What Kind of Movie Is Guardians of the Galaxy?
We use data from the “microgenres” represented by Ranker lists to show just how dynamic one movie (and its fanbase) can be.
Photo: Disney/Marvel
How would you describe the 2014 movie Guardians of the Galaxy? A sci-fi smash hit? A superhero movie? A zany comedy? Maybe you think of it first and foremost as Chris Pratt’s breakout movie role. Or maybe the first thing that comes to mind is its amazing soundtrack. You might think of it as a geek movie — or, conversely, as a movie for “bros.” You might consider it to be one of the best movies of 2014, or even the best of the 2010s. Or you could think it’s more than a little overrated.
As big fans of all things pop culture, we here at Ranker know that it’s tough to sum up a movie or TV show with just one label. That’s why we have lists dedicated to pretty much every category or quality of entertainment you can think of, whether it’s something as general as the Greatest Movies of All Time or as something specific as the Worst Title Lines Spoken in Film. Each of these lists is not only a ranking of movies or shows, but a way of defining them. They each represent a “micro-genre” in film or television.
Why are these “micro-genres” so important? They help us to more precisely understand people’s taste in entertainment. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime use microgenres to recommend new content to us, looking for similarities between the titles we’ve watched in the past (British TV shows, violent movies, supernatural soaps, etc.) to guess what we’ll want to watch next.
By compiling these micro-genres in the form of votable lists, Ranker can quantify a given movie or TV show’s status within that micro-genre. Compiled by the subject matter-experts on our editorial team, Ranker lists can tell us how popular a movie is not just in general, but as a member of many discrete micro-genres — for instance, we can use Get Out’s ranking on Best Intelligent Horror Movies to determine whether it should be recommended to a fan of intelligent horror movies. That information could potentially be used to recommend content to users of streaming services, or even help content providers decide what kind of shows and movies they should produce.
Photo: Ranker
A movie’s position across multiple multi-genre lists, we can get a nuanced picture of how the public feels about a TV show or movie that goes beyond a basic thumbs-up or thumbs-down review. To demonstrate what we mean, we’ll take a look at Guardians of the Galaxy — a movie that is not only immensely popular, but appeals to many different audiences for very different reasons.
What Kind of Movie Is Guardians of the Galaxy?
Guardians is ranked on well over 100 different movie lists on Ranker. Among them is the The Best Superhero Movies of All Time, a highly competitive list with nearly 540,000 votes — Guardians is ranked #3 out of a total of 188 movies. The movie is also ranked highly on a list covering an even broader category of movies, the Greatest Action Movies of All Time. Though Guardians is ranked #38 on this list (which has a total of 450,000 votes), it’s competing with 740 other titles, meaning it’s within the top 5% of all action movies. Finally, it’s #12 out of 573 on the Greatest Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, putting it in the top 2% overall above classics like Men in Black, Ghostbusters, and Wrath of Khan.
Guardians of the Galaxy is ranked #3 on The Best Superhero Movies of All Time
Of course, if you’re familiar with the movie, you could have determined that Guardians of the Galaxy fit into the superhero, action, and science fiction genres on your own. But these impressive rankings reflect a consensus among movie fans that Guardians not only belongs to these genres, but is an exceptional example of them. They provide an objective confirmation of what would otherwise be a subjective judgment: Guardians of the Galaxy is a big hit among movie fans who love sci-fi, action, and superhero flicks.
But other rankings indicate that Guardians performs well in categories that you might not have guessed. For example, it’s within the top 25% of the Funniest Movies of All Time, an incredibly competitive list with over a million votes. It may not be the Top 10, but considering it’s a superhero action movie competing with the most famous comedies in film history, it’s nothing to sneeze at. Its credibility as a comedy is further furnished by the fact that it also tops the list of both Funniest Superhero Movies and Funniest Movies About Aliens. It’s clear that Guardians of the Galaxy scores highly with audiences looking for laughs.
Then there are the many other micro-genres that Guardians belongs to, including Movies About Characters Reinventing Themselves (where it’s ranked #25), Best Sci-Fi Movies to Watch High on Weed (#4), Greatest Soundtracks of All Time (#13), and Most Rewatchable Movies (#54). That means that Guardians of the Galaxy can be recommended to fans of each of these micro-genres. That information that might be useful to streaming services who could combine some of these microgenres and rankings to offer Netflix-like carousels of recommendations to subscribers — because as Ranker Insights proves, all of these audiences are distinguished from one another by their own unique tastes and preferences.
Who Makes Up Guardians of the Galaxy’s Audience?
Ranker Insights can show us how fans of Guardians of the Galaxy fans on one list voted on other lists.
Ranker Insights gives us a snapshot of the tastes and interests of the people who voted up Guardians of the Galaxy on each of these respective lists, and all of them differ from one another.
For example, let’s look at the people who voted for Guardians on our list of Best Superhero Movies. Insights seems to suggest that these voters aren’t dyed-in-the-wool superhero fanatics, but people with broad tastes who appreciate a little bit of everything. When voting on the Best Sci-Fi Movies list, they prefer recent blockbusters like Star Trek, Pitch Black, and Pacific Rim along with sci-fi-inflected superhero movies like X-Men: Days of Future Past. Meanwhile, their taste in comedy favors classics like Hot Shots! and Major League, as well as funny superhero movies like Deadpool or Thor: Ragnarok.
The audience that voted up Guardians on the list of Best Sci-Fi Movies, on the other hand, are more straightforward superhero fanatics. The most common two picks for Best Movies Of All Time with this audience were The Avengers and Iron Man — the movies they voted up on Best Action Movies were almost exclusively about caped crusaders, including The Dark Knight, Thor, X Men: First Class, and Deadpool. This trend even extends to TV: their most common upvotes on Greatest TV Shows of All Time were for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Arrow, and they voted up Daredevil and The Flash in high numbers, as well.
What accounts for this clear difference in voting behavior? If you’re going out of your way to vote for superhero movies on a list of great sci-fi flicks, that probably means you’re a big fan of superhero movies! That’s not necessarily the case for people who vote up Guardians of the Galaxy on a list that’s full of other superhero movies, which explains why that audience’s tastes are notably more varied.
The differences become even more pronounced when you look at more niche audiences. For example, the people who upvoted Guardians on the Funniest Movies of All Time don’t seem to be tremendous superhero fans. The movies they upvote on Best Movies of All Time are varied in genre, including comedies like Borat and Shaun of the Dead, action flicks like Heat and The Departed and rom-coms like Annie Hall. But it’s clear they prefer cerebral, critically celebrated movies. That’s also evident in their favorite sci-fi movies, which include the cult hits like Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, and 12 Monkeys.
Photo: Disney/Marvel