"Hard as it is to believe, within the memory of those still living, Marvel was not always the movie establishment's billion-dollar behemoth but a scrappy, iconoclastic comic book gadfly. So one of the most pleasant surprises of the altogether pleasant and surprising Guardians of the Galaxy is that it takes us back to Marvel's roots and the subversive satisfactions those early days provided. … Blessed with a loose, anarchic B-picture soul that encourages you to enjoy yourself even when you're not quite sure what's going on, the scruffy Guardians is irreverent in a way that can bring the first Star Wars to mind … This Five Against the House ragtag bunch of misfits, rascals and rebels, a kind of garage band of the universe, form an alliance of the dispossessed that makes up in attitude what it lacks in status."