Journey vs. Destination

I’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy. Twice.

I was excited about the movie, I loved the trailers, even the teasers. I was pretty sure they’d taken all the good pieces and left the movie bereft of jokes. I was wrong, happily, happily wrong.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I adored GotG so much. Was it the really good plot? Was it the awesome number of quotable lines? Was it the fact that they had that meeting I have had at least once a week where a decision was made and then someone said “what? I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about something else”? (That is officially called “draxing” now, so you know.)

I love the point where one of them completely embarrasses himself, just to stall for a bit of time. I wish I was that brave. And I don’t know why I wouldn’t be. Embarrassment is not fatal. I love that he had the faith that his team would fix it.

It made me happy that at the end of the movie, the characters were relatively unchanged, except they were happier, more confident.

Let me recall my review of Thor (the first one). I could have sworn I posted a review of Thor here but can’t find it. Anyway, I thought Thor was a good movie but I found it difficult to watch. At the beginning, Thor is happy: happy to be a prince, happy to be a warrior, happy to be Thor. Then he get tricked, loses his hammer, falls in love, saves our world, goes home a man burdened by responsibilities, a dysfunctional family, and a long distance relationship. The movie was a story of a boy maturing to a man. He grew up and growing up sucked.

There is (or should be) a point in growing up where you have all this freedom and potential and energy: you can save the world and you want to but you don’t have to. It is a wonderful point. I remember the night after high school graduation as being fairly incandescent with possibilities and lacking in responsibilities.

There have been other points like that but, more often, the reward for a job well done is a more difficult job. That’s good but can get exhausting, even damaging as the difficult job becomes impossible.

There was none of that in the movie. The reward for a job well done in Guardians was the gratitude of a planet, a rebuilt space ship named after an 80s celeb, a new family, and a galaxy of possibilities.

If I could watch any movie this afternoon, it would be GotG. Again. It made me happy.