Guardians of the Galaxy

Much ado has been made about the huge risk Marvel Studios took adapting Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) for the big screen. Since The Avengers (2012), they’ve been content cranking out sequels to their mega-successful franchises of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. Guardians would be a real test of the Marvel brand with most industry insiders forecasting a modest success and a few predicting it to be the studio’s first big flop.

Based on a fairly obscure comic book set in a galaxy far, far away featuring the misadventures of a ragtag group of aliens led by a human orphaned from Earth, Guardians of the Galaxy enjoyed a resurgence in 2008 but still lacked the name recognition of the aforementioned superheroes. Furthermore, it was to be co-written and directed by James Gunn, the B-movie maverick responsible for modern cult classics like Slither (2006) and Super (2010), starring up and comers like Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and professional wrestler Dave Bautista. The two biggest movie stars – Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel – would not actually be appearing on-screen, instead providing voices for completely computer generated characters. Marvel’s canny and pervasive marketing blitzkrieg paid off. Guardians smashed opening weekend records for August.

We first meet Peter Quill as an eight-year-old boy losing his mother to cancer only to be subsequently abducted by a group of notorious space pirates led by a blue-skinned bandit known as Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker). They raise the young boy to be a smuggler and an outlaw a la Han Solo complete with the self-applied moniker Star-Lord (Chris Pratt). He steals a mysterious orb and plans to sell it on the Nova Corps homeworld Xandar, ripping off Yondu in the process, which results in a hefty bounty being placed on his head.

Little does Quill know that this theft has caught the attention of several interested parties: Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a mercenary duo, and Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), a powerful Kree alien who wants the orb so that it can be handed over to Thanos (Josh Brolin), an even more powerful being last seen at the end credits of The Avengers, in exchange for destroying Xandar, his sworn enemies. To this end, Ronan sends Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a deadly assassin, to retrieve the orb.

However, Quill when crosses paths with Groot, Rocket and Gamora, the resulting chaos has them arrested by the Nova Corps and thrown into an outer space prison known as Kyln. It is here that they meet Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), a warrior with a thirst for revenge on Ronan for killing his family. They form an uneasy alliance and break out of prison to sell the orb with Yondu, the Nova Corps, and Ronan and his trusted lieutenant Nebula (Karen Gillan) in hot pursuit.

With this film, Parks and Recreation’s Chris Pratt becomes a bonafide action star, deftly blending amusing quips with heroic feats. He does a nice job of also portraying Peter Quill as a man haunted by his past, like many of his cohorts. All of the Guardians have lost deeply personal things in their lives and this is what unites them – that, and saving their own lives and, by default, the galaxy. Zoe Saldana gets to portray yet another alien, but instead of being buried under CGI as she was in Avatar (2009), the actress sports a striking green look and a fierce attitude to match. A pleasant surprise comes from the casting of WWE wrestler Dave Bautista who is excellent as Drax, the gruff warrior that tags along with the rest of these ne’er-do-wells. It is a lot of fun to see this athlete bounce off of the other actors and who more than holds his own.

If Quill provides the film its heart, then Rocket provides the bulk of its humor, stealing almost every scene he’s in by not just getting to spout the bulk of the film’s funniest lines, but also the impressive CGI that brings him vividly to life so that he actually emotes convincingly. Special effects technology has finally caught up to Groot and Rocket, creating expressive, fully realized characters. Early on, you stop thinking of them as CGI characters and look at them as part of the team thanks to the voice work of Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper who give Groot and Rocket distinctive personalities.

The banter between Quill, Rocket, Gamora, Drax, and even Groot is a large part of the film’s charm. Quill is the wisecracking smartass while Gamora is all business, Rocket has anger management issues, Drax doesn’t understand metaphors (making for some pretty funny exchanges between him and Quill), and Groot just says, “I am Groot” at key moments. Credit should go to the witty screenplay by Gunn and Nicole Perlman that plants the seeds of jokes early in the film only for them to successfully pay off later on.

There is a fantastic mix of character moments and visual eye candy in Guardians of the Galaxy as Gunn immerses us in this strange galaxy and the colorful characters that populate it. His production team has crafted a textured, lived-in universe that is rich in detail and drenched in atmosphere. The film’s vibrant color scheme is complimented by a stellar soundtrack featuring songs from the 1970s and 1980s via a mixtape in Quill’s vintage Walkman that also acts a touchstone to his childhood on Earth and memories of his departed mother. As a result, the songs run the gamut from commenting humorously on the action (“Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Swede) to also adding poignancy to more reflective moments (“I’m Not in Love” by 10cc) as well.

The only problem I have with Guardians of the Galaxy is that its villainous trio isn’t all that interesting. Ronan and Nebula look cool, but the former is yet another power-mad baddie that Marvel likes trotting out in all of its films with only a few notable exceptions, and the latter suffers from Darth Maul syndrome – a character with a badass reputation but with very little actual proof of such. It’s no surprise that Loki and the Winter Soldier are the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s strongest villains – they both have deeply personal and compelling motivations for what they are doing, which is something that is lacking with Ronan. As for Thanos, he only gets a cameo this time out with hints that he might figure more prominently in either Guardians 2 or The Avengers 3, but that’s a long way off. Fortunately, our heroes are so interesting and so much fun to watch that the lack of substantial villains is a minor quibble at best.

Gunn has pulled off a real coup with this film. He maintains a tricky balancing act of creating a gonzo space opera full of weird characters and loaded with a dense plot while somehow making it palatable for mainstream consumption without compromise. After the debacle that was the Star Wars prequels, cinema needed a good space opera to expunge the bad vibes of George Lucas’ movies. Only Joss Whedon’s Serenity (2005) bravely stepped up and showed everyone how do it right, but now Guardians of the Galaxy joins it by providing an alternative for those hungry for an entertaining science fiction film, fulfilling a need that Lucas was unable to with his prequels.

Guardians of the Galaxy is an unabashed science fiction film full of exotic aliens, power-hungry villains, and exciting spaceship battles with the fate of the entire galaxy at stake. It is also a funny film – as close as Marvel has come to making a full-on comedy. Their other films have had humor, but were largely dramatic in nature. Guardians inverts this formula so that it is largely comedic with dramatic moments and the result is another entertaining and engaging film from Marvel who continue their impressive winning streak. More importantly, this film opens up the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a big way by introducing an entire galaxy for its increasing number of characters to inhabit.

The Iron Giant

“So we have to deal with our technological sophistication versus our spiritual sophistication — and technology always seems to be ahead of where we are spiritually. The machine in the movie ends up representing our own inventive side of ourselves and begs the question: Is it a good thing or is it a dangerous thing?” – Brad Bird

When The Iron Giant was released in 1999, it flew in the face of the current trend popularized by Disney animated musicals. Based on the 1968 children’s book, The Giant: A Story in Five Nights, by late British poet, Ted Hughes, The Iron Giant refuses to rely on musical numbers and simplify its message to appeal to kids. It is one of those rare animated films that both adults and kids can appreciate. It is also a nostalgic ode to the 1950s that is thought-provoking and entertaining.

Set in the small town of Rockwell, Maine in 1957, a nine-year old boy named Hogarth (the voice of Eli Marienthal) befriends a mysterious 50-foot robot (the voice of Vin Diesel) that has crash-landed near the town from outer space. Raised on steady diet of alien invasion B-movies, Hogarth tries his best to hide the presence of his large, metallic friend from his mother (voiced by Jennifer Aniston). He also keeps his new friend a secret from a snooping government agent (voiced by Christopher McDonald), but ends up sharing his secret with Dean, a jazz-loving beatnik sculptor (the voice of Harry Connick, Jr.), who runs the local scrapyard.

The film originated with Pete Townshend (guitarist for the legendary rock band, The Who) who had produced a musical version of Hughes’ book in 1993, called The Iron Man. He brought the project to Warner Brothers with Des McAnuff, director of Tommy (1975), with the idea of transforming it into an animated musical. Animator Brad Bird heard of the project and met with Townsend and the film’s screenwriter, Tim McCanlies. Bird remembers, “I read the book and I liked the book, but I had a whole lot of ideas of my own about what this film could be about. Once it sort of went that direction, I didn’t envision it as a musical.” Bird pitched his take on the material to the studio as follows: “What if a gun had a soul?” Warner Brothers liked the idea and gave the project the go-ahead.

Bird drew his inspirations for the look and feel of the film from two unlikely sources. He was inspired by the cliched and dated educational films depicted in the documentary, The Atomic Café (1982) about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war in the ‘50s. He also liked the radio broadcast about Sputnik that opens Robert Redford’s film, Quiz Show (1994). Bird said in an interview that “the bomb had changed our perspective and the future was no longer this perfect thing. Every upside had a dark underbelly.”

In many respects, The Iron Giant has a lot in common with another excellent film that came out around the same time, October Sky (1999). Both films are set in the same year (1957) with the beginnings of the space race and the dawn of the atomic age as their respective backdrops to the main action. The young protagonists of each film are dreamers and outsiders of their societies and present refreshingly peaceful resolutions to their respective conflicts.

To further reinforce the ‘50s vibe, Bird shot the film in Cinemascope, a widescreen form of cinema that was created to compete with the rising popularity of television. Bird said in an interview that, “There’s something immersive about the experience. Also, a lot of movies in the late ‘50s were shot in ‘Scope, so I thought it was appropriate for a movie set in 1957.”

The Iron Giant has a wonderfully nostalgic, small-town atmosphere that is brought to life by stunning animation that is on par with anything that Disney has produced in recent years. The attention to period detail, from the cheesy educational videos that Hogarth's class is forced to watch, to the way the townspeople talk, is faithfully recreated and goes a long way to drawing the viewer into this engaging world.

The animation style of this film recalls the early, groundbreaking Fleischer brothers” Superman cartoons of the 1940s with its depth of field, but without the German Expressionist influence. Bird and his team mixed computer animation (the robot) with traditional hand-drawn animation (the rest of the characters) in an exaggerated, cartoonish fashion that went against the current trend of realistically rendered characters (see Pixar). For Bird, “the reason to do animation is caricature. It’s the same reason that photography didn’t render portraiture obsolete. It’s because you can draw things in a way that is not trying to reproduce reality, but more the essence of reality.”

The real strength of The Iron Giant is the relationships between the characters — something that is often overlooked in animated films in favor of flashy visuals and epic musical numbers. This film has the feel of a very intimate, character-driven story with the relationship between Hogarth and his robot friend as the emotional center but with several other relationships (like the ones between Hogarth and his mother and between him and Dean) featured prominently as well. This is no simple Saturday morning cartoon but a strong feature film that actually has something to say.

The Iron Giant enjoyed positive reviews from most critics. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and felt that it wasn’t merely “a cute romp but an involving story that has something to say.” In his review for The New York Times, Lawrence van Gelder wrote, “Many adults, including parents eager to have their children absorb lessons about the perils of guns and the merits of peace and tolerance, will doubtless approve of the film's messages while they ponder how the passing years have smoothed the jagged edges of history.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “At times, The Iron Giant is more serene than it needs to be, but it's a lovely and touching daydream.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “The music doesn't flood the script with sentiment or canned nostalgia, and the movie is even restrained in its toilet jokes. Remarkably unassuming, genuinely playful, and superbly executed, The Iron Giant towers over the cartoon landscape.” In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised the film’s “flavorsome period ambience and its lively and satiric characters.”

The Iron Giant did not do as well at the box office as Bird had hoped. Traditionally, animated films set promotional deals a year in advance so that the appropriate amount of hype and advanced word can be created. Warner Brothers delayed giving the film a release date and so every time Bird courted a potential sponsor, they would lose interest because no concrete date was set. Very few advanced posters and trailers were created and this hurt the film when it was finally released. It only grossed $23 million but has since found a new life on video and DVD.

The Iron Giant is one of those rare animated films that not only appeals to both children and adults; it does not contain one annoying musical number. It is also refuses to serve as one long, obvious advertisement for a toy. In fact, this film is an entertaining, even touching story about tolerance and compassion. It deals with real issues like death and bigotry — pretty heavy topics for a children's animated film — in an honest and heartfelt way. From all indications, The Iron Giant was clearly a labor of love for those involved and this translates into an enjoyable film for everyone to enjoy.