Crim at the movies: Guardians of the Galaxy

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Once upon a time, sci-fi and comic books had this strange charm about them that made the movie itself magical. From the USS Enterprise and Flash Gordon, this charm of the unknown and the beautiful feeling of immersive high fantasy has helped assist the cultures we now have today. Unfortunately, since “The Empire Strikes Back”, this genre of entertainment has become increasingly grim and realistic. Nowadays, Sci-Fi movies have been focused onto the horrors of humanity while trying to retain the magic that essentially made the entire genre what it used to be. While I don’t particularly mind something like this occurring, especially with the Science Fiction genre always expanding and evolving over time, sometimes we can never really see how ‘original’ it used to be. No movie has come out over recent years that captures the original magic and wonder, even when that movie tried to come even close.

Well, not until just recently.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” features our sarcastic and highly enjoyable adventurer Peter Quill finding himself with an enormous price on his head after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan the Accuser, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade this menace, he accidentally stumbles upon four other characters, the female and energetic assassin Gamora, the revenge fuelled Drax the Destroyer, the enhanced trigger-happy foul-mouthed raccoon known as Rocket and a walking tree creature called Groot, whose only words are ''I am Groot'' This group of misfits all come together and the five of them form an unlikely team.

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We can all say that unlike other movies of it’s kind, Marvel is known to make serious and enjoyable movies that actually have a sense of humour when needed. This might be the first Marvel release that despite packing some serious heat in terms of entertainment could actually be called a comedy. It’s really more of a spoof of space operas or a freeze-ray joke towards Lost in Space. But enough about that, let’s get to where some of the aspects of the film really shine. Characters !

Oh yeah, and you get to play everyone's favourite game in the movie - 'Spot Stan Lee'.

The characters are really well presented, their back stories are engaging and they pack plenty of emotion into their own aspect of the film. In layman’s terms, they're interesting and easy to like. Each character has some really special moments and keep us wanting for more and more. Rocket steals the show with his anger management problems and bright one-liners, while managing to make us laugh and cry at the same time. When we see this group of people each with their own agenda come together, this dynamic yet unlikely team worked really well. Star-Lord carried a lot of this weight, and the audience can be very sympathetic towards him. All the actors do a great job at portraying there characters, they actually feel like real human beings. Real characters that you want to get to know about them and their struggles and even become attached to them. Every character in the movie got their time to shine. Everyone is pitch perfect in their roles even Batista! Everything about the characters in this movie, from character development to even the smallest details are absolutely.spot.on .

[video=youtube;KiAFwV2emZQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiAFwV2emZQ[/video]

The CGI in this film is absolutely fantastic as well. Although Cooper and Diesel give terrific vocal performances, it would be for nothing if it wasn’t for the stunning CGI work done to bring these characters to life. It’s tough to make a raccoon and a tree look just as real as the three humans that they’re teaming up with, but the work is so good that it feels completely real. CGI, depending on the style of film, what can make or break a movie. But the realism of the CGI is absolutely ridiculous, to the point where it’s almost real. The CGI work on Rocket and Groot is very impressive, and so was the choice to go with real (not digital) makeup on many of the characters, Gamora, Drax, and Nebula included. Of course, the real makeup may have taken numerous hours daily to apply but it can absolutely make your movie look hundreds of times more authentic. This type of filmmaking unfortunately isn’t used as much because it’s more expensive in almost every way, but it’s clear that it makes for a much better looking final product. It’s really pretty eye-candy.

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What makes the movie so damn enjoyable is how fun it is. Guardians of the Galaxy specialises in fun, buckets upon buckets of fun. Just as the team makes do with the junk they find around them, the film feels like a mound of gems culled from decades of pop-culture scavenging: You can defiantly see it inside this film. An evil galactic conqueror with ships that looked like something out of Lylat Wars wanting to take over the universe, but encountered Han Solo, Princess Leia and company. The script, by the film’s director James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, also deserves a mention and shares the jokes democratically and tends towards the quotable: in particular, the use of “pelvic sorcery”.

Propelled by a killer 1980s music soundtrack, director/co-writer James Gunn frames all the of this magnificent film and big-budget production with an comic vibe that shines in fun and bubbly. But rather than detract from the necessary dashes of drama, Gunn can suddenly change the vibe and actually make you feel towards the characters he’s brought to life.

Guardians of the Galaxy also comes closest to recreating that feel we got from Star Wars, that the galaxy was essentially a neighbourhood and the core band of characters were the type of fun, heroic, strongly motivated, vaguely idealistic people you could easily spend a franchise with.

I love this movie, and it deserves the score it receives. Yes! For the first time ever, we have a perfect score!

[video=youtube;04Jkoa8nXT0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Jkoa8nXT0[/video]​

This pretty much sums the whole movie up​

This movie received Five out of Five Lionhearts