jonny_

Usually when people say a movie wouldn't get made anymore, there are a ton of other movies exactly like it. But just try and find another movie outside of the 90's that plays like this one.

As always I feel like it's worth saying I don't love this movie because I think it's believable, grounded in reality or a revolutionary story. The honest truth is this movie is carried entirely by the acting and insane dialogue, it is absolutely over the top bonkers, but it goes so headlong into it that it goes through the wormhole and comes out the other side as high art.

The reason you won't get stuff like this now, it's just too crackers, crass and the two main actors in Denzel and Lithgow? You just wouldn't get two actors of that calibre and at their peak into what should be a B level movie.

John Lithgow alone is reason enough to watch this.

I've grown up loving super hero and sci-fi movies, Guardians of the Galaxy is highly rated and from Marvel which for me has a pretty decent track record, so this has to be great... right?

There are a lot of aspects I simply don't like about this, the dialogue is instensely clunky. The exposition is so lazy, more or less every chracter is introduced by someone saying their name and a summary of who they are. Apart from Groot who literally only has that as his whole vocabulary. When anything happens? You better believe someone has a mundane comment to really telegraph it. For example Rocket turns off the gravity and you see everyone outside begin to float, Gamora's next line is "He's turned off the gravity everywhere except for in here!" like great, thanks for that movie and man is that just the beginning of that happening.

The humour is either lines delivered deadpan, Star-lord talking about or playing/singing/dancing to music or someone commenting on Rocket Raccoon or Groot being a Raccoon/Tree/Weird. It's just not for me.

In a similar vein, the cast is a half and half of people whose movies i've really liked and the other half? Ehh... I personally don't think Chris Pratt can carry a movie franchise, having made it through these movies and the horrendous Jurassic World movies i'm yet to see what he brings to the table. Vin Diesel is very similar, the Fast series? Riddick? XXX? Oooft. He peaked in 98/99 with Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant and there's no sign of a return here. Dave Bautista is basically trying to follow in the footsteps of the Rock without the charisma that guy has. Zoe Saldana is ok, but it's her same old schtick.

On the flip side we get Michael Rooker really giving some effort and Karen Gillen who is massively underutilised. Djimon Hounsou and Glenn Close are also left out for huge swathes of this, it's almost criminal.

My final major issue is, absolutely nothing looks real or believable. I don't mean in the sense that I can't buy into superheroes in outer space, but more that it's so CGI heavy at no point does it look like an actor was actually on a set or in a vehicle. Despite the heavy praise for the effects, I still don't think CGI is and maybe never will be able to replace practical effects. When I catch a glimpse of Xandar in this, it may as well be a slightly cleaner looking Coruscant. There are films that were made in the 80's and 90's that had less, but could make you believe they're somewhere else. But here I get lifted right out of the movie and can tell they're in a big green warehouse.