Disaster Film

Marvel has a history of employing veteran filmmakers for its movie projects-Kenneth Branagh, Alan Taylor, Joe Johnston.  That streak has come to an end.  Either their list of veteran filmmakers willing to work on a comic book franchise has run out, or they are making a conscious decision to go with lesser names for some reason.  A lesser name does not necessarily mean a lesser talent, but does anyone really think that Marvel is going to discover someone?

James Gunn, not to be confused with Jame Gumb, is best known for once being married to Jenna Fischer.  Despite several years in the industry, his best known projects are screenplays for the two Scooby-Doo movies and the Dawn of the Dead remake.  So it is not very encouraging that he is the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

The trailer makes it clear that Guardians is going for a humorous, if not outright comedic, tone.  From a movie quality standpoint this could be a disaster.  I do not think it will be a disaster at the box office because Marvel has built up too much goodwill with its movie successes.  So it will have a good opening.  But the fact that Marvel is releasing it in August shows that they do not have a lot of confidence it it long term performance.  Big budget movies released in August are generally the worst of the worst.

I cannot help but think that this movie could have used Ghostbusters era Bill Murray as Star Lord.  Rewatch the trailer, and just imagine Bill Murray's signature delivery with those lines.

Another issue with this film is that nobody, and I do mean nobody, knows who the Guardians of the Galaxy are.  I was a big reader of Marvel Comics back in the 80s, and I have no memory of them.  Even while collecting back issues I have barely become aware of them, as they had no regular series until the 1990s, when Marvel Comics was going down the tubes.  It was more than a little surprising when Marvel announced this movie.  Then again, Marvel is also doing a movie using the Ant-Man character, though at least that one has Edgar Wright at the helm.