GUARDIANS of the GALAXY - Grading & Discussion

The movie is so damn pleased with itself because idiot fanboys campaign for it to be nominated for an Oscar. Okay.

 

There are lots of fun, shallow, guilty-pleasure sfx movies that I love more than breathing, but if I started saying that they should be Oscar contenders for all those categories like the guy in that video, than I'd be looked like I was crazy..

 

Each to his own, but I really don't think Marvel movies, and other popcornflicks, should be judged/analyzed to deeply. They are there to entertain. And if they didn't, that's fine, each to his own, again. Still, it's just a popcornflick.....

 

I just finished watching it, and I loved it. I also now know why so many people loved Groot. Oh, and this movie did the same thing to me that the people behind UP managed to do, the sneaky bastards.

Definitely an "A+" from me. I knew nothing going in, and now I want to own it.

 

I'm still forced to wonder if the majority of the people who criticize the Marvel films have ever read a comic book in their life.

 

I read them all the time.

But the films should work as films.. it's a separate medium. Things that work in comics can't always work in films.

 

I'm really taking a lot of hits here on my opinion of this film. But having a different opinion and talking about it.. that's the purpose of this board.

And it's not like I just said that the movie outright stinks and then fled, like a drive-by shooter. I've actually tried (insomuch as you can on a message board) brought up a few examples of why I don't like it.

Some people have addressed my specific examples but most people are just like "it's the Marvel hater again" (which is incorrect, I do like Marvel and their films, but I also think that they are overblown, overrated, and I don't like the direction they are taking cinema, but in and of themselves they are entertaining) or they'd say "it's a fun movie; what's wrong with having fun?" and while normally I'd agree things have gotten a bit out of hand with this film.

I just want a discussion and I don't feel that this dismissive attitude I've been getting is deserved.

So that the idea that T2 will still be regarded as acalssic twenty years from now while GotG will be nearly forgotten that far down the line might be my opinion and it might be unpopular, but expressing such thoughts here is what this board is about.

 

I think I hear what you are trying to say, but the Terminator movies, 1 and 2, both had moments that were certianly "funny" my favorite was when the Terminator responded to the "What do you have a dead cat in there?" Or when he agreed that it was wash day tomorrow and he had nothing clean, but they were certainly not comedies.

I think a better comparison, if you want, is Ghostbusters. That is a comedy with action, rather than an action movie with some small comic moments. Plus, it may not sound like a comedy when you state some if it's contents, haunting, monsters, demonic possession, wides scale destruction by a giant monster, but it certainly was a comedy.

Maybe you don't think that Ghostbusters was substantial or mattered? I don't know if that's what you think, but when you start using words like that, the word that comes to my mind is Pretentious.

 

Another possible issue is that people who overwhelmingly enjoy something don't tend to feel a need or desire to address points you think were negative or underwhelming.

So the discussion you'd like to have FSM is not occurring cause few see the merit in your points.

 

I think your point is apt! That is a more valid comparison. And that film has certainly passed the test of time. I'll have to give it some thought. I mean, I certainly didn't enjoy Guardians as much as Ghostbusters, but maybe some people would.

Your point is very well founded.

Yet I do have a thoughts:

Every time I think of Guardians, I think that it's just a product.. it might be a good product, but it was still just a product.. it was made, packaged and delivered as one, and everyone knew it going in. Ghostbusters was bit more risky but turned into a product after it achieved its notariety. In 1984 the thought of merging an "in on the joke" comedy with big special effects was very very risky.. and it was soemthing that took a lot of effort to pull off. Comedy is like drawing an animated character.. a single pencil too think or too think will throw everything off, and they managed to do it right in Ghostbusters. To me (and this is my opinion only) GotG was the epitome of Jeff Goldblum's speach in Jurassic Park: They stood on the shoulders of geniouses (all the science fiction films and blockbutsres and comedies that came before, ands they just built from there, hardly earning it by themselves, and more intent on on packaging it for the masses. As long it's selling. Star Wars and Ghostbusters and others did all the work to show this kind of film could be popular, and GotG just did it!

 

I don't know... pitching a film featuring a talking racoon and tree is probably as risky as it can get for a Marvel brand film.

But they not only made it anyway they turned those into the breakout characters.
So job well done, I'd say!

It could have easily gone into the other direction.

 

Every movie is a product.

 

Exactly. But apparently, to him, Marvel films are more product still, whatever the fuck he means by it. It's beyond tedious at this point.

 

Talking tree... done better in Two Towers. I would say that the concept of a CGI creature - in and of itself -is not a rsiky thing any more. Almost any creature brought to the screen is opening.

And the whole risk thing for Marvel is a sob story I'm tired of hearing. They made well over a billion on Avengers, and theya re backed by Disney.. even if Guardians flopped the losses would be endureable.

It's not nearly like the risk Lucas took with a New Hope wherein they threatened to shut the film down pretty much every day it was in production, and even the studio had little grasp of the universe and what they were even making, the producers and studio heads knew exactly what Guardians was going to be, and they were invested in that vision, such as it was.

And here: If it flopped they could have easily explained it away as a risk, but it really wasn't. And it's curious how all that talk of risk got people curious enough to see it.. the notion of "let's see this risky property for Marvel" was part of what sold people on the idea of shelling out money to begin with.. they were buying the Marvel brand and the fact that the other films were good.

 

I get what he's trying to say. Every professional musical act is a product, but some are a lot more consciously manufactured, calibrated and focus-grouped than others. Guardians certainly feels like a product of carefully market-tested manufacture in a way that, say, Winter's Bone doesn't. It's not an inherently bad thing -- you could say the same of The Lego Movie - but it's there.

 

That's all fine. Where the problem begins, at least for many, is with the idea that the "more manufactured" thing (film, book, song, etc.) is inherently less worthy of positive comments and "likeability" owing to its "more manufactured" nature.

 

I'm assuming FSM means that that's the case for him, no that that's "inherently" the case, but he can clarify if he chooses.

 

Can it really be called a "dance-off" if only one person dances and the other one just stands there going "what the hell are you doing"?

 

I think there's an outtake of Lee Pace accepting the dance-off and taking on Chris Pratt.