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Thursday, February 12, 2015

Best of 2014, #6: Guardians of the Galaxy

According to a lot of my theories, this movie shouldn’t work:
  • The hero is motivated by money for most of the movie, and even when he does decide to ditch the money and become a true hero, the heroic motivation is too small because he decides to save a planet that is not his own, nor is it the home planet of any of the Guardians. Why should he or we care about Glenn-Close-world? It’s bizarre that the movie remains compelling. The filmmakers must have been tempted to replace these weak motivations with a more straightforward emotion goal, such as searching for his missing father, or trying to avenge his dead mother, but the movie goes precisely the other way. In fact, you could say they break another rule: Instead of simplifying the motivation they multiply it: Pratt’s primary motivation is money, but his secondary motivation is something that seems equally superficial, but isn’t: he want to be cool. His social humiliation is delivered right away when he announces he’s Star-Lord and Djimon Hounsou says “Who?” (Nicely paid off when the same character later warns his boss, “That’s Star-Lord!”) This seemingly shallow goal becomes deeply heartfelt because we see how closely tied it is to his severed relationship with both parents. His hapless attempts to be cool ultimately are an attempt to search for his dad and bring his mother back. Threading that tricky emotional needle was a big part of this movie’s unexpected success.
  • But wait, here’s another violation: The concept seems to be too complicated. The interplanetary politics of this world are bizarrely labyrinthine, and after the very-relatable first scene we suddenly jump into the middle of a complicated story that we never quite catch up with, so why doesn’t this alienate the audience (literally and figuratively) as badly as Pacific Rim? Obviously, beginning in a recognizable place goes a long way, allowing us to step into this world with the hero, at least briefly, but beyond that, the movie greatly benefits from a rule hidden inside this post: the value of “I’ll tell you later” Guardians pushes this to its extreme, because this was basically one big movie of “I’ll tell you later.” The filmmakers use weirdness as wallpaper, much in the same way that Star Wars does, but they never ask us to care about that stuff any more than the hero does (and he’s wonderfully dismissive of most of it.)
This movie puts a very human hero in a very weird galaxy and allows us to hang on tightly to the hero’s emotional throughline as everything else goes crazy. You don’t have to believe in any of this craziness, you just have to believe in him. Pacific Rim does the opposite: It quickly becomes clear that those filmmakers care more about the concept than the characters, which makes it impossible for the audience to care about either.

Next: Back down to Earth…

18 comments:

j.s. said...

Here's the first one where we'll have to disagree. I know this was a huge hit. I also know someone who almost worked on it but passed because he just didn't get it, he couldn't see why anyone would care or be interested in this story. I'm with that guy. This film felt like it lasted 5 or 6 hours for me. Just one endless "cool" looking set piece after another. I know you say you care about the characters but I couldn't have cared less about any of them. They're all just stock figures inspired by (the kind way to see it) or just ripping off (probably the more accurate way) other better stories. All I could think of while watching it was how this or that detail of any given scene was done better, earlier somewhere else.

j.s. said...

In my haste, I forgot to ask what remains the biggest question for me about this film: Why is this team even a team? Is it just me or do the team members have even less reason to all join up together than any of the individuals do to pursue any of their goals?

James Kennedy said...

All I know is that if we get to the end of this dispiriting list (SNOWPIERCER??!?) and UNDER THE SKIN doesn't make the cut, then it's divorce between me and Matt. DIVORCE.

Matt Bird said...

Don't lose your spirit, James!

I did actually see "Under the Skin" on your recommendation, and I liked it a lot, but it didn't occur to me when I put the list together. Maybe I assumed it came out last year? Even so, I guess I was more impressed by it than enamored by it. The direction was a little self-conscious (intentionally) so I was never completely inside the story. Really good movie, though.

j.s. said...

Now I almost think you ought to do a separate post about why you think UNDER THE SKIN is a "really good movie" since it violates almost every ideal you hold sacred. It's an interesting experiment in how far you can take certain ideas (and it seems to end up proving the limits by blowing past them). And the technical side of things is first rate. But as an example of storytelling that humans are supposed to relate to and invest themselves in? I don't think so.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to second you on Snowpiercer James Kennedy. I posted on that one too. I hated the ending and the beginning took a while for me to really care. I probably would've hated it in its entirety if it weren't for Kang-ho Song.

As for Guardians. Loved this movie and I suspect that the only people who don't like this movie are Chris Pratt haters.

I love your second point on GotG and I love that Star Lords motivation essentially boils down to the fact he wants to be the cool guy.

Matt Bird said...

UNDER THE SKIN is just one of those movies that sets its own pace and writes its own rules. The most dramatic and heartbreaking scene in the movie (the death of the family on the beach) happens in the background of a scene, which is so audacious and yet so frustrating. It's a Lynchian movie. No, I wouldn't really want to draw any lessons from it for writers. It's a singular vision.

I loved the ending of SNOWPIERCER! What a brutal message: Sometimes the right thing to do isn't the smartest thing to do.

Anonymous said...

I dunno, I just hate movies that it's like, you watch the movie for X number of hours and then it basically just ends with everyone dead. I feel like it's such a cop-out in storytelling. I couldn't think of a good resolution where lessons are learned so lets just kill everyone and let that be a lesson... Not a fan.

j.s. said...

The film has amazing intense atmospheres, incredible camera and sound work.

I guess I'm still curious, though, whether you felt you could relate to the protagonist at all, given that she's such a cipher. It's easier for me in the first part of the film, once you understand she's an antihero and essentially, functionally, vis-a-vis the humans she ecounters, a slasher/psychopath. But when she suddenly seemingly randomly "decides" (is it even remotely implied how any notion of her separate "self" or agency would work?) to stop trapping men the film is even harder to relate to. We're supposed to read her cessation/defection as "good," and to pity her attempts to fit in to humanity (why she's trying all of this remains unclear) but to me that's like rendering a value judgement on the trajectory of a comet.

Narrative only works when it's possible to have a theory of the characters' minds, to understand why they're doing what they're doing and imagine what they might do next. But you can't do that with the monolith in 2001, the planet Solaris or with ScarJo's character in UNDER THE SKIN. The film initially seems quite boldly to insist on her utter alienness. But then in the middle it just suddenly takes that back and lazily anthropomorphizes her.

James Kennedy said...

I found it easier than j.s. to find my way in to UNDER THE SKIN because from the start I didn't see ScarJo's character as an antihero, slasher, or psychopath, but as a kind of baby. So the latter half works for me because she's not growing from villainy into empathy, and she is not being lazily anthropomorphized, but her fumbling attempts to be human are just part of her infantile attempt to understand her surroundings (and we have a feeling it will end badly because of the fate of her predecessor). And for the record I would eat up a movie told from the POV of a monolith. In fact, arguably that's what 2001 is.

Matt Bird said...

It's certainly very hard to tell a story in which we're alienated from the hero, and UTS does that in every sense of the word.

James, It's hard for me to see her as a baby because her man trap seems quite cunning and her smile as she does it quite sinister.

I liked her humanization process in the second half, but I was disappointed that it was marked by a searching look in the mirror. As a general rule, I never like searching looks in the mirror.

j.s. said...

The baby take on UNDER THE SKIN is nice, but it still makes me think of how other stories about learning an unfamiliar world give us many more frames of reference for where the learner's come from and where he/she/it is going. (Just one example: We still have no idea whether ScarJo's actually a separate self in any way comparable to a human and not some rogue member of a hive mind.)

The monolith is an abstraction that either represents or embodies the technology or lifeform of a superadvanced species. Who knows if they would even think in terms of narrative or experience time in a linear way. That's the thing that gives me pause about our coming robot overlords. For the first few minutes the strong A.I., now smarter than any human who has ever lived, would assimilate all of our collective history of science, technology, mathematics, perhaps even visual arts and music. But I'm not sure it would have much use for our narratives.

Anyway, if you're interested in speculative fiction from an non-human point of view, have you read any of those works that are about places, essentially timeless and mute, as people with various stories pass through them? I'm thinking of Alan Garner's novel RED SHIFT or Richard McQuire's brilliant graphic novel HERE.

James Kennedy said...

j.s. Oh kinda like THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES or the FOUNDATION books? I haven't heard of the books you mentioned but "speculative fiction from a non-human point of view" is what feels exciting to me lately (that's also why I loved UPSTREAM COLOR) so thank you for those recommendations!

Matt said "it's hard for me to see her as a baby because her man trap seems quite cunning and her smile as she does it quite sinister," but I felt the man trap is cunning only in the sense that nature is cunning. I don't think she invented that man trap, I think she's just unthinkingly carrying out her role in it . . . until she begins to have a glimmer otherwise. As for her smile, anything she does with her face, I don't feel there is a connection to "who she is," because as j.s. says she's as alien as a 2001 monolith. Her come-hither smile is just instrumental--in the same way evolution has made it such that a baby acts and looks cute in order to make us dupes take care of it, her smile is instrumental to getting those horndog dudes into her black room man trap. But there is no consciousness we can understand behind it. Which is why I find the movie so fascinating, and (I think) why j.s. finds it frustrating.

j.s. said...

The MARTIAN CHRONICLES story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is most like the books I'm talking about, where you get a kind of deep cosmic sense of time outside of typically human frames of reference, or where humanity seems like a bit player in the background. Olaf Stapelton's influential LAST AND FIRST MEN and STARMAKER are other examples of attempts to embody in sci-fi narrative an almost a-narratological consciousness.

But, really, anybody reading this far who cares about innovative storytelling or who is remotely interested in the potential of graphic novels as a medium ought to run out and get Richard McGuire's HERE right now. If you need any more convincing, consider that the first, shorter version of this is cited by genius Chris Ware as perhaps the biggest influence on his own work.

Matt Bird said...

Just looked up Richard McGuire's HERE. Yeah, I read the original story in RAW 20+ years ago and it was amazing. I didn't know it had been expanded into a book. That's awesome, I'll check it out.

Parker said...

I thought this movie was decently fun, mostly because the humor was good and Chris Pratt is always likable. But I got bored near the end and thought a lot of it was silly (the group falls from outer space but survives because they are "safely" ensconced in a tree-branch-ball??). I liked the characters and set pieces but the tone was really confusing and I feel like this might be the last comic book movie for me for a while.

Matt Bird said...

Yup, that was odd: Hey everybody we're about to be in a fiery crash, so our only hope is to get inside a big ball of kindling!

Anonymous said...

Rule of Cool: He is Groot.