《銀河護衛隊》成漫威最新吸金王

Talking about directing in blockbusters is sometimes nothing more than wishful thinking. Most are such impersonally operated machines — dedicated to the business of brand storytelling — that they tend to obliterate any whisper of individuality. That there’s a palpable directorial sensibility in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” along with other signs of genuine life, helps separate this latest Marvel cash grab from a lot of off-the-rack movie cartoons. Here, a pulse, wit, beauty and a real sensibility have been slipped into the fray, alongside the clockwork guffaws, kabooms and splats.

談論轟動大片的導演工作，有時是不可能的事情。這些影片大都致力於講述品牌故事，導演就像是不帶個人感情的控制機，傾向於抹去任何帶有個人特徵的私語。《銀河護衛隊》(Guardians of the Galaxy)中卻有着明顯的導演特色及真實生活的痕跡，令這部最新的漫威吸金大片得以從目前的衆多電影卡通中脫穎而出。片子的衝突中悄悄滲入了活力、智慧、美和真實感，此外還有定時出現的大笑、爆炸的巨響和砰然落地的聲音。

Lifted by a cast of professional charmers and a “What, me worry?” vibe, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is one of those interstellar westerns about a motley group of appealing baddies who rise to the heroic occasion and ride to the rescue, on spaceships rather than Appaloosas. The John Wayne role here — or, really, the 1970s Harrison Ford one — belongs to Chris Pratt, an easygoing, comic performer who’s very good at putting up a persuasive cute-dumb front and then shifting into a slyer, more knowing register. Wearing a swinging duster and some fetishistic head gear, Mr. Pratt slides into “Guardians of the Galaxy” doing a Gene Kelly soft shoe, but is soon flexing his action-hero bona fides (bang-bang, etc.) as Peter Quill, a heavily armed professional scavenger.

《銀河護衛隊》是一部星際西部片，講述一羣迷人的壞傢伙湊在一起，有了當英雄的機會，到宇宙飛船而不是阿帕魯薩小鎮去救人。一羣職業萬人迷演員，還有“什麼，我擔心？”的氣質提升了影片的質量。在這部影片裏，克里斯·普拉特(Chris Pratt)充當約翰·韋恩(John Wayne)的角色——哦，其實是20世紀70年代哈里森·福特(Harrison Ford)的角色——他是一個隨和的喜劇式演員，擅長擺出一副有說服力的聰明沉默的僞裝，接着就變成狡猾、更加世故的形象。普拉特身穿一件飄飄蕩蕩的罩衫，戴着具有拜物教氣質的頭部裝置，邁着吉恩·凱利(Gene Kelly)的舞步溜進《銀河護衛隊》，但是很快就顯示出了動作片主角的誠意（砰！砰！），他在片中的角色名叫彼得·奎爾(Peter Quill)，一個全副武裝的職業拾荒者。

Quill is a good and a sometimes bad guy who fights and jokes amid swirling, polychromatic smoke and cascading words like Xandarians, Morag and the Celestial (and awesome) Head. He comes into possession of a pretty blue rock that everyone would risk death trying to get, hence a throwaway about “The Maltese Falcon.” You see, in 1539, some crusading knights persuaded the king of Spain to give them the island of Malta. ... That’s not what happens in “Guardians,” which is based on a comic that first hit in 1969, but no matter. What counts are the dreams of Quill and his compatriots, including a wisecracking raccoon and an ambulatory tree, which have been ushered into existence by the director, James Gunn, with an eye to those who don’t know or care about the source material.

奎爾是個亦正亦邪的傢伙，他在五顏六色的煙霧中戰鬥、開玩笑，片中有很多“山達爾人”、“魔拉格星”和“神族（令人敬畏）頭顱”之類字眼。他得到了一塊漂亮的藍色石頭，所有人都冒死想要得到它，所以片中隨口提起了《馬耳他之鷹》(The Maltese Falcon)。你知道，在1539年，有些聖戰騎士們勸說西班牙國王把馬耳他島獻給他們……《銀河護衛隊》裏的故事可不是這樣，它是根據1969年走紅的一部漫畫改變的。不過沒關係。重要的是奎爾的夢想以及他的同伴們，其中包括一隻總說俏皮話的浣熊和一棵會走的樹，鑑於有人不知道或者不關心漫畫原作，特別交代一下，這棵樹是導演詹姆斯·岡(James Gunn)加進片子裏來的。

In other words, you don’t need to be held hostage by the Marvel Weltanschauung to enjoy “Guardians.” The story may be confusing and generic by turns, but if you shake off the bonds of narrative coherency it’s liberating letting the weird words — Yondu, Necrocraft, Sakkaran — just slide right past you, much like the zigzagging, exploding 3-D spaceships. What sticks are the fantastical landscapes, the beautiful creature designs and the actors delivering lively performances, even with strata of makeup and digital wizardry. Among the many amusements is the floating head (kind of like in “The Wizard of Oz”) that yells at a villain, Ronan (Lee Pace, with notes of “Star Wars” and “Prometheus”) who wants the blue rock so he can destroy Xandar, a post-racial Eden run by Nova Prime, a space-age Hillary Rodham Clinton (Glenn Close).

換言之，你就算不了解漫威漫畫的世界觀，也可以欣賞《銀河護衛隊》。故事情節可能有時混亂，有時平庸，但如果你不去管敘事的連貫性，那些古怪的字眼 “勇度”、“屍構生物”、“薩卡倫”也會一閃而過，就像那些曲折前進、突然爆炸的3-D太空船一樣。精彩的是幻想出來的風景，美麗的生物設計和演員們生動的表演，層層化妝和數碼特效也無法掩蓋他們的光彩。很多地方都很有趣，特別是一個漂浮的頭（有點像《OZ國曆險記》[The Wizard of Oz]），對惡棍羅南（李·佩斯[Lee Pace]飾演，讓人想起《星球大戰》[Star Wars]和《普羅米修斯》[Prometheus]）尖叫的一幕，羅南想得到這塊藍色的石頭，用來摧毀山達爾星——這是處在後種族歧視時代的伊甸園，領導人諾瓦至尊（格倫·克洛斯[Glenn Close]飾）堪稱太空時代的希拉里·羅德姆·克林頓(Hillary Rodham Clinton)。

Filled with a multihued populace, Xandar is shiny, clean and bright, and looks familiar because it evokes both our world (one building suggests the Gherkin in London) and your favorite tattered science-fiction paperback. It’s nice if a little ho-hum (as utopias tend to be in movies), particularly when compared with the darkly colored, visually seductive realms and spaces conjured up by Mr. Gunn and his team. From location to location, and character to character, the quality of the special effects meets the demands of the imaginative designs in sweep and detail. There are different ways to get lost in a movie, and while “Guardians” takes you down one after another crazy narrative turn, it also pulls you into — and, for the most part, keeps you in — a fully realized other world.

明亮而潔淨的山達爾星上有各種各樣的居民，讓人想起我們的世界（其中一座建築有點像倫敦的“小黃瓜”大廈），也想起你最心愛的科幻小說中的場景，所以看上去很熟悉。雖說有點沉悶（電影裏的烏托邦一般都是這樣），但它很漂亮，特別是同岡和其團隊創作出的那些深色調的迷人世界與空間進行對比。每個地點和角色的特效都能滿足想象設計的要求，從整體到局部無不如此。要想沉迷在電影世界中，有很多種不同的方式，《銀河護衛隊》帶你進入一個又一個瘋狂的敘事轉折，也推動着你進入一個完全可以感知的異世界，大多數時候能讓你沉浸其中。

That’s a relief, because the movie doesn’t start promisingly, opening with not one but two female clichés: the dead mother and the disposable chick. Both belong to Quill — he tells the chick, who enters with bed hair and not much else, that he forgot she was even there — and they suggest that however futuristic the movie may be, its sexual politics and worldview are antediluvian. (You have to wonder if the people who make these entertainments ever think about what such tired stereotypes say to young viewers, not to mention their own sons and daughters.) The sense that the movie’s appealingly old-fashioned jocularity, reminiscent of late Howard Hawks, has its fatal drawbacks dissipates with the introduction of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a green, mean, not-so-jolly killing machine.

這讓人感到安慰，因爲電影開頭顯得前景不妙。它以女性角色的俗套開場，而且不是一個女人，而是兩個女人：死去的母親和可以被隨便拋棄的姑娘。兩人都屬於奎爾，他告訴那個頭髮凌亂、近乎赤裸地走進來的姑娘，他忘記了她還在這兒——這顯示出這部影片雖然可能有着未來主義風格，但片中的性政治和世界觀還是老一套（你忍不住要想，拍這些片子的人到底有沒有想過，這種陳舊的老一套對年輕觀衆有什麼影響，更別提他們自己的兒女了）。片中有趣的老式滑稽讓人想起晚期的霍華德·霍克斯(Howard Hawks)，有着致命的缺點，不過隨着卡魔拉（Gamora，佐伊·索爾達娜[Zoe Saldana]飾演）的登場就消散了，她是個陰鬱自私的綠色殺人機器。

However familiar, Gamora turns out to be better than most Strong Female Characters — you know those girls: They’re fierce and finally inconsequential — that the blogger Tasha Robinson went after in a recent post about the so-called Trinity Syndrome. This pervasive sexist disorder affects a lot of filmmakers and is named for the “Matrix” character whose trajectory doesn’t deliver on her exciting promise. Gamora is given more to do than make a splashy entrance and wear tight costumes, and Ms. Saldana remains a charismatic screen presence, even when she trades in her Emma Peel-ish catsuits for a miniskirt, a costume change that’s accompanied by the image of a soft female hand resting on a strong male shoulder. This is another movie that mock-skewers the stereotypes it embraces.

卡魔拉這個角色雖然似曾相識，但還是超越了大多數強悍的女性角色——你知道這樣的女孩，她們很兇悍，但到最後變得無關緊要，就是博客寫手塔莎·羅賓森(Tasha Robinson)最新寫的所謂“崔妮緹綜合徵”。這個詞是指無處不在並影響了很多電影人的的男性至上論，是以《黑客帝國》(Matrix)中的女主角命名的，她故事的發展不像人們期待的那樣令人興奮。卡魔拉不僅身穿緊身衣，有一個引人矚目的登場，她還有更多事要做；索爾達娜一直是一個極具魅力的鏡頭人物，甚至當她把自己的艾瑪·皮爾(Emma Peel)式連體緊身衣換成一條短裙的時候也是如此——換裝還伴隨着這樣一幕：一隻柔軟的女人的手搭在強壯的男人肩膀上。這是片中的又一處引人嘲笑的俗套。

It’s old news that the major studios, having long absorbed the lessons of B-movie titans like Roger Corman, are now primarily in the business of churning out big-ticket exploitation flicks. (As a studio executive said way back in 1975, “What was ‘Jaws’ but an old Corman monster-from-the-deep flick?”) It’s perfect, then, that Mr. Gunn, having started out working for Troma Entertainment, that gleeful purveyor of barrel-scraping trash, has been tapped by Marvel for its latest bid at box-office domination. He’s a funny guy who brings a light touch to cartoon violence, whether he’s going for giggles (as in “Slither”) or uglier yuks (“Super”). But in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” he also summons up some emotion and even quiet desperation amid the scares and the brutes like Drax (a terrific Dave Bautista).

大製片公司從羅傑·科曼(Roger Corman)這些B級片巨頭那裏吸取了經驗，現在主要致力於快速推出高票房的剝削影片，這已經不是什麼新聞了（早在1975年，一個製片公司執行人就說，“《大白鯊》[Jaws]不就是一部科曼式的深淵怪物電影嗎？”）。詹姆斯·岡一開始在特洛瑪娛樂公司工作，這家令人愉快的公司專門翻箱倒櫃，翻拍老片，後來漫威邀請岡來拍攝這部最新的票房大片。岡是個有意思的人，不管他是想激起觀衆的傻笑（就像在他的《撕裂人》[Slither]裏），或是更醜陋的哈哈大笑（就像在《超級英雄》[Super]）裏，他令卡通暴力緩和了許多。但在《銀河護衛隊》裏，他也喚起了一些情感，甚至包括恐懼中靜靜的絕望，以及德拉克斯（Drax，大衛·巴蒂斯塔[Dave Bautista]飾演，非常可怕）這樣的獸性角色心中的絕望。

Given these moments of feeling, it doesn’t seem accidental that two of the brightest characters in the movie, which Mr. Gunn wrote with Nicole Perlman, are the raccoon and the tree, both surprisingly melancholic figures whose presence proves more resonant than their patter. The raccoon, Rocket (given an effectively grating screech by Bradley Cooper), is a nasty, often crude piece of work who’s never as funny as he thinks. But, much like the tree, a gorgeously rendered creature called Groot (Vin Diesel, in his finest role since “The Iron Giant”) — who nibbles his own tender sprouts and, in a nod to the 1931 film “Frankenstein,” offers a child a bloom — the raccoon carries with him an air of regret, a sense of loss and despair that, in the end, speaks more to our world than to that of the movie.

影片劇本由岡與尼克爾·帕爾曼(Nicole Perlman)合寫，有了這些充滿情感的時刻，片中最明亮的兩個角色是浣熊和樹，這也就不足爲奇了。出人意外的是，它們其實是很憂鬱的角色，它們的形象比它們的俏皮話更能引起共鳴。那隻名叫“火箭”的浣熊（它會發出刺耳的尖叫，由布拉德利·庫珀[Bradley Cooper]配音）是個粗魯討厭的傢伙，並不像自己以爲的那樣有趣；那棵樹是個被精彩呈現的生物，名叫格魯特（Groot，由範·迪塞爾[Vin Diesel]配音，這是他自《鋼鐵巨人》[The Iron Giant]以來最好的角色），它咬着自己新生的嫩芽，爲了向1931年的電影《弗蘭肯斯坦》(Grankenstein)致意，還給了一個孩子一朵花。兩個角色都帶着一種抱憾的氣息，一種失落與絕望的情緒，到最後更體現了我們這個世界的情感，而不是片中世界的情感。

“Guardians of the Galaxy” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Bloodless violence and soft expletives.

《銀河護衛隊》被標記爲PG-13級影片（家長強烈警告）。不見血的暴力和程度較輕的咒罵。電影2014年10月10日在中國大陸公映。