The Guy Who Made the "Guardians of the Galaxy" Trailer Should Be Fired
After seeing the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer a while back, I thought the movie would suck. The movie just looked stupid. I had not intention of going to see it, until my son pointed out the high Rotten Tomatoes review scores. I still hesitated, figuring the only people who had seen it and were reviewing it well were a select group of Comicon attendees or something similar.
But my son talked me into it and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Sure, its still a comic book movie so its not winning any Oscars and there are a few plot holes (if everyone is looking for the movie's MacGuffin so hard, why was it so easy for the protagonist to find?). And plenty of it is derivative (Rocket and Groot are Han and Chewy repackaged). Some of the characters seemed to be tossed in out of nowhere (e.g. the Collector), but I never read the comic book and presume, since this is clearly the first in a series, that they are setting up future regular characters. But the visuals were good and the dialog had some wit and charm to it. I loved how they worked the 70's music sound track into the story. I had wondered if Chris Pratt could carry off the leading man role but I thought he did OK. A very solid summer movie.
Postscript: My four word review: Zoe's Green This Time.
Hattori Hanzo:
I have not watched Guardians yet so I cannot attest to how they are treated but the characters themselves pre-date Star Wars.
August 1, 2014, 11:21 amXmas:
The Collector is part of the setup for the next Avengers movie. (Watch the end-credits scene in Thor: The Dark World. Watch the post end credits scene in Thor for something funny.)
August 1, 2014, 12:17 pmErgo:
Not these characters--this collection of "Guardians" post-dates Star Wars by many years. The original GotG never factored into their revival several years back, e.g. Starhawk and co.
August 1, 2014, 3:44 pmsch:
NPR review today had same opinion, best CG movie of the summer. "I am groot" Vin Diesels only line, but said many different ways.
August 1, 2014, 8:29 pmmesocyclone:
I remember watching the start of the original Star Wars movie when it premiered at the Cine Capri at 24th & Camelback (or thereabouts) in 1977. It started out with this very corny scrolling of text sort of off into the galaxy. I thought - Oh No! Then the movie started, and it was wonderful!
August 1, 2014, 9:43 pmsamwah:
Being a big fan of serials, I loved that part, and then the star destroyer started coming overhead...
August 2, 2014, 11:37 amJ_W_W:
This is the second Disney movie to have less than stellar previews, especially the teaser. Frozen's teaser trailer was not inspiring at all. In fact even the later trailers didn't do the movie justice. But yet $1 billion later.... Now Guardians has less than stelar trailers as well, but the movie is Awesome! The "Hooked on a Feelin'" trailer was the best of the bunch for this movie. I also think the introduction of the characters trailer was a response to the fact that these particular Marvel characters were not well known. But, I'm not sure that trailer was really needed, it sure didn't have a huge impact.
However, it all goes back to what really drives the huge box office movies, word-of-mouth.
August 4, 2014, 7:55 amjs4strings:
Just saw this last night, an extremely fun movie. Loved it. The GOTG comics came out well after i was done collecting comics. so i don't know how close to the movie comes to the original material, but the Star-Lord dancing in the first scene was hilarious.
August 6, 2014, 9:00 amBrianRommel:
I disagree The movie looked like a fun, funny sci-fi superhero movie according to the trailer and thats what I got when I saw the movie.
August 6, 2014, 9:12 amBrianRommel:
The original Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in 1969 but didn't get their own book until 1990. The new team which the movie is based of started in 2008. Though The characters go back much further such as Rocket who was created in 1976 as well as Star Lord. Groot dates back to 1960, Gomorra is from 1975 nad Drax is from 1973.
August 6, 2014, 9:18 amJohn VI:
The Collector is an interim character used to support the introduction of a major marvel villain, Thanos. They just introduced Thanos at comic con, though disney/marvel has been close lipped about when and with what franchise they will use him. Generally, he's a space based villian, but he is also generally a "end of all that is" kind of power and plan guy so the avengers are the better bet. Also, it is thanos' that is smiling at the end credits scene at the end of the original avengers movie, so they seem to be setting him up as a big cosmic string puller and can insert him anywhere they think they can make money. The original premise of thanos was control and destruction of the entire universe through an item called the " infinity Gauntlet" through 2 films now, THor 2 and Guardians, the Collector has aquired 2 of the six items necessary to make said gauntlet. That leaves up to 4 more films to play around with the collector. And with marvels current release schedule, it looks like they are setting up the collector as the stand in for thanos in all their Phase 2 films, and will likely introduce Thanos as thier major villian in their Phase 3 release schedule ( that is they release a dozen films per phase that generally tie into each other and play off each others mythos)
August 8, 2014, 2:38 pmMike Powers:
The issue is that there are tons and tons of Generic Sci-Fi Action Movies out there, and Marvel/Disney needed some way to differentiate GotG from all those GSAMs. If you just showed action beats and effects shots, it would look pretty much like a knock-off of "Serenity" except with a talking raccoon.
They also needed to introduce the characters to the audience, and they did that by doing exactly that.
And it ended with a funny little naughty neg, "what a bunch of a-holes", so you'll remember it.
I have to say that for what it needed to do, it was quite a good trailer. It certainly didn't make the movie look like anything other than a huge joke, but it got people thinking and talking about the movie, and that's what a trailer is *for*.
August 11, 2014, 11:30 am