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Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2

Richardson said:
Notice the qualifier 'Really good'.
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I agree! I think it is a good movie.

Not everyone would, though, and that's my point. "It's just a comic book movie" is not a compelling defense, especially coming from someone who had such a strong reaction to "just a scifi show trailer" earlier.
 
Jace911 said:
I agree! I think it is a good movie.

Not everyone would, though, and that's my point. "It's just a comic book movie" is not a compelling defense, especially coming from someone who had such a strong reaction to "just a scifi show trailer" earlier.
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A good comic book movie, explicitly based as a different continuity from the comics it was based on, maintaining continuity with most to all other works set within its specific setting, and delivering good writing, concepts, and followthrough...

versus:

A series specifically stated to be within a specific and established continuity, within a period with an already established look and design aesthetic that has so far failed to actually show any evidence of understanding the aesthetic, values, writing, or other shared attributes of the material it claims to be a part of, even to the extent of reasonable retcons/adjustments to the material within reason ala the MCU. Further compounded by the fact that these are easily researched details that a completely different production about an actual reboot/alternate universe got right not even a year before, and showing a lack of respect to the material in the process.

As I've said there, if they carefully adjusted the stuff to fit modern production techniques/values and updated the look while staying within the relative 'feel' in a way that makes you go 'yeah, okay, that works', it'd be fine. But when you fuck up badly enough that it looks more like another franchise, you have a problem.

Guardians gets a pass because it's damn good, is part of a franchise that is damn good, and generally stays internally self-consistent with real effort made to make sure mistakes aren't made. While another certain show can't even get the damn uniforms into a reasonable approximation of an update and makes critical errors about what one of the consistent long-seen species right despite being set within ten years of another part of the same franchise. You know... general basic detail shit. It might still get a pass if it's got good enough writing/acting, but... yeah, no. No hopes of that.

Quality, attention to detail, consistency, and properly applied dedication goes a long way. All of that spent poorly adds insult to injury.

But, you know, what does a fucking piss-poor Trek series have to do with a solid MCU film, I have to ask?
 
I'm amused that you're able to so thoroughly pass judgment on a tv series that hasn't even aired yet, but we're heading pretty off-topic. I apologize if I've touched a nerve with my joke.
 
Jace911 said:
I'm amused that you're able to so thoroughly pass judgment on a tv series that hasn't even aired yet, but we're heading pretty off-topic. I apologize if I've touched a nerve with my joke.
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It's just irritating that Trek for TV is going to be ruined by something that looks like the kind of edgy shitpost fanfic a thirteen year old who's primary love is Mass Effect would come up with when there's the perfectly good example of the Kelvin Timeline doing it better in every conceivable way literally right there saying it's alright to embrace the old look.

Thank fucking god the MCU is so nice.

Seriously, can we get back to the fact that the MCU has remained so on-point for almost ten years now, with enough movies that they could make a television series out of them? Can we seriously get that level of dedication for all sci-fi? I'd sell my soul to Trump (don't tell him that) if it would get that level of consistency and dedication for all sci-fi!
 
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VolantRedX said:
You missed my point so bad I have to assume it was intentional.
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Your point was flimsy enough to be used as part of Al Harrington's Tube-man emporium. Cheese is fine. Cheese is good. Cheese keeps you from getting so serious that you delve up your own ass far enough to turn into a singularity of gritty.
 
On seeing this movie for a second time, I think I enjoy both volumes about equally.

I liked the repeated theme of family. Peter meets his father, only to learn that Yondu had been his Dad. Gamora dealing with Nebula. Yondu losing most of his Ravager family to mutiny, but finding a new family with the Guardians.
 
It says sad things about the threat level of Thanos shown in the previous marvel movies that this movie is one of the better ones at making him seem threatening.
 
Hayateknight said:
It says sad things about the threat level of Thanos shown in the previous marvel movies that this movie is one of the better ones at making him seem threatening.
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By having his "daughters" go off on each other like they were each a combination of every Avenger? Cause I did see the fights between those two as the best evidence so far that he is going to be dangerous. So I agree with this sentiment.
 
E.I.G. said:
By having his "daughters" go off on each other like they were each a combination of every Avenger? Cause I did see the fights between those two as the best evidence so far that he is going to be dangerous. So I agree with this sentiment.
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I also meant it in that the other movies have done a piss poor job establishing Thanos as something we are to take as a serious threat. Like as much as I like Guardians 1, the scenes with Ronan and Thanos actively piss on any threat Thanos may have had. Like when Ronan decides not to give him the infinity stone and Thanos just made vague threats while sitting in his chair like a dumbass. Or when Thanos let Ronan kill one of his people directly in front of him and did nothing in response.
 
So, not as good as the first, better than most superhero films
I legitimately liked Ego as a film. His motives actually did fit with his name and overall characteristic. He lost himself in despair, discovered a reason to live, but it ended up blinding him to his own feels and self actualization, leading him to slowly self destruct until he found someone who he felt could truly understand him. His relationship with Peter was actually fatherly; Ego actually did love him. He had discovered someone who was of him and could share in his great work. With Peter's mother he forced himself to choose the work over her despite not wanting too out of what was almost a sense of duty to his great purpose (his ego), but now with Peter he didn't have to split that wicket. It brought him out of his despair and depression, which was pretty well articulated with him getting Mantis, and gave him hope again. It's just that he was unable to view people who weren't of him as well, people.

Baby Groot was a goddamn cancer and made me want to burn the theater down though.
 
Mutton said:
So, not as good as the first, better than most superhero films
I legitimately liked Ego as a film. His motives actually did fit with his name and overall characteristic. He lost himself in despair, discovered a reason to live, but it ended up blinding him to his own feels and self actualization, leading him to slowly self destruct until he found someone who he felt could truly understand him. His relationship with Peter was actually fatherly; Ego actually did love him. He had discovered someone who was of him and could share in his great work. With Peter's mother he forced himself to choose the work over her despite not wanting too out of what was almost a sense of duty to his great purpose (his ego), but now with Peter he didn't have to split that wicket. It brought him out of his despair and depression, which was pretty well articulated with him getting Mantis, and gave him hope again. It's just that he was unable to view people who weren't of him as well, people.

Baby Groot was a goddamn cancer and made me want to burn the theater down though.
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How can you not like Baby Groot. What's wrong with you?
 
Ant221 said:
How can you not like Baby Groot. What's wrong with you?
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There was nothing redeeming about Baby Groot above the level of kitten videos on youtube. Not only was he a piss poor stooge due to having basically zero ability to emote outside of a dopey smile, for some reason they put Rocket in the role of the straight man. Rocket's character is designed around being a wonderful edgy but heartfelt moral stooge; "You can't just take people's things" "But what if I want it more than them?!" It's similar to how Drax plays the foreigner stooge who doesn't understand idioms and would be perfectly in place with a malapropism or two.

Rocket's humor in being frustrated comes from him being frustrated at normal human behavior. Suddenly swapping the role doesn't work; you end up with a massively overacting Rocket who is playing against character with a stooge who can barely do more than a single emote. Especially when you're dragging the joke out for minutes and have the exact same call and response!

That's not to say that having the stooge play the straight man can't work; Drax got to do it with Mantis, but that hinged upon the fact that the big joke was that they were both stooges; Drax wasn't actually telling the truth as the audience sees it and Mantis was being extremely naive. He also played entirely within type; his jokes were about the difference in the audience culture vs Drax's culture, a classic foreigner joke.

There are more serious characters in the main cast which aren't written into the basic dichotomy all the time; Peter and Gamora can be both ends of the spectrum, but when they play off each other it can go either way. Peter then plays the straight man to Drax and Rocket, but adding Groot into the equation forced an imbalance on the cast, where either you'd need Peter, as the audience surrogate, to play straight man to 3 different stooges while still pushing the plot OR (in the route they took) have one of the stooges play straight man to the new stooge. This ended up not working.
 
Mutton said:
There was nothing redeeming about Baby Groot above the level of kitten videos on youtube. Not only was he a piss poor stooge due to having basically zero ability to emote outside of a dopey smile, for some reason they put Rocket in the role of the straight man. Rocket's character is designed around being a wonderful edgy but heartfelt moral stooge; "You can't just take people's things" "But what if I want it more than them?!" It's similar to how Drax plays the foreigner stooge who doesn't understand idioms and would be perfectly in place with a malapropism or two.

Rocket's humor in being frustrated comes from him being frustrated at normal human behavior. Suddenly swapping the role doesn't work; you end up with a massively overacting Rocket who is playing against character with a stooge who can barely do more than a single emote. Especially when you're dragging the joke out for minutes and have the exact same call and response!

That's not to say that having the stooge play the straight man can't work; Drax got to do it with Mantis, but that hinged upon the fact that the big joke was that they were both stooges; Drax wasn't actually telling the truth as the audience sees it and Mantis was being extremely naive. He also played entirely within type; his jokes were about the difference in the audience culture vs Drax's culture, a classic foreigner joke.

There are more serious characters in the main cast which aren't written into the basic dichotomy all the time; Peter and Gamora can be both ends of the spectrum, but when they play off each other it can go either way. Peter then plays the straight man to Drax and Rocket, but adding Groot into the equation forced an imbalance on the cast, where either you'd need Peter, as the audience surrogate, to play straight man to 3 different stooges while still pushing the plot OR (in the route they took) have one of the stooges play straight man to the new stooge. This ended up not working.
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Was Groot ever a straight man? He didn't really seem like one in the first movie.

Baby Groot's purpose is too extenuate the theme of Family that the film was going for. He was basically their child
 
Jcogginsa said:
Was Groot ever a straight man? He didn't really seem like one in the first movie.

Baby Groot's purpose is too extenuate the theme of Family that the film was going for. He was basically their child
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I don't think he was a straight man in the first film. If you wanted the child then Rocket already fills this role with the fact that he's the moral stooge, asking "buy why?!"
 
Jcogginsa said:
Except there's a difference between a child and a manchild
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For the family metaphor in GotG2 I don't see it. Especially because Baby Groot didn't actually fill the baby/toddler role. He didn't actively determine what missions were being taken by a need to work around a baby, he didn't end up influencing the actions of others by his helplessness to the world. He didn't get people in trouble by toddling around (Rocket basically did this). His contribution was by being a Mascot figure and by being small. The latter of which they could have written Rocket to fill and the former just lead to some extremely cringeworthy scenes.

Which was another issue that GotG2 had; it couldn't let a joke go. Taserface had to be played out several times too long. Every "baby groot so zany" scene was also several times too long. It was the Peter Griffin Holding His Shin and Crying For 2 Minutes of cinema.
 
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