"Guardians of the Galaxy" - Review
Before I start with this.....how many of you remember the rendition of the song "Hooked On A Feeling" by a group called Blue Sweed? Well.....Blue Swede's, Hooked On A Feeling is the song that's been used on the trailer for the latest addition to Marvel cinematic universe in the Guardians of the Galaxy film.
And its so cool! The fucker works!!
Of any movie Marvel Studios has released so far, Guardians of the Galaxy had the greatest potential to be the hit factory’s first dud. It features almost totally unknown Marvel heroes (Drax the Whatnow?), it was directed by a guy (James Gunn) whose taste for dark heroes isn’t exactly in line with The Avengers, and it’s set in space, with nary an Empire State Building or S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier or other recognizable fixtures to be found. In short, there’s a lot that could’ve gone wrong.
We should’ve trusted that Marvel would get it right.
Guardians of the Galaxy, out today, may not be from the Marvel mold that audiences are used to, but its off-kilter sense of humor helps smooth over virtually any imperfection. (Very few intergalactic face-offs involve an a cappella rendition of the Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child” and a sort-of dance-off. This one does.) In a cinematic universe that is constantly expanding, Marvel’s first foray into its “cosmic” stories is an excellent maiden voyage. (It also has a talking raccoon with a gun, voiced by Bradley Cooper, so it’s everything you ever wanted without even knowing it.)
While Guardians ranges far into the cosmos, it starts on Earth in 1988, where a young Peter Quill is listening to his Walkman as his mother lays dying in the hospital. When she dies, he runs outside in grief and is promptly abducted by a spacecraft (just go with it). Cut to 26 years later: Quill (Chris Pratt) is listening to the same Walkman and searching an abandoned planet for an orb his father figure Yondu (Michael Rooker)—head of the Ravagers who raised him—sent him to find. Korath (Djimon Hounsou), who has no idea who Quill or “Star-Lord” is, busts him in the act. (This is the scene that’s been in nearly every trailer or teaser from the beginning—a clip that pretty much established that Marvel also knew most moviegoers would be just as unfamiliar with this Star-Lord fellow as Korath.) Korath wants to collect the orb for galactic despot Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), who plans to use it to destroy the planet Xandar—possibly with the help of Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his less-favorite adoptive daughter Nebula (Karen “I shaved my head for this?” Gillan).
Got all that?
That parade of names and places comes in the movie’s first 30 minutes, much of it before the Guardians have even met. But the exposition is necessary: This is a universe non-comics readers know little about. And somehow, it doesn’t drag Guardians down. As long as you can keep your Ronans and Yondus and Thanoses straight, you’re fine. And soon enough, Quill meets his compatriots: Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper); Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel); Thanos’ favorite adoptive daughter, assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana); and Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). There’s a glorious (and fun) prison-break setpiece, and the movie launches into nonstop action and world-building. Ronan needs to be stopped, the Guardians pull together to do it, everyone else is here to welcome our new favorite super team, roll credits!
In that regard, Guardians is very much like The Avengers, but that’s where the easy comparison stops. The Guardians are a gang of not-particularly-heroic people (or tree-people, or whatever) who pull together, basically, for spaceships and giggles. And that seeming arbitrariness is where the team gets its charm (and best LOLs). For decades, our cinematic crusaders have been either misunderstood Batman types or straight-up do-gooders like Captain America. There may be a bad boy (Iron Man) or a god (Thor) in the bunch, but for all of his playboy ways, even Tony Stark probably couldn’t get away with an R-rated zinger like Quill saying that his ship’s interior “would look like a Jackson Pollock painting” under a blacklight. They may be aliens of one variety or another, but there’s something to Gunn’s Guardians—particularly the wry, crotch-scratching Rocket and no-BS Gamora—that makes them very easy to identify with (or to want to party with). And who doesn’t love a good redemption story?
Does that mean Guardians is on par with Avengers? Not exactly. That team had four films’ worth of hype before they assembled, and the Guardians are gathering in one whole-cloth film. But as an introduction to Marvel’s space stories and a link from them to the canon thus far, it serves its purpose dexterously. There’s a bit of Star Wars swagger, a touch of Firefly frolic, and just enough of the Marvel Method of storytelling (heroic bon vivants! bad guys get dealt with!) for it to validate Gunn and co-writer Nicole Perlman’s vision. They also made a film with one of the best (and probably insanely expensive) superhero soundtracks of all time—Quill’s mixtape has everything from The Runaways to the Jackson 5, and it invigorates scene after scene. (It’s also embedded below.)
Guardians is by no means flawless. If you find yourself lost in the name-checking of Yondus and Ronans, you’re probably not alone, and while most of the jokes are pitch-perfect, a few elicit forced laughter. There’s also something a little too We’re in this together now!, even groan-worthy, about the Guardians’ final face-off with Ronan. But the conclusion is so satisfying, and even goofy, that all is forgiven.
Guardians of the Galaxy is, of course, just the beginning. A Gunn-directed sequel was announced last week before the movie even hit theaters, so there’s a lot more to come. And presumably, one day these Guardians will fly even further into the Marvel universe—and I, for one, welcome our new singing, dancing, crotch-grabbing overlords.
'Ooga-Chaka': A Primer on the Unofficial 'Guardians of the Galaxy' Theme
Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" has a long, bizarre history
Marvel Studios maintained its stranglehold on the box office this past weekend with the genuinely delightful Guardians of the Galaxy. The Chris Pratt-powered vehicle—part sci-fi action flick, part sci-fi comedy—brought in $94.3 million during its opening weekend, the biggest debut ever for an August release, according to Box Office Mojo. There are several factors that contributed to the blockbuster's commercial and critical success: Pratt's Han Solo-ish charisma; the movie's vivid color palette; a rarely better Bradley Cooper voicing a trigger-happy, Napoleonic raccoon; a never-better Vin Diesel voicing a talking (albeit monosyllabic) tree.
And, of course, there's the soothing effect of the film's '70s-heavy soundtrack. As director James Gunn told Vulture recently, "We're thrust onto a bunch of strange planets with strange landscapes, and the familiarity of the pop songs made it all a little more palatable."
Redbone's 1974 single "Come and Get Your Love" opens Guardians, but audiences got a glimpse at the movie's vintage-jukebox appeal back in February, when the film's first official trailer (seen above) dusted off the "Ooga-ooga / Ooga-chaka" of Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling." Digital sales of the song spiked immediately; Billboard reported that the track sold more than 2,000 downloads the day after the preview premiered, giving the song its best-ever digital sales week at the time. This past week, though, the track sold 12,600 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan, marking a 348 percent increase from the previous week, in which the song sold 2,800 downloads. But newcomers may not realize that "Hooked on a Feeling" has a long, rich history that pre-dates its appearance in an intergalactic prison.
Originally released in 1968, "Hooked on a Feeling" was first recorded by singer B.J. Thomas, whose biggest song ended up being another Hollywood-endorsed hit, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But it was written by Mark James, the man behind classics sung by Brenda Lee and Elvis Presley, including "Suspicious Minds" and "Always on My Mind." Speaking on the phone with SPIN, James said he wrote the song with his childhood sweetheart in mind. "It's a true story," he said. "It's more or less a song about someone I wanted to be with." There was one complication, though: James was married to another woman at the time. And there's another twist—he's now married to the person who subconsciously inspired the song and has been since 1971.
One person who was less interested in the love story behind the lyrics and more concerned with the drug references was President Richard Nixon, who in 1970 asked radio programmers to ban all songs containing allusions to drug use—"Hooked on a Feeling" included. "Somebody said, 'Maybe we can crack down on drugs,'" James recalled, "and all of a sudden... 'Hooked on a Feeling? That's a drug song!'"
The earliest version of "Hooked" didn't feature the track's now-signature "Ooga-chaka" chant—that rhythmic refrain didn't manifest until 1971, when English singer-songwriter Jonathan King produced his own rendition, which reached No. 23 on the U.K. charts. (King was later disgraced when he was convicted in 2001 for committing sexual offenses against several teenage boys in the 1980s; he was released on parole in 2005.)
The best-known cover of "Hooked on a Feeling" came in 1974, courtesy of Swedish outfit Blue Swede. That interpretation, which carried over the "Ooga-chaka" from King's version, topped Billboard's Hot 100 chart and carved out its own pop-culture legacy. Remembering the first time he heard Blue Swede's take, James said he told record executives, "'This is a fun record and it's well-made. It's a hit.' I said, 'How big is this? I don't know, but I'd buy it.'"
The Swede-ish rendition showed up in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 crime classic, Reservoir Dogs...
and scored one of the earliest Internet memes, the "Dancing Baby," in a 1998 episode of FOX's Ally McBeal.
David Hasselhoff (!) also recorded his own version for his 1999 album of the same name...
and the Offspring sampled the "Ooga-chaka" call in their 2000 track, "Special Delivery."
Now, "Hooked on a Feeling" leads the clumsily titled Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Forty years after the track topped the charts, listeners are still happy to hear...
Ally McBeal Dancing Baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyb93tiVQQBlue Sweed Official
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jkAkm4JmM
