Friday, November 24, 2017

Fromage Fridays #43: The Guardians


The second worst thing that Russia has subjugated the States to in the last year.




As a major proponent of the superhero genre, I always jump at the rare opportunity to see the concept executed through the refreshing lens and new perspective of a foreign culture.

Enter the release of 2016 trailers for Russian superhero action flick, “The Guardians,” by director Sarik Andreasyan, who seems to have a peculiar obsession with fairly high concept genre stories in cinema.

The story of a group of former covert Soviet era KGB super soldier science experiments, including a woman that can turn invisible and telekinetically control water, a man with super speed and a master wielder of combat grade serrated swords, a manipulator of rock and Earth with super strength, and most famously, a man that can transform into a bear, united to take down their rogue creator and his terrorist plot actually received a fair bit of surprise attention from crowds out for something a little bit different from the standard Marvel/DC license-based faire filling the market.

With a concept silly yet sound enough to be one of the best foreign comics never imported and an admirable pass made at visual effects to at least make a lasting impression with audiences despite a low budget of $5 million, the only question remaining to be answered in this equation is how exactly did this go so wrong?

The inherent spectacle of superhero storylines often trips up productions operating outside of the mainstream primarily due to a lack of monetary resources necessary in believably rendering essential effects to bringing the spectacle to life, a lack of established storytelling talent capable of blending the genre’s bombast with compelling human drama, or some mixture and/or permutation of both.

“The Guardians’” budget may be substantially higher than what “Fromage Fridays” typically has to offer but by the standards of even lower budget blockbusters, it’s a drop in the bucket, which makes the technical side of the film all the more admirable.

Special effects utilized in bringing these characters and their capabilities to life are undeniably noticeable as special effects but through solid compositing and adherence to a mildly stylized aesthetic, the film can achieve an effect substantially grander than the money actually put into it.

Where “The Guardians” does unfortunately manage to undo all of that impressive technical artistry however is in its absolute inability to actually generate some sort of story to unfold in front of the rolling cameras.

Had this merely been a bad movie, I could have been more tolerant of whatever destination the final product was heading towards. The opening montage playing out over a somber music track in which the experiments and commissions responsible for the origins of its heroes before closing out on an opening credit logo almost had me as intrigued and stoked as I would be for something I watch in theaters, while the subsequent sequence of a military briefing in which the officer officiating the assembly felt the need to dictate the villains personal feelings of vengeful rage in an official government report as though he were a 14 year old summarizing a novel for a book report, establishes just the right level of B movie cheese that I was actively ready for a fun time.

The movie that ensues however isn’t so much a bad story so much as it is a nonexistent one.

While the screenplay clearly opts to keep things as simple as possible, focusing on the villain as a threat and excuse to rally special effects behind that needs to be stopped by the special effect generating heroes, even that manages to come off as completely flat and ineffective thanks to dialogue so bad and bland that it makes place filler meant for revision and punch up look like an Aaron Sorkin passion project.

The villain never expounds his motivations or demonstrates any sort of human trait that would define him as an actual person, one dimensional or otherwise and although the heroes occasionally bring forth a character trait or two that lends itself to what could have generated characterization and personal arcs of growth, they pretty much go nowhere despite having a few minutes dedicated to mildly exploring them.

Clocking in at under an hour and a half, the biggest saving grace of “The Guardians” is that it end right before its laziness began to actually piss me off, despite closing out on a flare up of anger by dropping a sequel hook so blatant that you would almost swear it’s an SNL skit waiting to happen, satirizing he nature of premature sequel advertisements for would-be franchises that tank.

More than irritation however, I simply felt let down. The movie is very visually creative yet doesn’t contain a worthwhile sequence that you can’t piece together by compiling the trailer footage and while I normally check my brain out completely when I can see a “Fromage Fridays” feature turning into train wreck, I found myself actively piecing together a better movie using only what was provided while adding a modest 15 minutes to the running time.

At its best, “The Guardians” is a fun visual ride for a few minutes at a time but gets so bogged down with its lack of imagination or drive in terms of actual story structure and writing that I found myself wishing it were the other way around.

The Japanese style of Tokusatsu has emphasized low budgets in favor of theatric performances and theme exploration in writing to be carried by the special effects showdowns on screen. Its emphasis on creativity over spectacle despite existing to tell action stories a style that I adore so much so that I not only met the release of 2017’s bland and sizably budgeted “Power Rangers” with a level of distaste and passionate vitriol distinct from the general sense of apathy that my fellow millennials felt towards it, the tenants and tropes of it are the cornerstones of a novel that I’m writing.


Perhaps “The Guardians” would never have gone mainstream, but they certainly didn’t need a big budget to yield a better movie than what we have here and it saddens me to see that potential wasted as we enter an age of big budget feature fatigue.


1½ out of 4 Shatners


Bottom Line: Had the care put into the visuals of "The Guardians" been applied to the writing, this score would have been double at least.

No comments:

Post a Comment