I’ve not been blogging for a month as I was observing Ramadan and came back to WordPress to see changes made. Lots of it. Well, time to get used to this. I have to say though, it’s neater.

Anyway, I’m not here to blog (or rant) about the changes made to WordPress. I’m here as always to do my own movie reviews. The first movie after my month-long hiatus is… Guardians of the Galaxy and I must say that it’s a damn good choice of a movie to come back to because 1) it’s a Marvel movie, and 2) it’s a damn good Marvel movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy followed the journey of 5 eccentric individuals – Peter Quill (human being played by the hilarious Chris Pratt), Gamora (a green-skinned alien played by Zoe Saldana), Drax the Destroyer (played by WWE wrestler Dave Bautista), Rocket (a talking, bounty hunting raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (a tree humanoid voiced by Vin Diesel) – who were put together out of circumstances. Unlike The Avengers, they were not formed by some alien version of Shield.

The film began with Peter who lost his mother in 1988 and abducted by an alien. 26 years later, we saw him on an abandoned planet, stealing a prized artifact to be sold to a collector in Xandar and was then hunted down by Gamora, one of Ronan’s assassin. (Ronan was played by Lee Pace, who was unrecognizable under all the make-up.) Unknowingly, Peter was also marked by Rocket and his accomplice, Groot. In all the chaos, all four of them were captured and brought to Kyln, where they met Drax the Destroyer who wanted to kill Gamora because his family was killed by Ronan. Gamora was then saved by Peter who found out that she was betraying Ronan by wanting to sell the artifact to the Collector (played by Benicio del Toro) for 4 billion units. Peter, Gamora, Rocket and Groot then worked together to escape from Kyln. Drax was somehow mixed into it after observing the start of the escape and helping them. However, when the artifact fell into the wrong hands, i.e. Ronan, it was up to the five of them to save the universe.

Marvel movies have always been light-hearted amidst the action-packed sequences and drama but Guardians of the Galaxy just take the cake, icing and the whole shebang. I couldn’t stop laughing from start to finish. The jokes coupled with the awesome 80s soundtrack were just A+. I can’t remember a Marvel movie which was this funny, not even Iron Man. The jokes might go over the head of the children in the audience but the adults would enjoy them.

On top of that, the effects were brilliant – A+ to whoever who did Groot and Rocket, Xandar looked like The Capitol, and the other planets were just absolutely fantastic. As mentioned earlier, Lee Pace was absolutely unrecognizable as Ronan so kudos to the makeup artists as well.

Also, for the first time ever (at least one I know of), a superhero movie was written by Nicole Perlman, a woman. So, if you enjoy the jokes and dialogues in this movie, bear in mind that it was written by a woman. So, booyah!

Like any other Marvel movies, there is a post-credit scene. I have to say that I don’t read Marvel comics so if you are like me, the post-credit scene would probably leave you with question marks but if you are a Marvel comics superfan, you might know what the post-credit scene meant and from my research, most like it. From my perspective though, the scene definitely matches the tone of the entire movie so it doesn’t throw you back so much.

i truly truly enjoyed the movie and if you have not watched it or unsure if you should, go and watch it. If you love the 80s music as much as I do, you would love the soundtrack as well. There is no question now that Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely the black sheep of Marvel and it’s ridiculously good! I give it a 5 out of 5.

The trailer… (Author’s note: I’m not sure if this trailer was before post-production or was the movie I watched had a lot of cuts but as I mentioned above, there was no mention of “Guardians of the Galaxy” until, well, the end.)