Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I'm really struggling lately to keep this blog active. Which gives longer and longer delays from time x when I see a movie to time y when I manage to write an entry. There's a good part in this, as I said also before, and that's the ability to select better movies. And "Guardians of the Galaxy" is the perfect example.

I don't like the super-hero genre, and I guess that's not something new for who's been reading this blog. The effect is that, with few exceptions = "Iron Man 3" or the first "Captain America", to not be very fond of what Marvel is producing. When I've seen the first trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy" - featuring "Blue Swede - Hooked on a Feeling" - I knew this is something else. And not just because it seemed clear enough that "GotG" is not a super-hero movie. But because I had the same feeling as when I've seen the trailers for "John Carter", the last "Star Trek"s, or even "Prince of Persia" or "The Lone Ranger". Yup, I know ... More than half of this enumeration was a box-office flop = I doubt there are many who liked all these ( except myself of course :) ). But all these have something in common. A story that is set in a complex SciFi/Fantasy world (well, less on "Lone Ranger", although that movie can be considered a SciFi in its own way), story that features a decent number of secondary threads, told in a witty & lighthearted manner, enough to give that "epic feeling" that you could find some time ago in "Star Wars" & "Indiana Jones". So .. the story in "GotG" ...

Is about an orb capable to tear down worlds, and 5 individuals of different "nationalities" who somehow reach to the conclusion that it might have sense to try securing the device for the greater good of the galaxy. Seems quite simple & tame as subject, right ? Well, here comes that part about secondary threads mentioned above. Without many spoilers, let's take a prison escape sequence as example. When in that sequence we have an escape plan featuring some surprise elements, one character of the 5 being introduced along with his background, the main hero with some childhood "issues" that require a detour from the plan, we can already talk about a sort of mini-episode inside the main story. This style of building-up adds a lot to the narrative, and even if the main thread stays simple, what's built along it is more than enough to say that you've seen an actual movie and not something like a VFX demo (e.g., "Transformers").

That's enough. This movie is so good, that I really don't want to spoil more. You should just see it. I have a single regret. I don't like Zoe Saldana = I was quite disappointed by the casting choice for the main female character ... but well .. Besides that, we obviously have some eye-rolling causing moments, but not that many. I don't have anything else negative left to say :) If I get back a bit to the titles list in the beginning (which I think I've enumerated at least partially also for other occasions), I can observe another relatively common thing: the anti-hero trait, which at least for me is quite catchy. And I think it gives way more potential to exploit to a movie than the opposite - and you can see this a lot here where we have 5 of them ;)

Rating: 5 out of 5