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When Guardians of the Galaxy first came out in 2014, it made quite a splash with its blend of wild locations and colorful characters along with a heavy helping of James Gunn humor. In fact... It made SO MUCH of a damn splash that it marked the turn of how modern movies would now usually get made, even over 10 years later. Combining raw action and drama with a good amount of humor was never a new concept, but it was something that, up till then, we didn't see a whole lot of. Or at least, not to my recollection anyway. Sure, we had action movies with humor IN them, but (usually) never to the amount and style that GotG seemed to have.
But it wasn't just the fact that GotG had a lot more humor in it. It was also, at least in my arrogant opinion, unexpected and intelligent in its humor. It also helped that we never really were expecting this sort of thing out of Marvel Studios either. Before GotG's release, The Avengers (2012) was probably the closest to this sort of thing. But still, we're now two paragraphs in just talking about this movie's humor, but the sort of quick-witted interrupting-the-action-and-drama humor of GotG is something I feel I really should talk about as people have rightly been complaining about this style of movie overrunning Hollywood for years now. Thankfully, I think this style of movie-making is finally on its way out the door now and film producers are these days a lot less likely to compromise a movie's carefully built drama and action for a joke.
In fact, it's because of that decrease that I feel I'm now able to once again appreciate and enjoy GotG for what it did. Getting mad at this movie is like getting mad at Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for starting a trend of dirty brown military shooters. This movie may not ever have been your personal favorite cup of tea, but if you ever did enjoy it and stopped due to Hollywood wildly overdoing this style of movie, well, don't worry. The idiots are now gone and it's safe to come out of that hole now and enjoy this movie as you once did.
Putting aside all that talk of the movie's style now, let's discuss this movie's main theme. And the word of the day here is family. Specifically, the family you choose to have and keep around you. Whether they're your blood relatives, or whether they're "just" very good friends. When I first watched GotG, I was always kinda confused why Peter Quill didn't take his mother's hand at the beginning, but it slowly dawned on me. Of course, Peter was just a dumb kid back then, but he was trying to emotionally turtle up and isolate himself from the incredible amounts of emotional hurt that he didn't want. And that's the running theme for this movie.
It's easy to not reach out to others. People often don't ask for help. They never show others their vulnerable side. Too much risk of being hurt again. But that's exactly what GotG is saying you should NOT do. Ronan is basically the logical extreme of those who completely go the lone-wolf route and choose hate, isolation, and lack of sympathy. Letting their grief turn into overwhelming hate. Beyond that, GotG takes great pains to show us how much of a screw-up each person on the team here is. All their peculiarities and imperfections. But despite that, they all know that they need to grow the hell up and reach out to each other, despite all their annoyances.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a broken record here and talk once again about how important it is that we all unify here both as individuals and as a country. Are we gonna be guardians of our own little corner of the galaxy? Or are we going to be the dumbasses who, in our blind hate and stupidity, try to take on a friggin' army by ourselves?
But it wasn't just the fact that GotG had a lot more humor in it. It was also, at least in my arrogant opinion, unexpected and intelligent in its humor. It also helped that we never really were expecting this sort of thing out of Marvel Studios either. Before GotG's release, The Avengers (2012) was probably the closest to this sort of thing. But still, we're now two paragraphs in just talking about this movie's humor, but the sort of quick-witted interrupting-the-action-and-drama humor of GotG is something I feel I really should talk about as people have rightly been complaining about this style of movie overrunning Hollywood for years now. Thankfully, I think this style of movie-making is finally on its way out the door now and film producers are these days a lot less likely to compromise a movie's carefully built drama and action for a joke.
In fact, it's because of that decrease that I feel I'm now able to once again appreciate and enjoy GotG for what it did. Getting mad at this movie is like getting mad at Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for starting a trend of dirty brown military shooters. This movie may not ever have been your personal favorite cup of tea, but if you ever did enjoy it and stopped due to Hollywood wildly overdoing this style of movie, well, don't worry. The idiots are now gone and it's safe to come out of that hole now and enjoy this movie as you once did.
Putting aside all that talk of the movie's style now, let's discuss this movie's main theme. And the word of the day here is family. Specifically, the family you choose to have and keep around you. Whether they're your blood relatives, or whether they're "just" very good friends. When I first watched GotG, I was always kinda confused why Peter Quill didn't take his mother's hand at the beginning, but it slowly dawned on me. Of course, Peter was just a dumb kid back then, but he was trying to emotionally turtle up and isolate himself from the incredible amounts of emotional hurt that he didn't want. And that's the running theme for this movie.
It's easy to not reach out to others. People often don't ask for help. They never show others their vulnerable side. Too much risk of being hurt again. But that's exactly what GotG is saying you should NOT do. Ronan is basically the logical extreme of those who completely go the lone-wolf route and choose hate, isolation, and lack of sympathy. Letting their grief turn into overwhelming hate. Beyond that, GotG takes great pains to show us how much of a screw-up each person on the team here is. All their peculiarities and imperfections. But despite that, they all know that they need to grow the hell up and reach out to each other, despite all their annoyances.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a broken record here and talk once again about how important it is that we all unify here both as individuals and as a country. Are we gonna be guardians of our own little corner of the galaxy? Or are we going to be the dumbasses who, in our blind hate and stupidity, try to take on a friggin' army by ourselves?
