Guardians of the Galaxy

You’re welcome

Women were the original storytellers.  Those visual narratives smeared on the walls of ancient caves?  Created by women.  Women have also penned some of the greatest novels, short stories, and poems in our history, from Sappho to Flannery O’Connor to Grace Paley to Virginia Woolf, right down to Amy Hempel, Karen Russell, Jennifer Egan, Helen Oyeyemi, and Eowyn Ivey.  So as much of a landmark it is that a female screenwriter (Nicole Perlman) finally has her name attached to one of the Marvel Universe’s cornucopia of formula CG-action movies, it’s no revelation, and it’s infuriating to read headlines such as “Who Knew Women Could Write Superhero Movies?” We all did.  Women write much better stuff on a daily basis.  The real landmark here is that the Marvel people have finally allowed for this to happen, and the result is a superhero movie that is more sarcastic, self-possessed, and absorbing than anything of its type since the original Iron Man.

The story begins yet another “boy with a dead mother” narrative.  Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) fails to comfort his mother (Laura Haddock) as she dies of cancer.  Equipped with only a mixtape of her favorite ’70s songs (“Awesome Mix #1”) and her final unopened birthday present to him, he runs out into a field, where he is soon abducted by aliens.  A normal day at the hospital, really.  Twenty-something years later, in a utopian used-future, Quill is a bandit and has fashioned himself “Star-Lord.”  The whole thing has a real Outlaw Star vibe.  His frenemy/mentor Yondu (Michael Rooker) becomes annoyed when Quill takes a valuable sphere for himself, as does a religious fanatic called Ronan (Lee Pace), whose henchman Korath (Djimon Hounsou) was sent to pick it up before having an unfortunate encounter with Quill.  In the absence of his mother, Quill has become a selfish, thieving womanizer, and now some serious galactic powers are after him.  Ronan, played by Lee Pace as a laconic, one-dimensional amalgam of Shredder and any Dragonball Z villain, sends Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to retrieve the stolen orb.  Through one thing and another, Gamora, a ruthless assassin whose sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) also works with Ronan, reveals that she was planning on betraying Ronan anyway, as the MacGuffin everyone is after contains an Infinity Stone, an object able to raze entire civilizations in seconds.  Guess what Ronan plans on doing with it?

Quill and Gamora, after meeting bounty hunters Rocket (Bradley Cooper) – a science experiment gone wrong, who appears as a foul-mouthed raccoon, but has never heard of raccoons – and Groot (apparently Vin Diesel), a walking CG tree who only knows three words (“I am Groot”), end up in a classic scenario: imprisoned with a bunch of tough inmates who hate them, and in need of a friendly inmate to help them out.  This help comes in the form of Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), whose family was killed by Ronan during one of the latter’s routine killing sprees.  Convenient motivation!  Once they escape, they discover that Ronan’s next target is the planet Xandar, a facsimile of Earth, and home to the Nova Corps (generic good-guy space-marines), plenty of unsuspecting folks with children, and a certain philanderer who looks an awful lot like Stan Lee.  Needless to say, this aggression will not stand, man.  Quill’s group formulates a plan to get rid of Ronan and keep the stone safe, and the whole thing goes pretty much how you’d expect.

Chris Pratt, known for playing the frumpy and loveable Andy Dwyer on Parks & Rec, does a lot of work with the character of Quill that an already-established film comedian – say, Ben Stiller – would not have had to do.  Perlman’s script is not afraid to make Quill initially unlikeable and selfish for the sake of being selfish, and even though we know he’s destined to become the film’s Boring Hero, he feels like an actual character by the time he gets to that point (or at least, as much of a character as one can be in a movie made up of nearly nonstop action).  Dave Bautista’s stilted acting suits the character of Drax perfectly: he’s a muscleheaded Spartan-style warrior who only speaks literally and doesn’t understand metaphors or sarcasm (“Nothing goes over my head!  My reflexes are much too fast.  I would just catch it.”).  Cooper’s voice is nearly unrecognizable as Rocket, who ends up as one of the most fully realized characters in the film, albeit with almost no real background revealed – I imagine this will be sequel fodder, along with the details of Quill’s parentage and the leftover villains.

Zoe Saldana plays Gamora with great confidence, and she is the film’s truest badass, but as the story begins to center more and more around Quill, the woman who overpowered every member of the cast at the beginning (including Drax, whom she could have killed back in prison) suddenly relies on the stubbly hero, is reluctantly attracted to his silly dancing, and agrees to follow his lead.  She’s not exactly downtrodden, but she’s always second fiddle, is needlessly called a “whore” at one point, and ultimately satisfies the male wish fulfillment that comes with having a protagonist like Quill, right down to occupying a void left by Quill’s mother at the beginning (as if taking Gamora’s hand during a vital time makes up for the fact that his mother died a lonely, agonizing death).  The group makes heavy use of the No Girls Allowed Clause, even allowing two Big Tough Guys, but only one woman.  The opposition does the same: Nebula is the most adept, hardy, and consistent of the villainous characters, while Korath grovels and gets his butt whupped, and Ronan alternatively broods and bickers with his partner, Thanos (Josh Brolin).  Nebula’s real conflict is with Gamora, her adoptive sister, and her escape enables future layers for her character, rather than just having her function as one of the big three bad guys, so that every member of the hero team has someone to fight at the end (although in terms of this movie itself, she satisfies that condition too).

Most of the characters’ behavior makes sense, and the adventure itself is something they’re simply dragged into, making them Marvel’s true “ragtag” group.  In fact, Ronan pejoratively labels them the “Guardians of the Galaxy” after what seems to be a crippling screw-up on their part.  Everyone has a background that could have conceivably brought them to where they are, although most of that background isn’t explored because so much time is devoted to chases and explosions, and because the structure of the film is that of a fast-paced and linear video game.  Even the histrionic theatrics of Ronan, which he goes through again and again instead of just killing the heroes, seems justified when you think of him as a fanatical alien whose sense of ceremony is just as important to him as what he actually accomplishes.

What sets Guardians apart from other superhero stock is its sarcasm and self-conscious quality.  Or at least, its attempt to be aware of what it is.  During an obligatory Hero Shot, Gamora yawns and Quill wipes his nose.  Quill constantly makes references to pre-’90s pop culture, including Ranger Rick, Alf, Alyssa Milano, and others that the film’s target demographic won’t get.  When Quill makes his plea for aid from the Nova Corps, who have vilified him for years, his big justification is that he’s “an a-hole, but not one-hundred-percent a dick.”  The funny parts are genuinely funny due to Pratt’s delivery.  But the issue is that the film still carries the structure of every other Marvel movie, in spite of how much they make make fun of it, so when the inevitable epiphanies happen and Quill decides to be a good guy, it’s a sham.  Even Quill can’t explain why he risks his life to save Gamora when she’s spaced by Nebula; he knows it would have made more sense to just save himself.  His big rallying speech to the Guardians argues that this is their chance to “give a shit,” and even after Rocket correctly lampshades the obligatory Heroes Standing Up One at a Time scene as “a bunch of jackasses standing in a circle,” that scene has still happened, and for the same reason it happens in every one of these movies: Freytag’s Superhero Pyramid.

The film comes very close to being Marvel’s redheaded stepchild, and is genuinely better than most Marvel movies despite being bogged down by conventions and still being too “safe” for fear of not making its money back.  But hey, we’re talking about a company that responds to accusations of gender discrimination by turning one of its already-famous male characters female instead of just creating a new female character.  What are you afraid of, Marvel?

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014); written by Nicole Perlman; directed by James Gunn; starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, and Bradley Cooper. 

The Man With Iron Fists

Tiger-style!

The fights in The Man With the Iron Fists are about what you’d expect given any knowledge of its narrow range of influences: they’re numerous, long, gory, and full of glamorous-looking airborne kicks and the occasional dismemberment (see also: bull-shitsu).

It was only a matter of time before RZA created his own martial arts epic, considering the effects of those classic kung-fu favorites on his music and virtually everything he’s ever produced.  The film comes off as a love note to the beloved genre, albeit without much in the way of reinvention or originality, and the film occasionally skirts a Tarantino-esque style of tribute (namely in the opening and ending sequences).  The main issue is that RZA chooses to cast himself in the title role instead of a more adept actor, and while I’m not sure I’d be able to resist the temptation of casting myself as the central character in a film that resembles a generic arcade fighting game, there’s a certain responsibility that comes with having the money and privilege to actually make that choice, and RZA’s performance doesn’t match that of the other actors in the film, leastways not enough to afford his character the lead role.

The story sees Thaddeus (RZA), an escaped slave and expert blacksmith, trapped and destitute in Jungle Village, a made-up place somewhere in an anachronistic era of China in which people apparently spent their days fighting with inventive weapons.  Though he feels badly about it, Thaddeus makes a living creating deadly weapons for bad people, most notably the clan of Silver Lion (Byron Mann), a turncoat warlord who murdered his adopted father in order to seize power.  Silver Lion’s closest advisers include Brass Body (Dave Bautista), a mercenary with the inexplicable power to turn his body to solid metal with the bat of an eye (amendment: an era of China in which people fight with inventive weapons and magic powers), and Poison Dagger (Daniel Wu), a hooded figure who serves as the film’s codex for 3/4 of the story until he’s needed for a fight scene.  The other main power structure in Jungle Village is Madame Blossom (Lucy Liu), the self-proclaimed Queen of the village, who runs a brothel, the women of which practice (unbeknownst to the villagers) “black widow style,” another seemingly magic-based form of fighting.  Eventually, a Man With No Name type figure who calls himself (ugh) “Jack Knife” (Russell Crowe, who I still can’t believe did this film) wanders into town in search of fortune.  Through one thing and another, Jack becomes involved in a revenge plot against the evil Silver Lion, allying with the stoic Thaddeus and Zen-Yi (Rick Yune), the real son of Silver Lion’s murdered stepfather.

The cast of characters is ambitiously huge and also includes Jamie Chung as Thaddeus’ girlfriend, Cung Lee as Bronze Lion (Silver Lion’s main crony), Gordon Liu as an ancient monk, Grace Huang and Andrew Lin as the Geminis (fighters hired by the Emperor to guard his gold, the film’s MacGuffin), and Pam Grier as Thaddeus’ mother.  The film is paced in such a way that an audience may be confused as to whether each character is receiving her/his proper amount of screen time, but in the end, things seem to fall into place.  The cast and its use resembles Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter series (originally X-rated in America for its violence, which is somewhat laughable now), in that it features a group of fighters with various seemingly unstoppable styles, and relies on its main character to devise techniques for defeating each of them.  Thaddeus, I think, cheats a little bit, and Crowe’s character carries a gun, but it’s still somehow easier to root for them than the heartless bastards they’re up against.

A film like this relies 95% on its fight scenes, and despite the obvious wire-work heavily featured throughout, there’s a sense of consistency.  The sheer amount of fighting is exhausting, but nothing comes out of left field (judge for yourself whether that’s good or bad).  Women get a short straw here (all, as you’d expect, are either dead or prostitutes), but Lucy Liu’s performance is more dedicated and fun than it needs to be.  Crowe, who has gained considerable weight (and apparently lost it for Les Miserables), is reliably funny and likeable, despite his character’s womanizing tendencies.  The best performance, though, has to be Byron Mann as the deliciously evil Silver Lion, such a sociopath that he makes fun of his victims’ pleas before slaughtering them.  Mann makes the role fun without going over the top (maybe a task in and of itself when considering how over-the-top the movie is anyway).

Something I can’t help but notice – slavery seems to be a hot topic lately.  Cloud Atlas had a slavery storyline, there’ve been three movies about Lincoln out in the past year, Tarantino’s Django Unchained involves a slave hunting down slave owners, Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave is being adapted into a film next year, and now, even a pulpy fight-movie by RZA has an abrupt and obligatory back-story in which white guys in cowboy hats beat the hell out of Thaddeus and throw the “n-word” around.  Of course, this is an issue that we may never come to terms with as a nation and as a people, but I have to wonder why this year is the time in which to act it out.

The Man With the Iron Fists (2012); written and directed by RZA; starring Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, RZA, and Byron Mann.