Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios

If you don’t already have some kind of prior knowledge or love for comic books—and particularly, their history—the Marvel Cinematic universe can be a kind of alienating entity. Sure, such characters as Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Hulk are arguably iconic enough that you’d certainly enjoy and get their respective movies without having ever read a comic book, and Marvel’s done a good job of introducing their complicated backstories on screen. But since 2012’s The Avengers blew up the box office—the culmination of Marvel Studio’s Phase I of films—things have gotten a little more convoluted.

With Marvel’s big characters already in the middle of their respective franchises, the studio announced that Phase II would mine some of their lesser-known characters. But how would that be received? Would audience flock to theaters to catch films of smaller characters like Ant-Man and Dr. Strange? Well, that’s the experiment Marvel Studios set out to conduct when they announced a couple years ago that a Guardians of the Galaxy movie was in the pipeline. With no bankable/recognizable superheroes in the the Guardians crew—one of the central characters is even an anthropomorphic raccoon and another is an anthropomorphic tree who can only mutter the same three words—many were certainly curious to see how Marvel Studios would make a Guardians of the Galaxy movie fit within their canon of iconic superhero movies. The answer? Don’t make it a superhero movie at all.

With Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel has created their least superhero-y superhero movie yet. The result is a rollicking sci-fi/action-comedy that harkens back to a time when summer blockbusters stopped taking themselves so seriously and just tried to have fun. That’s not to say the stakes aren’t high in Guardians—they certainly are—but co-writer/director James Gunn deftly demonstrates an innate ability to keep things light and comedic at the perfect times without every compromising the gravity of the narrative. Guardians of the Galaxy is easily the most fun summer blockbusters to come out in years.

Make no mistake: Guardians of the Galaxy is nonetheless a superhero origin story, no matter how slyly it tries to hide it. The film kicks off in 1988 when a young Peter Quill is sitting in a desolate hospital waiting room, listening to his Walkman. He’s taken into a hospital room where he witnesses his mom pass away from cancer. Emotionally distraught, he runs out of the hospital where he’s immediately abducted by an alien ship. Fast forward 25 years and Quill—known by his nickname Starlord—lives as an intergalactic outlaw; doing odd, mostly illegal jobs to make a living.

Things get complicated for Peter (Chris Pratt) when his latest job sends him to a desolate planet to retrieve an mysterious orb that we later find out contains an Infinity Stone—a powerful, ancient stone that gives whoever is worthy of wielding it an infinite amount of power. Naturally, Peter isn’t the only one after it. The Kree warlord known as Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) has his minions searching for it, too. One of them is Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who actually is planning to use it to betray Ronan and her adoptive father, Thanos. Eventually, Peter and Gamora end up imprisoned together, where they meet a foul-mouthed raccoon, Rocket (Bradley Cooper), his powerful tree-monster buddy, Groot (Vin Diesel), and the tortured Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). The group soon buddies up, realizing they have a common enemy in Ronan, and fight their way to try and keep the Infinity Stone out of his hands.

There’s a lot of characters and a lot of plot all flying by at once in Guardians—Gamora’s tumultuous relationship with the villains, the bounty on Peter’s head by the band of thieves (led by Michael Rooker’s Yondu) who raised him, Drax’s blindsided quest for vengeance against Ronan for killing his family—but Gunn does a nice job of keeping it all relatively simple and streamlined. But what makes Guardians of the Galaxy really shine among the the Hollywood blockbuster stars is the witty, razor-sharp script he co-wrote with Nicole Perlman that balances comedic chops not just on Pratt’s shoulders, but also on Cooper’s, Diesel’s, and, most impressively, Bautista’s.

Since this is a Marvel movie, there’s no shortage of in-your-face explosions and high-octane actions. Couple that with the film’s intergalactic setting and kooky alien characters, and Guardians builds a cinematic universe that doesn’t look and feel too far off from the one Star Wars established in 1977. But despite the grand setting, the devastating Infinity Stone-as-MacGuffin, and the ruthless villain with actually sensible motivations, Guardians never feels self-serious, like many superhero films these days do.

Gunn knows what makes a great summer blockbuster—deft action, appropriately timed witty comedy, likeable characters, and a carefully balanced tone that teeters between heavy and light—and skillfully applies that knowledge to Guardians of the Galaxy. Perhaps the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe should take note.

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Guardians of the Galaxy
Directed by James Gunn
Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman
With Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Dave Bautista, and Vin Diesel
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.
Running time 121 minutes
Opens today at in theaters everywhere