Guardians of the Galaxy is a 2014 production from Marvel Studios. It’s a movie directed by James Gunn, who is also the co-writer alongside Nicole Perlman. The main protagonist is played by famous actor Chris Pratt, who shines alongside the likes of Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace and Karen Gillan. We also hear the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel. The movie scores an excellent 8.0/10 on IMDb and received a 76 Metascore.
A Summary
Guardians of the Galaxy shows a group of individuals and the powerful, fanatic Ronan (Lee Pace) fighting to get their hands on an Orb containing one of the Infinity Stones. The individuals end up allying to gather to the orb and sell it, but they end up doing much more than that. Allowing for the creation of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
We start the story with Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who got taken from Earth by a spaceship when he was a kid. He is the first one to find the Orb on a planet called Morag. Our second gonnabe Guardian is Gamora (Zoe Saldana). She is an adopted daughter of the mad titan Thanos, who was sent to Ronan together with her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) to aid Ronan in retrieving the Orb for Thanos.
Gamora needs to find the Orb for Ronan, during which she meets Quill on the planet Xander, where he is trying to sell the Orb. Another to future Guardians are on Xandar as well, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel). They get into a fight with each on other on the streets and end up all being arrested by Nova HQ. They get sent to prison where they come in contact with our last Guardian, Drax (Dave Bautista).
The group decide to work together to get out of prison and sell the Orb. At that moment, Drax is not yet a part of the group, but during the escape, he helps them out and is allowed to join them. He is only interested in killing Ronan and not money. Together they fly to Knowhere where Gamora found a buyer for the Orb.
Her buyer called The Collector opens the Orb as they find out that there is an Infinity Stone inside of it. An all-powerful stone with the capabilities to wipe out planets in an instant. Everything then goes south. The whole collection of The Collector is destroyed as Ronan arrives on Knowhere. After a tough fight, they all manage to leave on Yondu’s ship, the man who took Quill from Earth when he was a kid.
The Infinity Stone, however, was lost to Ronan during the fight. Quill convinces the Guardians to work together with Yondu’s men, The Ravagers, to retrieve the stone and protect Ronan’s targeted enemy, Xandar. They think of a plan and even though it was only 12% done, they start the execution.
They manage to take Ronan’s ship down at the cost of Groot, who grows a large ball around the Guardians to protect them from the impact. It is a really powerful moment as Groot says ‘We are Groot’ while he said nothing more than ‘I am Groot’ during the whole of the movie. However, Ronan has the Infinity Stone, is still alive and has know landed on Xandar, giving him the ability to destroy the planet.
Quill starts dancing in front of Ronan just as he tries to grab his epic moment of destruction. Baffled by this action, Ronan is unaware of Rocket and Drax, who shoot at Ronan’s hammer, destroying it. This releases the Infinity Stone and Quill immediately grabs it. The power of the stone is too much to hold, but all the Guardians come together and share the burden. After that, they kill Ronan as Peter Quill proclaims the group as The Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Story
I believe this story to be one of the best in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a group of disorganised, lonely and scarred individuals who ultimately come together to destroy a greater evil. I love how all the Guardians have their own, original backstory but do share a common thread through all of those stories. They are individuals who have been through a lot, on a deeply personal level. You can see how they start unwillingly to share their stories, likely because those stories are not to be easily shared with any random person.
As they grow towards each other and form a group of friends, they start sharing their stories and giving in to each other’s emotions. I think it’s great how they end up together. They start out fighting each other, which gets them all imprisoned, but that ends up giving them a common goal: escaping the prison. So, they work together and manage to do so. At which point they start arguing again because their next choice isn’t as clear as the previous one.
But in the end, they need each other to survive. They all have their quirks, but they also all have their strengths. As they learn that themselves with the fights on Knowhere and Xandar, they start to grow towards each other and form a group of friends instead of people with a common goal. The final sequence plays an invaluable part in this as they are all holding hands, managing to contain the power of the Infinity Stone.
The Characters
The Guardians
I will just take all the Guardians on at once, you could say that Quill is their leader and therefore could be seen as more important than the other Guardians. However, I feel that the Guardians of the Galaxy is made great by the group itself, even if Quill might be a bit more important to the plot than say Drax. I think they form an extraordinary and fun to watch group of goofs, who together can achieve exceptional things.
The composition of the members and their respective traits and strengths also proves invaluable to the success of this movie. We have Peter Quill as the sort of leader, human roots give him a personality unlike any other in the galaxy. He loves his music and knows more about social interactions than all of the other Guardians combined. Gamora is probably to most dangerous one, in the beginning, she always has her guard up around the other guys as she comes from a background of hate.
Then we have the duo of Groot and Rocket, both animated characters, who already knew each other before the events of the movie. Rocket’s charisma and cynicism is a great addition to the squad, while Groot’s ‘I am Groot’ just level-ups to the movie to whole new world. And then one of my favourite Guardians, Drax. He takes everything literally and proves to be an excellent move by the writers as he provides a comic relieve unlike any other seen before in the MCU.
Ronan
As, kind of, the main antagonist in this movie I feel like I have to single him out. It’s said that he is a Kree fanatic, who wants to destroy Xander for their earlier crimes against the Kree. Crimes which are already forgiven by the official Kree leaders as a peace treaty was signed between the two planets. I feel like this was one of the places the movie missed some important plot points.
I saw this movie during a chronological viewing of all the MCU movies, which means that I saw Captain Marvel before this movie. As Captain Marvel herself spent time with the Kree, the viewer would be familiar with them. But if you follow release order, which arguably is more important, you would have seen neither Ronan nor the Kree before. The movie then lacks in explaining some backstory for Ronan. How did he come to be separated from the other Kree? Why is he such a fanatic of the old ways of the Kree?
The Production
Production-wise the Guardians of the Galaxy proves to be one of the best of the MCU. It adds a level of comedy to an action-heavy scene and does so perfectly. It provides another level of joy on top of the still available action scenes. Like Rocket asking for a robotic leg during the prison escape for no reason, besides it being funny to see someone walk with one leg. It provides some comic relief during what would be one of the tensest scenes of the movie.
The movie also emphasizes the background music, which adds another level of enjoyability to the scenes we’re watching. Add that to the insane production value that the Marvel Cinematic Universe always offers, like the stunning visual effects during the Infinity Stone scene, and you get one of the best MCU films, in my opinion.