There’s nothing like good old nostalgia. And everyone loves a good revival, even in the fictionalised version of the year 2014, when actor Chris Pratt’s character Peter Quill aka Star-Lord is on an interplanetary scavenging mission in Marvel’s latest summer superhero film, Guardians of the Galaxy .
But the opening sequence on the planet Morag lends an air of familiarity when Peter turns on his cassette player and jams out to ‘Come and Get Your Love’ by rock band Redbone. Through the course of the film, Peter fights for his cassette player and specifically his tape — Awesome Mix Vol. 1 — against the bad guys and keeps his mixtape close to him, as a reminder of his late mother, who gifted it to him.
It is director James Gunn’s brilliant execution in selecting music from the 1970s and 80s that blends in with the fictional timeline of Guardians . The director told Billboard in an interview, “We really baked the music into the movie […] Having it be part of the initial filmmaking process as opposed to something that you tack on at the end... it really made it a much more holistic experience.” Peter receives the tape in 1988, and continues to listen to it 24 years later — and everything from David Bowie’s trippy ‘Moonage Daydream’ to Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ are timeless hits from three decades ago. By the time viewers finish watching Guardians, they realise exactly how catchy these songs still are.
Gunn has said that he first compiled the songs by running through the top singles “for every year in the 70s” Billboard charts. Unsurprisingly, the director’s first list numbered in at 500 songs. He ultimately trimmed it down to 120 songs and finally a 90-minute mixtape — Awesome Mix Vol. 1, which is also the original soundtrack (OST) to Guardians .
While the film has raked in over $300 million since its release on August 1, Awesome Mix Vol. 1 has become the first-ever soundtrack with previously released songs to top the Billboard charts for three weeks in a row. Selling over 200,000 units, the 12-track compilation is also the second movie soundtrack to reach the number one spot on the charts, after animated musical comedy Frozen .
Cassettes may not be trendy any longer but mixtapes still are — even though the tapes are long gone. But if you liked the hilarious, action-packed film that was Guardians , there’s little doubt that you didn’t dig everything from Jackson 5 to Marvin Gaye to Rupert Holmes that played in the background. Gunn recently took to Facebook after hearing that Awesome Mix Vol. 1 had topped the charts, saying, “Somewhere in a boardroom right now, a movie executive is trying to give a film that’s not testing well the ‘ Guardians soundtrack treatment but with a new twist’ — say, 90s grunge hits over a buddy action comedy. This is something you will not thank me for.”
And for those looking out for more of Gunn’s picks when the Guardians sequel will release in 2017, there’s already a hint when Peter opens his mother’s last present to him — Awesome Mix Vol. 2. But the director has already said he won’t follow the same formula. Gunn told entertainment website Vulture, “When I’m approaching the sequel, I probably won’t structure it in the exact same way. One of the reasons people like Guardians is because it’s fresh and different, so the second one will be fresh and different from the first one.”
