Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Space invaders

A talking, gun-toting raccoon as part of a super team might be weird, but add a sentient tree who only says: “I am Groot”, that’s when things get outright bizarre. Movie fans who have gotten used to Marvel fare — from Captain America’s shield to Iron Man’s quips — now have a new host of characters to be acquainted with in what might be Marvel’s oddest, edgiest and most hilarious offering yet.

A talking, gun-toting raccoon as part of a super team might be weird, but add a sentient tree who only says: “I am Groot”, that’s when things get outright bizarre. Movie fans who have gotten used to Marvel fare — from Captain America’s shield to Iron Man’s quips — now have a new host of characters to be acquainted with in what might be Marvel’s oddest, edgiest and most hilarious offering yet.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is based on the Marvel comic book series of the same name, and can be described as a cockier Indiana-Jones-meets-Star-Wars. After all, there’s a ragtag bunch of oddballs led by Star-Lord (played by Parks and Recreation’s Chris Pratt) facing off against Ronan the Accuser (the villain, if you can’t already tell from his name).

The movie features some of the least-known Marvel characters as headliners brought to life by a diverse cast, reflecting the wackiness of the movie: Pratt is better known for his comedic chops and was last heard in The Lego Movie, wrestler Dave Bautista stars as fellow Guardian Drax the Destroyer, sci-fi mainstay Zoe Saldana is the deadly assassin Gamora, while Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel lend their voices as Rocket Raccoon and the tree-like Groot respectively. Making sense of the antics of these crazy aliens is writer-director James Gunn, who made eclectic movies such as Slither and Super.

“I never think anything I do is crazy, I guess I’m just crazy!” said Gunn when he was in Singapore for the Guardian’s South-east Asia press tour with Saldana and Bautista last week. “I just think of it as, I’m telling the story of these characters who happen to live in outer space, I’m making an action-adventure film and I want people to love those characters and feel for them as they go along on this journey as much as possible.”

 

THE POWER COSMIC

 

This marks Marvel’s first movie set in its cosmic universe. The Avengers in 2012 gave only a hint of that with the appearance of the alien Chitauri and the glimpse of comics super-villain Thanos in the after-credits scene, while the character known as the Collector (performed by a very bleached Benicio Del Toro) popped up at the end of Thor: The Dark World.

And Gunn was quick to point out that this helps set Guardians apart from the other Marvel movies. “Well, there’s the obvious difference, which is that (Guardians) is in outer space. There’s more of everything in Guardians,” he added. “There’s more action, there’s more comedy, there’s more drama … I think that it’s just a more extreme film than the other Marvel movies.”

To get an idea of how the Guardians and the other Marvel ensemble, Avengers, compare, Gunn likened the former to The Rolling Stones and the latter to The Beatles. Leading lady Saldana took it a step further: “The Guardians are the Sex Pistols, and the Avengers? They’re the Backstreet Boys.”

The musical comparison works because music plays a huge part in the movie. Gunn himself filled the film’s soundtrack with a mix of songs from the ’70s and ’80s, such as Blue Swede’s Hooked On A Feeling, which hit the top of the iTunes chart after it was featured in the movie’s trailer.

“It’s pretty exciting that this guy has got a new career from us after being featured in the movie,” joked Gunn.

 

HOOKED ON A FEELING

 

From the 20-minute preview shown during their South-east Asia tour, it appears that Gunn has managed to get fans—and cast members—wanting more.

“I just have the feeling that we’re going to be doing this again,” mused Bautista. “I just feel that this is going to be huge.”

Guardians also gives a nod to the larger Marvel universe out there, with Ant-Man set for a release next year and a Doctor Strange movie in the works. That means, too, that lesser-known heroes such as African hero Black Panther and She-Hulk could get their chance to go from print to screen. We already hear Howard the Duck quacking cheerfully at the thought of a reboot.

Gunn himself is toying with the idea of working with another Marvel character. “There’s this character called Hit-Monkey that I like a lot, a little assassin monkey, but I think that now that I’ve done Guardians, I’ve sort of had my fill of anthropomorphic furry murderers,” said Gunn. “But there’s also the Thunderbolts … a bunch of super villains who become part of a super team, so I like that quite a bit.”

As for a Marvel fan like me? I’m wishing for Emily Blunt as Captain Marvel, maybe in Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. That doesn’t seem so crazy, does it?

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.