Today I gave into the hype and went to see Guardians of the Galaxy. Okay, heres the deal: As advertised, the characters are all lovably roguish and well conceived. The dialogue was all very pithy and funny, and there were a lot of great lines. But it was all in the service of an extremely rote and mediocre story. In fact, in every other respect, it was just like every other superhero movie made in the last twenty years. At this point, I would say spoiler alert, but youve already seen it all a hundred times. Some single-minded villain is seeking to settle an ancient score by destroying the world/galaxy and all that stands in his way is a hunky but misunderstood loner and his friends. After a few tacked on references to childhood tragedies to humanize their motivations, they come up with a needlessly convoluted plan to confront said villain which results in an epic battle that seems to take up a third of the movie, twenty minutes of which are spent watching CGI shrapnel fly across the screen. Seriously, at one point, I felt like I was watching a video made to distract dogs while their owner was away. One of the endearing things about Guardians is how it recognizes and mocks the conventions of its genre. After the requisite pep talk scene where all the heroes gradually throw in, standing up to join the suicidal mission to stop the arch-villain, the raccoon guy reluctantly joins, saying, Okay, were all standing now. Like a bunch of jackasses. It was a funny moment and a good jab at a cinematic cliche, or at least it would be if were not simultaneously asking us to swallow the very trope it was mocking. This is what a kind of aggravating about this movie. It wants to be cool, and rewards the audience for being smart enough to realize the absurdity of the genres conventions, but at the same time it expects you to be dumb enough to be content with them. Im sure this movie will be a huge hit, and it was very cleverly scripted. My fear is that Hollywood will take this as a sign that they dont need to change their formulas or tell meaningful stories, that they simply need to be more hip and clever in how they feed us the same old shit.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 03:08:32 +0000