are a lot of people at the Dark Aster crash site for a city that "has been evacuated," for instance. Even so, none of them are big enough to bother me afterward even.
Perhaps the best part, in my mind, is the characters. Individually, most of them wouldn't be all that well developed, but as a group they come together well. The interplay is good. The dialog feels pretty natural - it's easy to ignore the feeling that gives, but watch the banter and dialog in A New Hope and compare that to Revenge of the Sith. In the latter case, everyone feels like they're just reading lines, emotion is forced and flat. In Guardians, the banter is believable. And the characters in specific?
Peter "Star Lord" Quill is our point of view character - the human in space to give us the perspective of someone not born among the stars. He's also charismatic and playful, even if a bit of an "a-hole." He's set up as someone who may not be native to space, but he's having fun there. His morals are pretty loose, with lots of flings and his trying to swipe a score out from under Yondu. What does he value at this point? Probably freedom and money. He's not evil by any stretch, but the law gets in the way.
By the end, it looks like he might have come to terms to some degree with his mom's death. More importantly, though, he's forged a bond with the other Guardians. I do see an arc there, and I feel he's become more heroic. I think Quill at the beginning would have agreed with Rocket and fled, just hoping to stay out of Ronan's way. But he's had a lot to think about along the way, and that's been enough to develop a slightly stricter moral code. Stealing from someone may be okay, but standing by and letting a planet be wiped out is not.
Rocket absolutely steals the show for me. Maybe I'm a sucker for a raccoon. He parallels Quill as far as development goes, starting out as a bounty hunter whose only apparent connection is to Groot, his muscle. By the end, his morals may not have undergone quite the same transformation, but actions speak, and he puts himself on the line to 1) fly vanguard against a massive ship, 2) directly provide cover for civilians fleeing the scene, and 3) plow his ship strain into Ronan. Part of that's sticking with Groot, but it also looks like he's letting the others in and accepting them as friends as well. He's probably got the same sense of self-preservation he did in the beginning, but now it extends to that handful of others as well.
His attitude and banter is simply awesome - especially his picking on cybernetics for amusement. He's also the brains in a lot of ways, being a mechanical genius and weapon-builder. And he really does make you feel for what he's been through on his drunken tirade.
Groot is an odd one. He gets a lot of situational humor since his only line is "I am Groot" (well, except the one "We are Groot"). He's Rocket's tough and positively capable of throwing down physically, but he's also got the soft side portrayed by the flower he gives to the girl on Knowhere. In a way, he's probably the moral balance for Rocket, keeping him from committing any crime too atrocious. It's hard to give a character like this an arc, and other than the blatantly physical destruction and rebirth, he doesn't really have one - but he still provides a sense of levity in places in addition to being muscle.
Drax is a fairly one-note character. He's out to destroy those responsible for killing his family. Rawr! He's the totally literal one, which makes him the straight man who shows how silly a lot of our jargon is (I wonder how well all that translates into other languages around the globe). He too finds friendship among the group, becoming slightly less single-minded in his focus.
Gamora is a bit more complicated to analyze. In spite of being an assassin with a reputation, she's the one that offers moral grounding and guidance to Quill. She provides some straight man "you are an idiot" commentary before Drax takes that place over. She's got knowledge of what's going on, but she isn't the planner that Rocket is. Really, in an RPG group, she'd be the PC who generalized - not ending up bad, yet somehow overshadowed in basically every area by someone else in the party.
She isn't given much of an arc, as she seems to be the only person dedicated to the cause of keeping the orb/stone from Ronan and Thanos from the outset. Like the others, she forms from friendships and trust among the group, and provides a sort of loose romantic interest for Quill. It's slightly refreshing to see that she's singled out at the prison not for being a woman, but for being an assassin connected with some really bad, genocidal folks.
So, taken individually, I think Rocket and Quill are the only ones who have enough development, maybe, for a movie. But the movie is about the group. And it works. They fight (in slightly better than regular comic book fashion), they are thrown together, they work together, they become friends and see the benefit of relying on one another, and they make their big stand together.
And in the end, it's a fun ride.
Theoretically, it could be better. The characters could have developed more. The plot could have had some more interesting, possibly surprising, elements.
Practically, though, I'm not sure how much better you can do with 2-3 hours of screen time. And if you did, that might foul the pacing of everything else. Instead, you get a good, solid adventure with a certain joyous atmosphere. And I love it.
A wonderful analytical break-down of the protagonists and their development (or lack there of)
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