Guardians of the Galaxy; or Rocket Racoon hangs out with some other guys

Another day, another CGI-heavy Marvel slugfest. Long before this movie ever landed, I just wanted to see the racoon. The first trailer didn’t even give the racoon a line, but something told me that he was going to own the damn movie when it finally happened. 

And so it came to pass. Maybe the weirdest thing about Guardians of the Galaxy is that the CGI characters are somehow warmer and more interesting than the humans. Rocket Racoon is just the best thing Marvel ever bothered with. Groot has one line, repeatedly endlessly, and somehow he’s a warm presence all the way through the movie. And this is two actors literally phoning it in; all Vin Diesel had to do was say “I am Groot” a bunch of times and go home. Bradley Cooper did the whole thing in a looping booth. You almost have to feel sorry for all the other guys who had to show up and work up a sweat every day.

I kind of wish that the Marvel guys would learn from this; make a movie with interesting characters who feel like people and say funny things; instant hit. Explosions have been done to death. They’re boring now, because blowing things up is just the director saying “I am Groot” so loud you can’t even make the words out. Five guys bickering over whether they’ve even got a plan; there’s a million ways to make that fresh.

I don’t think my wish is going to come true any time soon, because the back half of the movie is literally interchangeable with any other Marvel movie. There’s a big flying menace which is going to destroy a big brightly lit city and so the heroes have to shoot it down, as though somehow having it fall in flaming chunks of explodium will do less damage to the landscape than letting it open fire. I have literally lost count of how often Marvel have done this, but I have bitched about it enough already. 

We watched it in 3D because they have made it literally impossible to see it in any other format. And John forgot his 3D glasses, so we got a chance to check out James Gunn’s claim that the movie had been designed in 3D from the ground up. No. I didn’t notice anything remarkable with my 3D glasses on, and John had just as much as I did with no glasses at all, because all the fun is the racoon and the other guys he gets stuck hanging out with.