Nearly every instance of a Guardians of the Galaxy trailer shown for the past six months at multiplexes nationwide is immediately followed by the same whispers. "Who are those guys?" "Have you ever heard of these superheroes?" "Are they related to the Avengers?" Don't beat yourself up if you've never heard of the Guardians. Even the most diehard geek only has a passing familiarity with these characters. Marvel Studios, well aware of this, takes this as an opportunity to cut itself loose from comic book continuity, giving director James Gunn a considerable amount of creative license to come up with a bouncy, hilarious bauble, an almost $200 million near-throwaway that also happens to be one of the best cinematic adventures of the year.
is certainly asking for it to live up to a lot. I think it was Glenn Kenny, of Premiere, that recently brought this up in regards to another film with a similar name. He was implying that critics sharpen their knives when confronted with a name like that. And a recent survey of some of the titles of the reviews for this bank heist movie confirms Mr. Kenny's theory. Of course, if you're Michael Radford (
), the director, wouldn't you do your best to avoid any such attacks by excising any potential pitfalls from your film?