"Guardians of the Galaxy" Review | Movie Monday

In 1988, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) was abducted from his home planet, Earth. Fast forward 26 years and Quill, aka Star-Lord, is a badass-leather-jacket-wearing Ravager searching for a highly sought-after orb. He quickly discovers that a very powerful person, Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), is also looking for it. The motley crew - Quill, Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), and Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) - must work together to stop Ronan from using the infinity stone to destroy the world as they know it.

I love this movie. It's absolutely in my top 4 Marvel movies, and within those 4 I'd have a very hard time picking a favourite.

I really liked most of the characters and could empathize with them and their back stories. It's very funny - the humour is so well-done by everyone, and it's great that there was some innocent humour and some not-so. I laughed at both. Hard.

Guardians is pretty accessible. It can stand alone and you don't need to have seen any of the other Marvel Universe films to understand what's going on, although there are a lot of Easter Eggs for fans who are more familiar with the Universe.

This film and its characters are very sweet. I think my favourite friendship was Rocket and Groot's because they really cared for and understood each other. Who knew I could care so much about a raccoon and a talking tree?

I like what they did with Quill and his cassette player. They really emphasized that he's human and grew up in the same society as many of the viewers, listening to the same songs and watching the same movies - he's like us. His attachment to the device is sometimes used as a comedic thing, but it's very clear that Peter's cassette player means a lot to him.

There are so many 80's references, it's wonderful. As I was growing up, my parents introduced me to "oldies" and songs they loved (much like what Quill's mom does for him in the film), which included stuff from the previous decade, the 80's, so I knew and loved a lot of the songs on the soundtrack and it made me so happy whenever I recognized one of those great songs.

This movie combines several things I love very much: humour, sci-fi, adventure, the 80's and Star-Lord's jacket (seriously, I want one).

I. Love. Marvel.

Image Credit: "Rocket Raccoon Statue" by Gage Skidmore via flickr in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.