The Guardians of the Galaxy are coming.
For the three of you left in America who haven’t seen the teaser trailer for Marvel’s next cinematic outing, shame on you. Click the link below and watch it now. I’ll wait right here.
Done?
Good. You’re a better person for it now. With the next trailer set to hit theaters and the interwebs in the next few days I felt it was time for me to weigh in on my opinion about the Guardians of the Galaxy getting a big screen adaptation, seeing that I’m a huge comic book, and specifically, Marvel comics fan. So here it is. I know NOTHING about the Guardians. I mean almost nothing at all. My knowledge of these characters extends only as far as the few episodes of Marvel cartoons like Ultimate Spider-man or Earth Mightiest Heroes, in which the Guardians made a guest appearance. So the amount of what I can tell you about those characters or whether the movie will be a good adaptation equals about as much as I can tell you about particle physics, which is exactly dick.
I’m actually happy about this, being in the dark about these characters. I intend to keep it this way. When I first heard that this was coming up on Marvel’s list I was taken aback at how strange of a choice this was. I think my exact reaction was something akin to “Really? The space guys with the raccoon?” That pretty much summed up what I know about the team. So I insisted on keeping myself in the dark, I refused to read any of their comics, or even their Wiki page. This seemed such a weird choice for Marvel to bank on in their grand cinematic universe that I chose to go in as blind to this series as most of the rest of the movie going world.
As much as I’ve avoided learning about the source material, the opposite is true of the movie’s production. I’ve straight up devoured every morsel I could get my hands on about the making of the film. I watched for every bit of casting news, shooting schedules, concept art, posters, trailers, etc. Now I’m more excited for this than anything else left to come out this year. I love the entire cast, and I’m especially happy to see Chris Pratt go all buff superhero in a big Marvel film. The director is James Gunn, who made the fantastic “Slither”, and the twisted but not that great “Super”. All in all I look at the whole thing and just get excited. Marvel is banking on their first possible flop in their Avengers universe. Granted Marvel has taken a lot of risks in their Phase 2 films so far, shaking up their world in each main characters’ respective franchises. If you’ve seen Iron Man 3, Thor 2 and Captain America 2 you know what I mean, each film ended with the main characters world changed in a drastic way. But even for Marvel, this seems risky.
Taking a cast of eclectic actors and casting them as a relatively unknown superheros is a long shot to throw millions of dollars at. On top of that, taking your two most famous actors, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, and having them just voicing a CGI Raccoon, and tree, respectively, is even riskier. The latter of which has publicly stated he only has one line in the whole movie, which from what I understand true to the comics, in which Diesel’s character Groot only has ever said the words “I am Groot”. Take all these disparate elements and throw them into a giant cosmic comic book adventure that’s opening up a whole new universe to the movie going audience makes for the weirdest, riskiest, and at least to me, most exciting thing to come down the marvel pipeline in the entirety of their giant connected movie universe. I have a lot of faith based on their track record thus far, so hopefully this will be the next step and proves that Marvel can do anything, and not be the thing that jumps the shark on comic book movies.
Until next time friends, I am Groot.
-General Dopeness