Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

The Marvel Universe movies could have not existed before Right Now. Yet, for all the technological advances and computer wizardry that have made The Avengers and the like possible, the magic still comes from the humanity of the actors. No amount of technical prowess can make you care about Iron Man if a great actor hasn’t sold you on the bravado and change of heart of the man inside the suit. Captain America’s shield and super strength are great but his adventures don’t work if Chris Evans’s star turn isn’t so perfectly pitched to invoke fantasies of the nobility of a bygone American era. Without the humanity it’s just Trans4rmers and nobody wants that. (Shut up. I’m in denial about those billions). With Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios has gone Cosmic opening up a whole new movie wing for their ever-expanding universe. As they leave Earth behind, have they found a way to retain the humanity?

Yes and no. But not in the way you might expect.

It helps of course, on a superficial level that the movie begins on Earth and shamelessly pushes collective 80s nostalgia buttons by making Peter Quill, our hero, relentlessly nostalgic about that era. We first meet him as a little boy in 1988 and his most cherished possession twenty some years later when the movie takes place isn’t any of his impressive weapons or starship but a walkman with a cassette tape called “Awesome Mix Tape Volume 1”. It also helps that Quill is played by the endearingly simple Andy from “Parks and Recreation” a.k.a. Chris Pratt. Pratt’s new body may be imposingly hard, with all its cuddly body weight chiseled off, but those years of familiarity have given him a phantom comfy-ness. 

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Live(ish) from Comic Con: Marvel-ous Ant Man & Avengers 2

Anne Marie here, wrapping up coverage from San Diego Comic Con after 8 straight hours of studio announcements. Marvel had some major obstacles to overcome for its brief one hour panel. Edgar Wright's departure from Ant Man had generated negative press, and not everyone was thrilled with the studio's decision to put out release dates unattached to any actual films. WB had been gearing up for a fight, but overall so far Hall H's announcements had been more misses than hits. As the studio delayed 15 minutes into its start time and fans grew mad, the question hung in the air: could Marvel deliver?

Answer: Hell yes.

Ant Man
Marvel president Kevin Feige introduced a panel designed to assuage fan fears: Paul Rudd (new Ant Man), Michael Douglas (old Ant Man), Corey Stoll (confirmed as villain Yellow Jacket), Evangeline Lilly (Ant Man's love interest) and Peyton Reed, who stepped in to direct. Reed was quick to flash his geek cred: 20 straight years at Comic Con and a stint in a band named the Johnny Quests. But none of that really proves his credentials as Wright's replacement. Marvel even produced a minute long teaser, despite the fact that they don't start shooting for another two weeks. It's more than WB provided for Batman v Superman, but it's not enlightening. Here's the weirdest moment of the panel:

Paul Rudd: I'm popping my Comic Con cherry, and it's as advertised.

Chris Hardwicke: If you're going to do it, do it with 7,000 people.

Michael Douglas: I've popped enough cherries.

So, Michael Douglas is kind of creepy. This isn't news, but it bears repeating.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
The panel assembling half of the Avengers team was charming enough, but the real show began at approximately 6:40pm, when 7,000 geeks in Hall H collectively lost their minds over the trailer for the next Avengers movie. Set to a creepy version of "There Are No Strings On Me" (the advantage of being owned by Disney), it teased Iron Man's Hulk-Busting armor, an army of Ultrons (that look suspiciously like Iron Man drones), and twins Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (played by Elizabeth Olson and Aaron Taylor Johnson and totally unrelated to the Xmen versions) dealing some serious damage.

Elizabeth Olson almost slipped up and said the word "mutant." The crowd groaned a bit. #SDCC2014 #Marvel #copyright

— Anne Marie (@WeRecycleMovies) July 27, 2014

Age of Ultron promises to be much, much darker. Despite a lively banter-filled dinner party opening, the trailer ended with Iron Man holding Captain America's broken shield at the base of a mountain of superhero corpses. Chris Evans keeps saying he's out a after Captain America is over. Maybe it's over earlier than we expected.

We ended with two final announcements of the night: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 has been set for a 2017 release. Says a lot about Marvel's confidence, since Guardians 1 won't be released until Friday. But who cares, because more importantly Josh Brolin is Thanos! He walked out wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.

And that's the end of my Hall H coverage! This year was 15 hours of waiting in line and 8 hours of studio announcements. I'll be back to wrap things up Sunday night after I've showered, slept, and questioned my life choices for a bit.

Live(ish) from San Diego Comic Con!

Anne Marie here, writing from the Big Daddy of all conventions, San Diego Comic Con! For the next four days, over 100,000 geeks and geekettes of all ages will take over downtown San Diego. Haters state that SDCC "sold out" and stopped being about comics long ago; I say that's a good thing. Studios, TV networks, video game companies, and publishers all vie for a place here.  Think of SDCC like an all-inclusionary media festival, if most of the media was made up of trailers, demos, behind-the-scenes panels, and free tchotchkes in the shape of Simpsons characters.

SDCC has been playing an increasingly large role in the pop culture landscape. As many as half of 2014's Top 10 Blockbusters had a presence at Comic Con last year. But it's not just about the lowbrow. The Academy Award-winning Gravity premiered its trailer at a panel last year where director Alfonso Cuaron discussed its now-famous technological challenges. The year before, Quentin Tarantino assembled the cast of Django Unchained to talk about his eventual-Oscar-winning film. But awards aside, SDCC is all about the fans.  

a detail from the first Ant-Man poster 

Each year, the studios vie for fans' attention (and social media connections), and two studios always loom large: Warner Bros and Marvel. This year, there are rumbles that WB will not only show off the new Batman/Superman film, but may give us a glimpse at the Justice League. Marvel, the crowned king of Comic Con, will not be overshadowed. They've been planting bread crumbs in the form of press releases leading up to SDCC, but will Saturday be when we finally learn what films are attached to that maddening set of release dates Marvel teased earlier this week? Will they redeem Ant Man after Edgar Wright's very public departure? A little panel can go a long way towards smoothing things over. 20th Century Fox and Legendary will also be making noise with everything from Batman '66 to a rumored Godzilla 2. And that's just what's happening in the movies!

For the next four days, I'll have my thumb on the pulse of pop culture, and I'll be sharing what I find with you. Follow me on Twitter for live updates, and stay tuned here for interviews, panel reviews, and more. Have something you want me to see? At Comic Con yourself? Tweet me or post in to comments below!

Linkpiercer

Guardian Tim Robey has a lovely tribute to TV & film star James Garner (RIP) who I'll always remember best for Murphy's Romance and Victor/Victoria in the 1980s
Pajiba I'm more of a cat person but this gallery of big celebrities with tiny dogs is adorable
Criterion Collection on the painstaking restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Thompson on Hollywood has an in depth look at the VOD decisions involving Snowpiercer from the mouth of Harvey Weinstein (so yes it's very one-sided... but interesting nonetheless)

The Dissolve 'when images match ideas' on Snowpiercer and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 
Pajiba has the talk with Marvel about the Edgar Wright Divorce  
Towleroad Andrew Rannells starts soon as Hedwig. (I'm excited. The role is big enough for multiple interpretations)
Theater Mania Michelle Williams wants to keep singing at the Kit Kat Club longer than expected. She's staying with Cabaret all the way through November 9th now (I guess she doesn't have to start promoting Suite Française for awhile still)
Details interviews Wentworth Miller, former Prison Break hunk and Stoker writer, on his career after coming out

And, finally, are you excited for Festival Season yet?

I'm trying to remain calm as I make plans but NYFF isn't making staying calm any easier what with their Opening Night Film (Gone Girl's world premiere) Centerpiece (Inherent Vice) and Closing Night (Birdman which is scheduled for Venice as well). Tomorrow TIFF holds their opening news conference and we'll hear more about their plans as well. Here's some speculation from a Toronto news site which suggests that Reese Witherspoon is going to be a major presence and you can probably safely assume that Maps to the Stars will also be there given TIFF's love of Cronenberg.

Burning Questions: Are Marvel films Interchangeable?

Amir here and I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore. There is no Marvel movie in theatres at the moment but the world is anticipating Guardians of the Galaxy very soon, as has been the case every few months for the past several years. Like Michael Bay films, discussed in the box office column, Marvel films are entities I have vowed not to ever see again, especially after news came out that Edgar Wright was taken off Ant-Man. I was marginally interested in Guardians after seeing the kooky trailer, but who are we kidding? The off-kilter humor of the short preview is going to give way to explosions and “things crashing into other things” and the experience will be like every single other Marvel film.

Which brings me to this frustrating news: Marvel has announced release dates for (hopefully all) their future films until the end of the decade, with the catch being the absence of... film titles? Yes, that’s correct. The studio has planned its visual assault all the way for the next five years, without even bothering with the names in the announcement this time.

Have they now realized that their output is completely interchangeable? I’m not exactly sure if I’d be less upset if these dates had titles attached to them, but what stings about the news is Marvel’s acute awareness that the audience will get excited about it and mark their calendars even without characters or stories to get excited about in the first place, like zombies feeding on chiseled heroes. The studio has become the brand, fully overshadowing the content of its films; and its sibling comics business moves like turning Thor into a woman do little to conceal the studio's lack of creative force. This announcement of release dates of unnamed product reeks of what's desperately rotten with today’s film culture: That a distinctly original, unique (and admittedly problematic) vision like Snowpiercer, fails to crack double digits at the box office, at a time when a studio with no regard for originality or qualitative progress can correctly expect people to rush to their wallets five years in advance.

Something is broken and it needs serious fixing, otherwise what we're offered on screen will continue to become less versatile and more depressing by the week. If you don't believe me, look no further than this weekend's wide release box office, where a meaningless sequel stayed at the top spot; a terrible sequel came second; an even more terrible sequel came third; and the most terrible of all sequels came fifth. I’m fucking angry about everything.