Written by James Gunn And Nicole Perlman
Directed by James Gunn
Peter (to the team): "So here we are: a thief, two thugs, an assassin and a maniac. But we're not gonna stand by as evil wipes out the galaxy. I guess we're stuck together, partners."
At this point in the MCU, there had been enough hijinks on planet Earth (with the exception of the Thor movies), so it was definitely time to take things on a more cosmic level and this was certainly great start to that.
Opening with a young Peter Quill (Wyatt Oleff) who witnessed the death of his mother but before he could process his loss, he's abducted by Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his life takes something of a different turn. A turn for the shadier to be perfectly honest.
Cut to twenty six years later and a much older and rather promiscuous Peter (Chris Pratt) was stealing a much sought after orb containing an Infinity Stone and getting himself into all kinds of trouble. Even Yondu was starting to get annoyed with him.
However Yondu was only the tip of his worries as the movie quickly had duo Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) along with trained assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) battling Peter to get that orb at the behest of dangerous Kree leader Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) and her adopted father, Thanos (Josh Brolin).
Except when all four characters met and clashed on Xandar, they immediately ended up in prison, managed to escape and even got an all in Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) who had his own mason against Ronan and initial dislike for Gamora to boot.
As a rag tag team, the movie depicted the five leads as people with their own demons who struggled to get along with each other at first before the event of Knowhere and Ronan's possession of the Infinity Stone forced them all to step up as a team. It also didn't hurt that Yondu could be easily reasoned with and that characters at Nova Corps such as Irani Rael (Glenn Close) and Rhomann Dey (John C. Reilly) were more receptive to outside help.
The third act of the movie does have some great battle scenes, including Gamora sparring with half sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), Groot really showcasing his power set along with a heroic sacrifice but it's Peter's "dance off" with Ronan before the group effort to defeat him that proved to be a strong conclusion to the big problem.
As a team, these guys might be A-holes but they certainly got the job done and made for a rather good team nonetheless. Well, they did manage to stop a planet from getting destroyed, which ain't bad for a first mission.
- Peter learned that he's half human and it was his other half that made him able to withstand touching the stone. Yondu was also meant to deliver Peter to his father but didn't.
- Josh Brolin had replaced Damion Poitier as Thanos with this movie. Nebula resented his favouritism towards Gamora.
- Rocket was not a fan of Stan Lee with a younger woman and we had Djimon Hounsou as Korath in a supporting role.
- A post credit scene showed Howard the Duck (Seth Green) disgusted at Cosmo the Spacedog licking the Collector (Benicio Del Toro).
- Standout music: The highlights were Come And Get Your Love, Cherry Bomb, Ain't No Mountain High Enough and Hooked On A Feeling.
- Chronology: The movie opens in 1988 but is largely set in 2014, the year of its release.
Guardians Of The Galaxy marked an impressive debut for James Gunn in the world of comic book movies and definitely was one of the biggest high points of the early-ish days of the MCU. Pretty much everything in this movie comes together perfectly. One of my favourites in this franchise.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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