Plenty of good reviews out there of this great movie, so I am not going to cover the usual stuff everybody else covered. Also, Adam Carolla did a fantastic interview with director James Gunn about this film. I wholeheartedly endorse the flick and encourage all to see it. However, I am not and never have been a comic book aficionado; the closest I have come is reading some classic Batman (I know he was DC, not Marvel). I do enjoy the Marvel movies and cartoons and have since I was a kid.
While I prefer 3D IMAX, my wife hates 3D, so we saw Guardians in “regular.”
Some extra cool stuff and I think this is chronological. “Come and Get Your Love,” by Redbone appears in an early scene, played on Peter Quill’s vintage cassette Walkman. I can never get enough of that tune and it brought a smile to my face when I heard it. The Regal Theater at West Town Mall has a fantastic sound system and it provided the best play of the songs in this movie that I have ever heard. Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is now the first album of all previously released songs to top Billboard's
Top 200.There were probably many hat-tips to other films in this show, but these are what I caught:
An “E.T.” moment between Drax the Destroyer and Rocket. Remember the fingertip light touch that was on many of the “E.T.” posters? Drax and the raccoon do an approximation of that in the destruction of Knowhere sequence (I think, or it could have been the destruction of somewhere else sequence too).
The song “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways appears and immediately reminded me of the George Lucas film “Howard the Duck,” because Beverly Switzler’s (Lea Thompson) New-Wave band in that movie was named Cherry Bomb. Howard the Duck appears at the end in Knowhere, talking to The Collector.
Back in the 1990s when I was finally finishing college, members of the University of Tennessee Theater Department dubbed me "The Guy Who Liked Howard The Duck," because I was the first person any of them met who actually liked the film.
In the full credits, which by-the-way should be posted somewhere in the Marvel websites but I have yet to find, there was a credit for an “Exposito.” A common misspelling and mispronunciation for my name. Thought it nifty that the name exists in that form out there for real.
As much as I enjoy movies at Regal Theaters, the pre-movie crap has finally gotten too long for my taste. Minor glitch one was the 2D and 3D start times were incorrect under their respective posters at the theater entrance. Second, the start time was supposed to be 7:40 PM. The movie did not start until 8:10 PM, and included one preview of some football movie twice. Maybe they can get that shaved back to 20 minutes or less.
Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ
