The Guardians (2017)

When Batman hit the big screen in 1966, nobody knew how big the superhero craze would be. It would take a handful of Superman movies, a bunch of low-rent Marvel movies, and a quartet of Batman movies, all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s to really set the stage. The one-two-three punch of Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man between 1998 and 2002 would push things to a new level. Superheroes were the new big action craze, and that craze hasn’t subsided since.

Things certainly changed over the two decades since. They didn’t stay stagnant. But superheroes are still one of the biggest money-makers for studios. Disney and Marvel teamed up, getting the majority of Marvel properties back from other studios who had been making movies based on the comic book characters. They built a universe that shared the superheroes so that it was more like the comics. One hero could pop up in the story of another hero. A villain could cross over. There could even be a team up with a bunch of heroes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe changed how people saw superheroes.

DC and Warner Bros. tried to capture the same magic with their characters, though it didn’t quite work out. The individual movies worked fine, but the forced universe never sat well with audiences. The idea of it was mostly scrapped in favour of standalone movies that allowed filmmakers to try and tell unique-ish stories within superhero worlds. It set DC apart from Marvel because it was an entirely different approach. The Batman wouldn’t be anything like Iron Man III because the companies’ models of making movies were nothing alike.

Outside of the two big superhero movie companies, and outside of Sony’s Spider-Man offshoots, there were still a bunch of other superhero properties coming out. There were television adaptations of Marvel and DC properties. The Umbrella Academy, The Boys, and Invincible found popularity on streaming services. The Cape became a short-lived show of legend thanks to the mantra of six seasons and a movie. And then there were the various superhero movies like Hancock, Alter Egos, Super, Kick-Ass, and Defendor coming out on a semi-regular basis. It wasn’t just North American productions that capitalized on the superhero craze, either.

The Guardians was a superhero movie that came out of Russia in 2017. Major Elena Larina (Valeriya Shkirando) ran Patriot, a secret government organization tasked with fighting off August Kuratov (Stanislav Shirin). He was a mad scientist who experimented on people, giving some of them superpowers, while harming many others. Patriot brought together a few people who had been experimented on, who now had superpowers. They had a tough task ahead of them, since Kuratov now had superstrength and could control machinery.

The Guardians fit into the superhero team subsection of superhero movies. Much like X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Avengers, or The Justice League, it involved a bunch of superheroes working together to fight off a common adversary. In this case, it was the mad scientist who experimented on them years earlier, before performing the same sort of experiments on himself. They were the only hope that Russia and the world had to stop Kuratov’s evil plan. Nobody else had the power necessary to put an end to it. The Patriot program did.

The team in The Guardians consisted of consisted of Ler (Sebastien Sisak), Arsus (Anton Pampushnyy), Khan (Sanjar Madi), and Xenia (Alina Lanina). Ler could control rocks, building himself armour and weapons from whatever rock and rubble lay nearby. He would later get an upgrade of a rock-laser fusion whip sort of thing that would be always around him. Arsus was a man who could transform into a bear, either partially or wholly, with super strength. He would be given a gun that fired based on his focus of attack. Khan had super speed and some cool swords. His upgrade made it tougher for people to stop his speed. Finally, Xenia was their member with invisibility. When she was given a new suit, it allowed her to turn anything invisible while she touched it.

This was a solid team of superpowers. Invisibility, speed, strength, and some sort of elemental thing. It’s better than a team where it’s just a bunch of strong dudes or just a bunch of fast dudes. There was variation to it that allowed for different fighting techniques. Kuratov couldn’t get too used to one power because he always had to be ready for one of the other three to come into play.

Let’s take a moment to compare the Patriot team to a sports team. On a hockey team, you want depth. It’s great if you have an Auston Matthews or a Connor McDavid on your forward line. You want people who can score goals. But you also want playmakers and solid defencemen and a good goalie and enforcers and those guys who never give up and those guys who just bring energy. There are many types of players who play many different roles on a team. If the entire team was good shots, it wouldn’t be a good team. Nobody would be making the play for them to score a goal. Nobody would be stopping the other team when they had the puck. If they fell behind, there might not be the players to pull them back into things and give them that energy boost. Superhero teams require that same depth.

If the Patriot team consisted solely of a bunch of super strong bear-men, they would be easy to beat. If Kuratov figured out how to stop one bear-man, he would likely figure out how to stop them all. Even if the bear-men were working together, it would only take a scaling up of that prevention method to keep them from stopping him. The Guardians played it a little smarter by having the variety on the team. Kuratov might be adept at stopping Arsus, the bear-man, but he wouldn’t know how well Arsus worked with Xenia. He wouldn’t necessarily know how to stop both of them together. Toss in Ler and Khan with their two other powers and the combination becomes exponentially more difficult to stop.

The team that was assembled in The Guardians was good. Their action sequences were good. emotion that was given to their characters was good. Arsus worried that he would turn into a bear forever. Ler couldn’t age and felt the heartbreak of watching his family age and die while he kept living. Khan killed his brother by accident when he was first mutated. Xenia had amnesia and felt lonely because she didn’t know anyone who had powers like hers. Until she was brought back into Patriot, that is. That stuff worked for The Guardians.

What didn’t work, and what probably brought the movie the negative attention it is known for having, was the story, itself. There wasn’t a whole lot to The Guardians when it came to story. There were some twists and turns thrown in there that became more throwaway lines than actual story beats. The Major in charge of the Patriot program before Elena turned on the team. It wasn’t really shown and wasn’t brought up after it was initially mentioned. Kuratov’s plan involved an army of his own clones, but he never got to the point of releasing the army. Or even part of the army. He was defeated before that could happen. Arsus mentioned turning into a bear forever. Nothing was done to prevent that, and it never happened. There were a bunch of plants without payoffs.

Then there was the conflict. The Patriot team was brought together. They went to fight Kuratov. They lost. They were upgraded. They fought again. They won. That was it. Typically, in an action hero movie, there’s more than what audiences were given with The Guardians. Those basic points are there, sure, but there’s always something more. A lot of it comes in between the two big battles. There may be some smaller skirmishes, which there weren’t. The “upgrade” usually becomes a journey. The Patriot team was simply given their upgrades. Everything felt too easy. The obstacles the team encountered either didn’t need effort to overcome or didn’t even exist. Things felt too small in scale for a superhero movie. Especially for a superhero team movie.

Much of these issues could have been alleviated if The Guardians had been given another half hour of runtime. At an hour and a half, it was one of the shorter superhero movies to come out in the later half of the 2010s. With that reduced time, it tried to tell a story structured the same way as its major American superhero counterparts. Most of those superhero movies were between two hours and two and a half hours, allowing them enough time to breathe. There was enough time to dig into the different parts of the story. With half an hour to an hour less of time, it becomes much more difficult to focus on those elements of the story, leading to the lack of obstacles when the Patriot team got their upgrades, or the lack of layers to Kuratov’s plan. The story needed that extra time to expand.

Other than that, The Guardians was a fun enough addition to the superhero genre. It didn’t break any new ground, but it was entertaining. It was a good time. There were superheroes with cool superpowers. They got into fights that were enjoyable to watch. There wasn’t a whole lot of substance weighing things down. It was light, airy fun. The only real difference between it and the many other superhero movies that come out on a regular basis was that it was Russian.

Superhero movies are a major product of the Hollywood system. When the trio of Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man hit at the turn of the century, studios picked up on their popularity and ran with it. They never looked back. They pumped out various superhero movies, including some that have been covered through Sunday “Bad” Movies. DC had more Batman movies like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. There was Superman Returns. There was even a Catwoman movie. Marvel let any studio make whatever movies they wanted, resulting in a bunch of Spider-Man and X-Men movies, alongside Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and Ghost Rider. There were satires and spoofs, and smaller, independently produced superhero movies as well. The superhero craze hit big.

When Iron Man came out in 2008, it changed things even more. It birthed the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which not only showed that superheroes were here to stay on the big screen, but opened up the idea of shared universes through all kinds of movies. Superhero movies have been changing the landscape of cinema since the late 1990s. Sure, there were movies before that. The Superman and Batman movies. Those cheap Marvel movies like the 1990 Captain America and the television movies like Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s that people saw there could be other, good superhero movies. And those people fell in love.

Before that, nobody knew how big superhero movies would one day be. They were content with the few movies they got, the comics they read, and the television shows that were put in front of them. They didn’t know about the bigger superhero world that would one day come. It’s here now. We’re living it. And there have been some great things to come out of it. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Now for some notes:

• I mentioned a few of the superhero movies that have been covered in Sunday “Bad” Movies. I mentioned Catwoman (week 174), Ghost Rider (week 260), Captain America (week 181), and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (week 284). I want to also mention Metal Man (week 79) and Fant4stic (week 172).
• The Guardians featured archive footage of John F. Kennedy. It’s not the first time archive footage of the former president was featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies. Wing Commander (week 394) also used archive footage of Kennedy.
• Have you seen The Guardians? What did you think? Was it a good superhero movie, or did it leave something to be desired? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• The comments and Twitter are good places to suggest movies for me to watch for Sunday “Bad” Movies. Tell me what movies I should know about.
• Make sure to give Instagram a look for some Sunday “Bad” Movies stuff.
• We’re quickly approaching week 500, but we have one more stop before then. Next week, I’ll be checking out a National Lampoon movie from the late 1990s. It’s been a while since I checked out a National Lampoon flick. This one has a bunch of kids playing golf under the watchful eye of Tom Arnold. Yeah, I’m going to watch Golf Punks, so be sure to come back next week for that one. Or in a few days, really. This post is late.