Review: Guardians of the Galaxy “Road to Knowhere”

Spoilers Below

Quill leads the Guardians of the Galaxy into an alien prison to break out Yondu. They free the leader of the Ravagers, and head to Korath whom has a Spartax artifact that he looks to give to Thanos. Quill is able to sneak into Korath’s chamber which holds the artifact, but no thanks to Yondu who up and disappears. Korath returns, but is subdued, leaving the Guardians to take flight and head to Knowhere so as to get some assistance from The Broker. Like always, this son of a bitch wants nothing to do with it, but then both Korath’s group and Yondu’s Ravagers show up and we’ve got a big battle. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the biggest threat, as Knowhere starts to come to life and ensnare everyone.

Our Take

Despite the fact that this series takes place after the Guardians of the Galaxy film, it isn’t exactly clear how the hell Korath is back, but I’m guessing Thanos rebuilt him. In any case, a lot of the plot points and dialogue showcased in the sneak peek seem to be rehashed from the feature film. For example, the main plot of the episode features Quill and Yondu going to get an artifact, which if you remember was essentially the same plot as the movie. Take out artifact, insert infinite stone, and you’ve got yourself a heavily inspired effort. Worse yet, there are so many lines of dialogue from the movie that are blatantly forced into the script. The constant ‘outlaw vs hero’ argument is already getting old, and I guarantee you can list 10 lines reiterate from the movie before the 22 minute run-time is up.

Fortunately, the show isn’t all bad. The action scenes are well-directed, and the characters are very entertaining. Granted, some of the voices are bad impressions of the feature film, with Yondu possibly being the worst, but Rocket isn’t far behind. The latter is actually starting to grow on me, so it may take a while before I accept James Arnold Taylor’s best Michael Rooker impersonation. The same can’t be said about Taylor’s Cosmic the Spacedog, whom single-handedly saved my overall interest in the show.

I really hope the producers start to break away from the film’s settings, dialogue, and characters as time goes on. Having seen the feature film 10,000 times, I really don’t need to keep seeing James Gunn’s efforts throughly burned to the ground over time. Cosmic the Spacedog gives me hope that the animated series will 1) widen the number of new and returning characters to the franchise and 2) help the show break off and do it’s own thing. At the end of the day, this isn’t a continuation of the MCU-verse film, so let’s have fun with it! Guardians of the Galaxy is a HUGE franchise with limitless characters and settings. As of now, the show is really just a bad stand-up comedian doing his best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.