The Marvelous Marvel Rewatch (Now Playing: Avengers: Infinity War)

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Guardians of the Galaxy

Man, I really hated on this movie from the second I heard it was even going to be released.  I recognized Drax and Gamora from the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, and they were two characters that I really did not like.  At the time Iron Man 1 and Cap 1 were the only movies I really liked, and I thought Marvel was overall just getting worse and worse and this Guardians movie was a new low.  (Kind of like how people see DC movies actually.)  Finally after several friends told me it was good and also I found out it was the highest grossing movie of the year, I decided to go see it.  I'm glad that I finally did.

Just rewatched it again for like the 3rd or 4th time a couple of days ago.  Below are my thoughts, and as always there are lots of spoilers, so don't read if you haven't seen the movie yet.


Pluses:

The soundtrack is fantastic.  On top of that the makers of this film were aware of that and they integrated the music into the story line, which makes it even better.

There is a very strong family theme in this film, which plays really well.  The underlying story is that all of the characters are from broken/dysfunctional families in some way, so they desperately want family, but they are afraid of getting hurt at the same time.  One moment they are pulling on your heartstrings, while the next they are making fun of how sentimental everyone is.    In any given scene, you don't know which of these directions they are going to go, which makes things more interesting.

The characters/actors are fantastic and it is very easy to grow attached to this cast.  Even some of the antagonists like Yondu and Nebula are fairly interesting.

Because this movie is so separate from the rest of the MCU, they were very free talking about Thanos and the Infinity Stones, which I like.  I actually expected something like Infinity War to come very soon after this movie.  I am actually surprised we've had to wait as long as we did.

Overall there are three basic philosophies to sci-fi: 1) Technology will solve all our problems and make society better in every way.  2)  Technology will make everything worse.  3)  Technology will give us cool gadgets, but other than that people will continue to be more or less like they always have.  This movie embraces philosophy 3, which is the viewpoint I prefer in sci-fi.


Minuses:

Ronin is kind of a dumb villain.  Do we even find out why he wants to destroy Xandar?  If so, I missed it.


In conclusion, Guardians of the Galaxy is a movie I would recommend to anyone.  On the surface it's a Marvel movie, but underneath it has a great cast, great soundtrack, and it's a hilarious movie with a lot of heart.  The main villain is kind of dumb, but that's ok, because that just means the Guardians will make you laugh at him.

9/10