Guardians of the Galaxy Review

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How is it that every new Marvel Cinematic Universe is my new favorite? Because Marvel Studios is really good at their job, that's why!

It's pretty easy to understand why The Avengers was so successful; they had five movies to set up tons of hype, with recognizable characters. All Guardians of the Galaxy had was a kick-ass trailer. I guess that's enough to earn them a $94 million opening weekend. 

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was nice seeing a Marvel movie that didn't even pretend to take itself seriously, yet still contained a bunch of events that will impact the rest of the Universe. It was comedy gold, especially when you think it is getting serious and then something hilarious happens and changes the tone completely.

I also love getting a Marvel movie with a hard science fiction setting. Don't get me wrong, superheroes are cool, but I like technology-based powers better. Part of that is because there is the potential that we might develop that technology in the future. A big part of a good science fiction movie is the visuals, and Guardians of the Galaxy was beautiful. I loved the spaceship designs, the weapons, and the plethora of alien races on display.

The soundtrack was fantastic and definitely unique. As the trailer suggests, it is heavily based on 70s and 80s pop music like "Hooked on a Feeling", "Cherry Bomb", and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". The original score was also fantastic, and carried the emotional tone of the movie perfectly.

As an ensemble movie it worked very well. All the characters got a chance to shine, though the focus was certainly on Peter Quill, the human. Groot stole the show as the lovable beast with a heart of gold. 

The one area that disappointed me with was how they stuck with entirely traditional gender roles. Gamora was supposed to be the deadliest assassin in the galaxy, but she ends up being the one who needs to be saved by Quill. Quill was also portrayed as your quintessential ladies' man, though of course a part of his character development was him finding love. Marvel has had many opportunities to be more creative and inclusive in their portrayal of genders, and it just hasn't happened yet. I hope the upcoming show Agent Carter finally breaks the mold.

I don't care who you are, you should go and see Guardians of the Galaxy as soon as you can. Seriously, just Google "Nearby showings of Guardians of the Galaxy" and it will get you on the right path.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become my biggest ongoing fandom this year, mostly thanks to the excellent show Agents of SHIELD that serves to whet my appetite between movie releases. As they have demonstrated before, they are very good at making sequels that are better than their predecessors, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues that trend. Granted, the first Captain America movie was inherently limited because it was an origin story; even so, The Winter Soldier blew it out of the water. I'll even go so far as to say that it is my favorite apart from The Avengers.

Part of the reason that I like it so much is because it ties into the grander story they are telling more than any of the other individual heroes' movies. Thor tends to deal with large cosmic threats, but doesn't have as much bearing on the lay of the land here on Earth. Even the Iron Man movies only deal with adversaries that matter to Tony Stark. With The Winter Soldier however, I don't think the world will ever be the same. I'm kind of worried about watching the next episode of SHIELD because I'm not sure how the show will change as a result of this movie. Bottom line: if you are invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is a must-see.

The two main twists in the story were executed well, though I figured out one of them before it happened.
Because of the nature of the way the Cinematic Universe takes concepts from the comic books and reapplies them to this new context, it would be very easy to accidentally spoil things for yourself by looking up things that already exist but we have not yet seen in the movies. Luckily I managed to avoid anything like that.

The dialogue was spot-on (I laughed obnoxiously loud at more than a few jokes) and the action was so good that Sonja had to hold my hand to stop me from getting too riled up. There weren't even any secondary characters that I hated. Man, everything about this movie was good.

Obviously this is Captain America's movie, but Black Widow has a large part to play as well. I was really glad to see this, because I think that she and Hawkeye deserve more screentime than they have been given so far. I wish they could have a movie all to themselves, but that probably isn't going to happen. Honestly though, why does Ant-Man get a movie and they don't?

Dream: An Epic Staring Contest

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In my dream Hawkeye was training someone on how to fight with a knife (it was just like that scene in Secondhand Lions). Hawkeye started talking about how good his eyesight was, and he brought up this city in the sky that only he could see. Obviously he was talking about Asgard. To prove it, he looked up at Asgard, and at that exact moment Heimdall happened to be looking at Hawkeye. Their eyes locked...and the most epic staring contest of all time began.

Personally I'm betting on Heimdall.