‘Guardians’: Russia’s embarrassingly cynical ploy to cash in on a Hollywood craze
In recent years, the Marvel universe has taken over cinema, with superhero stories being preferred over the authenticity of real people and prioritised by distribution companies who want to make obscene amounts of money. While this formulaic filmmaking has been endlessly discussed and criticised by filmmakers and film lovers alike, with some defending this form of entertainment and others comparing it to the death of entertainment entirely, there is no denying that it brings large audiences to the cinema and makes some people very rich. This is a tempting proposition for many, with other studios attempting to capitalise on this trend and recreate the frenzied fandom within other franchises, with the future of the James Bond series perhaps being subject to the same fate after reports that Amazon wanted to turn it into a Marvel-esque franchise.
However, while the future of the MI6 story is still uncertain, one studio attempted to recreate this business model and failed terribly. The 2017 film Guardians was so terrible that it was labelled as one of the worst of all time.
Guardians is set during the Cold War and follows an organisation called Patriot, which assembles a squad of superheroes who have long been forced to conceal their identities. The team is brought out of hiding when a new and dangerous threat emerges. Directed by Sarik Andreasyan, the film was Russia’s ambitious attempt to carve out its own success in the booming superhero genre. Ironically, the project was a collaboration with a studio named ‘Enjoy Movies’, a title that seemed at odds with the film’s sombre tone and the government-backed nature of the production.
Given who was involved in the production, the film is intensely patriotic, with each character representing a different nationality of the USSR but with strange similarities to the Marvel universe, with one character being able to turn into a bear (which resembles The Hulk), one character who can move very quickly (resembling Quicksilver) and one being able to turn invisible (much like the Invisible Woman).
However, despite their attempt to capitalise on this demand, the project was a catastrophic failure, with critics slamming the poor writing, directing, acting and cheap-looking CGI. The film bombed at the box office, with it performing fine during opening weekend and then dropping by 90% each subsequent weekend. Each review was fairly brutal and unforgiving, despite their attempts to cover this up, with the director of the film allegedly taking down any reviews he didn’t like on YouTube through copyright claims. The film’s failure bankrupted the studio, and the Cinema Foundation of Russia was so furious at the lack of success that they asked for their money back.
It also seems that they aimed too high during pre-production, with the studio announcing a sequel before the release of the first film, with the superheroes joining forces with China and being partially funded by a Chinese production company. However, after the studio declared bankruptcy, the chances of this seemed increasingly unlikely, but when the director was asked about the sequel’s cancellation, he cryptically responded by saying, “Deadpool 2 was to blame for everything”, explaining that the script was too similar to Guardians 2.
Even though the Guardians story is inherently tragic, it’s unfortunately quite funny that the film flopped in such a dramatic way after it was predicted to be such a huge success. Maybe Russia has learned a lesson from shamelessly copying Hollywood, or maybe, they’ve conveniently forgotten about the whole thing.
