Guardians of the Galaxy

Start­ing with 2008’s Iron Man, Mar­vel Stu­dios spent close to $1b spread across five movies famil­iaris­ing audi­ences with its Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. One by one we got to know the Avengers, learn­ing their back­sto­ries, their moti­va­tions, their allies and ene­mies, strengths and weak­ness­es. Exces­sive? It cer­tain­ly felt that way. But when Avengers Assem­ble blast­ed on to our screens in 2012, sud­den­ly all the pomp and pageantry seemed worth it. It was for Mar­vel at least. By the time Joss Whe­don arose as the new­ly crowned Geek King of the Uni­verse, the studio’s top brass were rub­bing their hands to the tune of $4b in box office coin.

In hind­sight, it’s hard to see that large­ly enjoy­able but con­vo­lut­ed pre­am­ble as any­thing more than the cyn­i­cal, sys­tem­at­ic milk­ing of a seem­ing­ly per­pet­u­al cash cow. Espe­cial­ly now off the back of James Gunn’s spec­tac­u­lar Guardians of the Galaxy, which in its open­ing half hour achieves what Mar­vel pre­vi­ous­ly spent a com­bined 750 min­utes doing. Name­ly, lay­ing the foun­da­tions for an unadul­ter­at­ed sug­ar-rush of a sum­mer block­buster that packs big laughs and even big­ger action into a nim­ble inter­galac­tic caper. Quite a feat when you con­sid­er that the epony­mous space­far­ing team only made their com­ic book debut in 2008, and so aren’t ingrained in pop­u­lar cul­tur­al in the way that say, Iron Man or Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, are.

So how has Gunn done it? How has he spun a stan­dard-issue super­hero plot – misc celes­tial orb with the capac­i­ty to destroy the entire galaxy falls into the wrong hands – around a med­ley of exot­ic extrater­res­tri­al freaka­zoids that includes a boun­ty hunt­ing racoon, a nar­cis­sis­tic Ent, a green-skinned assas­sin with seri­ous dad­dy issues and Beni­cio del Toro in full Mugatu mode, and come up trumps? Sim­ple. It’s all a mat­ter of keep­ing it real.

Accli­ma­tis­ing audi­ences to an unknown alien world and the dizzy­ing array of curi­ous beings that inhab­it it would be an insur­mount­able task were it not for the cen­tral, ground­ing pres­ence of Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, the prank­ish rogue who goes by the self-giv­en alias ​‘Star-Lord’. Essen­tial­ly play­ing his Parks and Recre­ation char­ac­ter liv­ing out a Han Solo fan­ta­sy, Pratt proves that you don’t need a square jaw or flow­ing blond locks to prop up a tent­pole release. Which is not to say that he’s a less impres­sive phys­i­cal spec­i­men, just that – refresh­ing­ly – tick­et sales aren’t con­tin­gent on him get­ting his kit off.

In some respects, Quill is an old-fash­ioned sor­ta sci-fi hero. When we first meet him, bust­ing out of an ancient tem­ple Indi­ana Jones-style hav­ing pinched a price­less arte­fact, he’s cocky, self­ish and chau­vin­is­tic. His flaws are obvi­ous and unde­ni­able. And he’s bet­ter for it. Indeed, he’s got more in com­mon with Orig­i­nal Series era James Kirk and Jack ​“Big Trou­ble” Bur­ton than any of Marvel’s recent fran­chise dar­lings. He still rep­re­sents virtue, only with the caveat that some­times he can be a bit of a dick. But his basic fal­li­bil­i­ty doesn’t just make him easy to relate to, it makes him realistic.

This galaxy is no utopia, as encoun­ters with the tyran­ni­cal Thanos and chief vil­lain Ronan (Lee Pace) – who looks like Darth Maul audi­tion­ing for the Blue Man Group – quick­ly estab­lish, and as such it’s pos­si­ble to view Quill as the prod­uct of a cor­rupt sys­tem. Tech­ni­cal­ly he’s a crim­i­nal, and yet we root for him because, as the film’s only Earth-born pro­tag­o­nist, he dis­plays human qual­i­ties that are instant­ly recog­nis­able and which are reflect­ed in his dys­func­tion­al rela­tion­ships with fel­low Guardians Gamo­ra (Zoe Sal­dana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Rock­et (Bradley Coop­er). It also helps that he’s got a fond­ness for obscure ​’70s pop anthems – the use of the sound­track as an emo­tion­al anchor is a mas­ter­stroke from Gunn.

Here’s the skin­ny. You can have the most daz­zling spe­cial effects, the slick­est action, even Bradley Coop­er voic­ing a trig­ger-hap­py rodent, but it all counts for noth­ing if you don’t give the audi­ence a char­ac­ter they can invest in. Above all, then, this is a tri­umph of human sto­ry­telling. Mar­vel may not see Guardians as its prize asset, but this could be the start of a tru­ly awe­some franchise.