Guardians of the Galaxy (4 Stars)

Thank you, Amazon, for celebrating Black Friday this year. I've been wanting to buy this film ever since it was released on Blu-ray 12 months ago, but the price was too high. When it was first released it cost £19, then the price dropped to £15 after a few months, and ever since then the price has been hovering between £10 and £15. When I buy Blu-ray Discs the most I usually pay is £6, although I go as high as £8 for a film I really want. No higher than £8, that's my absolute maximum. The price has probably stayed higher because it's a best seller and there's been no need to drop the price. I've been watching Ebay for special offers, but whenever a Blu-ray was offered for auction the bidding went up to silly levels, always higher than Amazon's price. Some people are stupid.

Then came Black Friday. Amazon offered the Blu-ray version of the film for £6.99. I ordered it immediately, but didn't watch it until now because I wanted to finish watching my essential 30 films first. Incidentally, I've noticed a large number of copies of this film appearing on Ebay in the last two days. It looks like a lot of greedy people bought it just to make a profit.

Usually my first reaction when I see a Marvel film in the cinema is to attack it for its deviations from the comics, but when I watch it a second time on disc I appreciate it in its own right, despite the changes. This time I'm going in the opposite direction. Check out the pictures above of Gamora as she appears in Marvel's comics. Then look at the photo of Gamora in the film below.

In the comics Gamora wears a full body fishnet suit without anything underneath. Some artists (like the one above) draw the fishnet in a darker green than her skin, giving the impression that it's a bodysuit with a fishnet pattern. As far as I can tell this was self-censorship by the comics, not a true representation of what she was wearing.

I might have accepted the green bodysuit version in the film as an attempt to keep the film suitable for young viewers in America The Prude, but instead of that Gamora's costume was completely ruined. It's little more than a leather outfit, not even tight fitting.

Added to this, Zoe Saldana was a poor choice to play Gamora. She's too flat-chested. In the comics Gamora stuns men with her beauty before knocking them out with her fists. Zoe Saldana doesn't have the necessary sex appeal.

One thing I don't like so much in the film on watching it again is the big space ship battles that look like scenes from "Star Wars". This wouldn't have been necessary if Drax the Destroyer (to give him his full name) hadn't been made so weak in the film. In the comics Drax can fly through space at speeds much faster than light, and he can fire power beams from his hands. He could take out a whole fleet of spaceships by himself. Instead of this he just sits idly around in spaceships waiting for the opportunity to get out and punch someone.

This is the real Drax, battling against the all-powerful Thanos. This is the Drax I wanted to see in the film, not just a wrestler in outer space.