Marvel Have Done It Once Again!

Again, it's been a long time since my last review, and I apologise for that, but I've had exams/uni worries to deal with since them, as well as starting writing two other stories that I've wanted to focus on recently. But today I went out with my best friend Charlie to see Guardians Of The Galaxy, and once again, Marvel have proven why they're the top of their field!
GOTC is a film about a rag team of outlaws saving the entire galaxy (sound familiar to a TV series by the current Marvel show runner Joss Whedon by any chance?) and the film does exactly what it says on the tin with added laughs making a brilliant tie-in to The Avengers universe too!
The film starts with the heart wrenching seen of Peter Quill as a child losing his mother before being abducted by a space ship. It only lasts about five minutes, but did honestly make me want to cry at the sight of a little boy losing his mother, it was excellently acted by everyone in the scene and really had me routing for Peter before the 'real' part of the film started.
The scene moves onto him twenty years in the future, where Peter is now basically a bounty hunter for treasure across the galaxy, and he's on a decimated planet looking for an orb. He runs into the guards of Ronan, this films resident bad guy, who is working for Thanos (remember him?) A fight scene ensues and he escapes, to land on the planet Xandar, only to be captured by Rocket and Groot,(a raccoon and a massive tree...yeah I wasn't sure on that either) who promptly lose him to Gamora (a green woman with brilliant martial arts skills, slightly strange too) only to then for the four of them get arrested for breaking the peace on Xandar.
They're thrown into prison and meet Drax the Destroyer (not going into too much detail here for those who want to see the film) and form an alliance. They make a daring escape and fly off to find the orb, to be told by The Collector (previously seen at the end of Thor - The Dark World) that inside is an Infinity Stone, of the same sort of power as the Tesseract, capable of destroying worlds. And Ronan wants it, as does Thanos... This is not ending well!
More fight scenes commence and Ronan gets the orb, thanks to his helper, and Gamora's adopted sibling Nebula. If the Guardian's want to save the galaxy, they must fight them to gain the orb back and give it to the people who will look after it, but not use it's powers for good nor evil. Let the battle's commence!
Now that's the basic premise of the film, so I'm going to stop talking about the actual story line before I ruin it for anybody who hasn't seen it and instead talk about how much I enjoyed it.
The film itself is very good, very clearly Marvel with it's classic one liners and unique characters, yet this film was a bit more out there in its characters than it's Avengers/X-Men counterparts. Maybe because Rocket and Groot (oh how I cried over Rocket and Groot at the end) are very clearly not human, Gamora is bright green and Drax is gray with red designs over him, it sticks out to me as a bit more unique in its characters differing from the 'average' humanoid team of superheros saving the world/universe/galaxy. And this film had more gags in than The Avengers, which had me laughing the entire way through, which also helped for the ride.
And yet, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did The Avengers, and not just because I'm a bit biased with my love for The Avengers. To me the characters stick out against the other Marvel film counterparts because they look different, not because they're amazing characters and I root for them. Sure, I like them, but I didn't feel as much for them as I do for say, Iron Man and Magneto. There was only the showing of Peter's abduction as a boy of a back story for the characters, everybody else got a few lines talking about their pasts. I'm not saying that I didn't like the characters, or that they should all have had solo films first so we all got introduced properly, but maybe a few flashbacks would have been helpful along the way to help make the characters more 3D they were.
Gamora could have such a bigger backing story line to herself, having been taking in and brought up by Thanos from a young girl alongside Nebula before being given on loan to Ronan. There could have been a lot more to it than the throwaway lines she got about it. She even states at one point that 'she has been brought up by her enemies' so I would have loved to have seen a bit more into this. All we know is that she wants the orb at the beginning to sell on to escape Thanos and Ronan, but we don't know why, or anything else to it. She could have had her own few flashbacks, or a bit more dialogue, to explain her actions. Her fighting with Nebula and trying to convince her to join them could have done with a bit more sisterly feelings (unless there are none between them, they explanation please). This could have been done with all the characters too, a bit of back story goes a long way in films, even when it's based on comic books, as some of us haven't read them!
That being said, the film was very good for a laugh, and a slightly better look into Thanos (anybody thinking that Loki is going to be needed again soon, seeing as it was Thanos' scepter and army he was using? God I hope he's back soon!) coupled with a small mystery by the end of the film to set up the next time. A few references to The Avengers (12% of a plan, and Groot pulling a Hulk 'puny god' move, the tesseract etc). But mostly I would implore the writers to invest some more time in character back stories to flesh out their characters, bad ass fighting and good one liners only go so far. They've got a good premise going with Guardians Of The Galaxy. The cast is brilliant, Chris Pratt is hilarious, Zoe Salanda is brilliant, and I didn't even recognise Karen Gilligan or Lee Pace until half way through. Though I would have made a few changes, the film stands as a good film, and I'd recommend seeing it as a Marvel fan, or if you're just up for a good laugh with some action scenes thrown in!