+2
Yeah, it was aright, I guess.
It mostly looks amazing, but still not as special as Thor, which I re-watched recently and was reminded what a spectacle the climax was where Loki freezes the Bifrost with the Casket of Ancient Winters before the showdown on the Rainbow bridge — there is still nothing in this film both as imaginative or beautiful as those scenes. Still, in the wasteland at the start of the film to the gritty sprawl of Knowhere we have some very atmospheric locations, as well as a constant steam of cool looking shots.
So, that aside, the real strength of the movie is the characters. They have consistent, believable interactions with each other. Each of them has a moment of weakness, and they each change in a simple but effective way. All of this is done with mostly a bunch of jokes. And this is a pretty funny movie, believe it. Even better than Iron Man 3 for laughs, I think.
All that works great... for 2/3rds of the movie. However, Guardians suffers more in my opinion from third act over the top empty flash and bang than any Superhero film I've seen in a while. I love a good action climax, but you've got to build up to it right, it's got to mean something, and shouldn't feel like it's there to tick a box. The Winter Soldier and Days of Future Past handled the climax incredibly well. Next to those, this is a pretty dismal attempt. It's very cliche: deep voiced evil dude comes to end the world, airplanes falling out of the sky, tons of faceless mooks as cannon fodder for the heroes. And it didn't feel natural how the Guardians are still are the front of this action when it gets around the saving the world... they just didn't get to that place in the film in a believable fashion — like, what could those five misfits who had just been trying to survive up to this point do when Ronan invades that an army of ravagers or the Nova corps couldn't? Use Rocket's handmade big gun? And seeing as you're supposed to be world building, why not switch focus over to some of the Nova corps characters for a while, or to the villains again (which were rubbish, by the way).
James Gunn has made quite a kooky film here, what with the crude, off-beat humour and the retro music and some creative visuals, but also one that's quite formulaic. It has a lot of clever detail in places, but is also pretty dumb in places too.
Last edited by Sam250; 08-04-14 at 08:04 PM.