Anarchy Journal Constitutional

by @anarchyroll
8/11/2014

Holy Howard the Duck was Guardians of Galaxy a good comic book movie!

The first time I heard of Guardians of the Galaxy was when the trailer debuted online earlier this year.

This film is yet another example that Marvel Studios does way more right than wrong and that all Marvel intellectual properties should be developed for the silver screen by Marvel and NOT third-party like Sony (Spiderman) or 2oth Century Fox (X-Men).

I saw the movie with a friend who owns all but two issues of Guardians ever printed. He informed me that the film was as true to the source material as any comic book movie that has come before it. That is another reason why Marvel Studios needs to make all Marvel movies. It is important that comic book movies be very close to their source material, more so than novels. Why?

My friend @TheFantom says it all the time and it’s truer each time I hear it; comic books are colorized, fully fleshed out, movie storyboards.

That doesn’t mean each comic book movie needs to be a shot for shot live action version of a comic. Hollywood needs to be able to do its thing and take creative license with the source material. But maybe let’s have one comic book movie that is a live action storyboard and see how it does in the theaters. It can’t do any worse than Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern disaster.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the opposite of disappointing. It was everything I want out of a summer blockbuster movie in general, and out of a comic book movie specifically. It had awesome action, great comedy, and intense drama all in the right places of a film that was neither too short or too long.

The opening scene of the movie is intense human drama, the very next scene is a comedic, musical, action scene. That sentence basically sums up Guardians of the Galaxy. The film does a good job at touching upon the full range of human emotions. I think that many women who don’t like comic book movies or big budget action movies would like this film for that very reason; the full range of emotions get their buttons pressed.

So whether you’re a casual movie fan or the human version of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, Guardians of the Galaxy will find a way to suck you into the screen and entertain you, regardless of whether you paid the extra fee for 3D. And these days, at these prices, that is all I ask of a movie.