If the poster for “Guardians of the Galaxy” seems a bit like a parody of a space-opera movie — with its ray-gun firing hero, green-skinned Amazon, machine-gun toting space racoon and giant alien plant — well, that’s because it is. Kind of.
Director James Gunn is best known for his film “Super,” which was a rather hilarious and demented dismantling of the superhero genre. With “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Gunn inherits a little-known Marvel Comics property — a bush-league versions “Avengers,” basically — and attempts to have some fun with it. He’s aiming to both make a mockery of “Star Wars”-style space operas and also deliver enough sci-fi spectacle to make any fanboy swoon. Remarkably, he succeeds, and “Guardians” is pure, silly fun. (It’s even more remarkable considering Gunn’s last film, the gross-out comedy “Movie 43,” utterly bombed at the box office.)
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