Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

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Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Crazedwraith »

Just about to watch. I thought we could treat ourselves to a thread for it.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Will probably be a week Tuesday before I can see it, but I'm looking forward to it. GotG is in my top five for the MCU, easily.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Steve »

Got the tickets for Thursday night, IMAX 3D, going with my brother.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by K. A. Pital »

We've just seen it yesterday.

Glorious is all I can say.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Bedlam »

Saw it yesterday.

It was a good film although I don't think it surpasses the original. It felt in many places particularly near the beginning that it was trying to hard to be funny and zany where as the original felt a little more natural. It did improve in the last third though.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Crazedwraith »

Bedlam wrote:Saw it yesterday.

It was a good film although I don't think it surpasses the original. It felt in many places particularly near the beginning that it was trying to hard to be funny and zany where as the original felt a little more natural. It did improve in the last third though.
This.

Plus it had a complete lack of subtlety. In some bits this is good in others well... I dislike it when characters monologue about other character's character to them. And they telegraphed the dramatic put followed by punch line a few times. (the final Taserface bit)

And the lack of Thanos was surprising giving his role.

Still I'm pretty sure that was Ben Browder as a Sovereign Military guy which tickles me. And I always like Kurt Russel. There were good character beats for all the Guardians old and new, so it was a strong outing.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Vendetta »

Bedlam wrote:Saw it yesterday.

It was a good film although I don't think it surpasses the original. It felt in many places particularly near the beginning that it was trying to hard to be funny and zany where as the original felt a little more natural. It did improve in the last third though.
I largely agree. It was stylish and funny and found time for all the characters to get their moment, but it did often put the pursuit of style ahead of building tension.

Still a fun old time, but not on the level of the first one.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by PREDATOR490 »

This film was disappointing.

Felt too much like it was bathing in the success of the last film by taking excessive liberties trying to be funny. The result is the pacing is failing and any sense of drama abysmal for humour that does not really work. The biggest example is the whistling dart of doom. In the first film it already crossed the bounds of reason but this went into a completely ludicrous scene.

The previous film had some semblance of continuity with the rest of the MU and relevance. This film felt like a gigantic tangent with nothing achieved or that relevant to the grander universe that exists.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Iroscato »

Absolutely loved it, enjoyed it even more than the first one. Still digesting it, but that's all I have to say for now.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by K. A. Pital »

I don't like Marvel as a whole.

This film only works because of the funny 80s throwbacks and puns, and is itself nothing but a collection of sci-fi puns and references and the like (much like Deadpool is a bunch of genre-ridiculing jokes made into a character).

So "more of the same" was not bad in this particular case.

Who on earth can even consider superhero movies seriously, as serious stories? They are ridiculous, and when done dead-serious, they are ridiculous and dull (or sometimes so bad its good). In this case, a non-serious approach makes for a much better film (as it was the case with Deadpool, too).

This is not an animated comic book and people should stop treating the Marvel stories as some sort of grand epos. They're pulpy stuff, and work best when done in an appropriate style and fashion.

Stallone and the other gags worked, this time. It was cool, it was fun (again), and it was not overdone, as with say successive iterations of the Expendables.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by The Romulan Republic »

K. A. Pital wrote:Who on earth can even consider superhero movies seriously, as serious stories? They are ridiculous, and when done dead-serious, they are ridiculous and dull (or sometimes so bad its good). In this case, a non-serious approach makes for a much better film (as it was the case with Deadpool, too).
I disagree that it is impossible to make a serious superhero film. Weather there are any serious superhero films you personally like is your business, but this kind of generalization is insulting to both the genre and its fans.
This is not an animated comic book and people should stop treating the Marvel stories as some sort of grand epos. They're pulpy stuff, and work best when done in an appropriate style and fashion.
Marvel is largely fluff, yeah- and I kind of wish they'd shake up the style a bit, because their films have kept largely the same style and formula, with mostly minor/cosmetic variations, for nigh-on twenty films now, and its wearing thing (has been for several films in fact).

At least GotG steps out of the box a little bit (even if its only one foot outside the box) with the science fiction/space setting and a bit more cussing.

Mind you, I like a relentlessly silly superhero film. I enjoyed Deadpool overall, and I like GotG.

I just don't think that's all the genre can or should be.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by K. A. Pital »

The Romulan Republic wrote:I disagree that it is impossible to make a serious superhero film. Weather there are any serious superhero films you personally like is your business, but this kind of generalization is insulting to both the genre and its fans.
I do not disagree that it is possible to make one, just not in the MCU or other "commonverse" without first isolating the characters and the setting, like Watchmen. An isolated setting can be serious. But it is also very hard to accomplish and is a one-shot. You cannot make any more Watchmen. The other films are bound to become silly, even when striving to be serious. Sometimes it happens with the very first franchise film, sometimes with the second, but it does.
Mind you, I like a relentlessly silly superhero film. I enjoyed Deadpool overall, and I like GotG.

I just don't think that's all the genre can or should be.
Well, what else can it offer? Like I said above, you can do a dead-serious take on the genre once (Watchmen), and you can hover inbetween (X-Men), when there is a plausible antihero who serves as a magnet, pardon the pun, but that is pretty much the end of it. There's also Kick-ass, but it is also an attempt to be serious in a "real world setting" where superheroes are not possible, and which works just once - the second one did not work as well as the first one.

All or most of the other attempts at maintaining seriousness have fizzled. Look at the DC trainwreck - Batman and Superman and the sexually objectified "Wonder Woman", they suck. Big time. I'd pick Deadpool or GotG over any of the DC films. Look at Iron Man - at some point, the story degenerated into self-referencing bullshit. Thor - that is actually a funny one, has a fair bit of humour because otherwise the Norse god alien bullshit just would not work. Thor 3 looks like a flashy space opera thing, too, which shows just how quickly any pretense of seriousness flies out of the window.

The problem is the nature of the genre, a story of superpowered beings who are not only shielded from death by their superpower, but also by the character shields or Universal Chronology Protection Conjencture that exists in comic books, or whatever you call it. At some point they also have to face supervillains, and all this usually while the world keeps on living its own daily life. These stories are bound to degenerate into ridiculousness, unless the action is timely taken out to the outer planets or elsewhere away from Earth (GotG, Thor).

Undying characters disallow serious dramatic events to ever unfold, so superhero films can never be even half as dramatic as even a high fantasy story (say, Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones) or a non genre sci fi drama. Fake deaths (Superman?) cheapen the drama - they cheapen everything - not strengthen it.

I maintain that this is a fundamental problem with the plot, and it can only be rectified by having a half-serious or absolutely non-serious take on it.

Going serious can work once, and then everyone dies (see Watchmen or Logan, for a more recent take). And then it feels like it does not really belong to the genre, as many note - these films are "odd" and have their own, out of "mainline" universe stories.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by The Romulan Republic »

K. A. Pital wrote:I do not disagree that it is possible to make one, just not in the MCU or other "commonverse" without first isolating the characters and the setting, like Watchmen. An isolated setting can be serious. But it is also very hard to accomplish and is a one-shot. You cannot make any more Watchmen. The other films are bound to become silly, even when striving to be serious. Sometimes it happens with the very first franchise film, sometimes with the second, but it does.
I think that the superhero genre is ultimately like any other genre of speculative fiction- if you want to do a serious story, you need to be willing to think through and address the implications of your premise.

Although I do think the superhero genre has a very particular, and very serious, set of questions written into its fabric- what makes a person "super human", what rights/responsibilities such a person would have, and when someone is justified in taking the law into their own hands. A superhero, or at least a classic superhero, dances along a fine line between a libertarian/individualist ideal, and an authoritarian/fascist one.

Some films address these questions explicitly, some do not, but those question are there, implicitly at least, in all, or almost all, entries in the genre.

The longer a franchise goes, though, the harder it becomes to stay believable/intelligent, yes. I won't say its impossible, but the longer a series goes, and the more writers/executives it involves, the more likely it is that it will lose coherence. But that is nothing unique to the superhero genre. I challenge you to name one series that ran over, oh, two seasons that doesn't have major plot holes/continuity errors. :)
Well, what else can it offer? Like I said above, you can do a dead-serious take on the genre once (Watchmen), and you can hover inbetween (X-Men), when there is a plausible antihero who serves as a magnet, pardon the pun, but that is pretty much the end of it. There's also Kick-ass, but it is also an attempt to be serious in a "real world setting" where superheroes are not possible, and which works just once - the second one did not work as well as the first one.
You don't have to be "realistic" (in the sense of fitting in with the real world) in order to be serious- unless you consider most types of SF inherently silly.

As to what you can offer- see above for a start.
All or most of the other attempts at maintaining seriousness have fizzled. Look at the DC trainwreck - Batman and Superman and the sexually objectified "Wonder Woman", they suck. Big time. I'd pick Deadpool or GotG over any of the DC films. Look at Iron Man - at some point, the story degenerated into self-referencing bullshit. Thor - that is actually a funny one, has a fair bit of humour because otherwise the Norse god alien bullshit just would not work. Thor 3 looks like a flashy space opera thing, too, which shows just how quickly any pretense of seriousness flies out of the window.
DC's problems have nothing to do with seriousness or lack thereof, or with being superhero films. Crass exploitation and objectification is an issue across this and many other genres, and beyond that, its mainly a matter of the films being disjointed in terms of plot and editing, feeling very much "written by committee".

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Nolan Batman films.
The problem is the nature of the genre, a story of superpowered beings who are not only shielded from death by their superpower, but also by the character shields or Universal Chronology Protection Conjencture that exists in comic books, or whatever you call it. At some point they also have to face supervillains, and all this usually while the world keeps on living its own daily life. These stories are bound to degenerate into ridiculousness, unless the action is timely taken out to the outer planets or elsewhere away from Earth (GotG, Thor).
I don't think these conventions are at all innate to the genre, or even to a longer-running series.

The unwillingness to kill characters is, I suspect, more an economic decision than anything else- they want to keep making money off the IP. Since we know they're not going to stop telling Batman and Superman stories any time soon, I actually favour regular reboots, so that different authors can try different interpretations of the characters, with each version having a distinct ending before it becomes too convoluted.

The whole superhero who lives an ordinary life under a secret identity thing is idiotic if kept going for long, yes, but while its a common convention, I don't believe its a necessary one for the genre.
Undying characters disallow serious dramatic events to ever unfold, so superhero films can never be even half as dramatic as even a high fantasy story (say, Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones) or a non genre sci fi drama. Fake deaths (Superman?) cheapen the drama - they cheapen everything - not strengthen it.

I maintain that this is a fundamental problem with the plot, and it can only be rectified by having a half-serious or absolutely non-serious take on it.
I agree strongly with your first paragraph.

Where I disagree is that this is a fundamental part of the genre. You can tell a story that is recognizably a superhero story, even a multi-part one, while avoiding those pit falls.
Going serious can work once, and then everyone dies (see Watchmen or Logan, for a more recent take).
Come again?

I hope you're not suggesting that the seriousness of a film is determined by its body count.

It is determined by the willingness of the writers to take the premise and its implications seriously, and maintain coherence in the plot, themes, and character development. This can easily lead to a high body count, but it doesn't have to.
And then it feels like it does not really belong to the genre, as many note - these films are "odd" and have their own, out of "mainline" universe stories.
I'd still consider them superhero stories, but yeah, Watchmen wouldn't really fit with mainline DC or Marvel.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by K. A. Pital »

I hope you're not suggesting that the seriousness of a film is determined by its body count.
Hah. Good question. I think in case of films that center on an open conflict (as in, with fights and shooting) of good and evil, it very much depends on the body count. If nobody (or nobody the audience would care about) dies in a planetwide confrontation of good guys and bad guys, this cheapens the story, cheapens the confrontation and kills the drama.

You are right that sometimes it is possible to display a serious confrontation without a bodycount (it is implied that massive casualties would occur if the hero fails to win), but at some point, it becomes less believable (usually that happens at the second film, if you are quite lucky and talened, then at the third film).

Once again, sterile PG-13 fights "over the future of mankind" stopped working for me a very long time ago. So I go to the film and expect to be entertained with comedy if the dramatic component no longer works. And GotG delivers here, unlike most other films.

I also think reboots can add a new story to a beaten-to-death character, but they also have a bad success rate.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by The Romulan Republic »

K. A. Pital wrote:
I hope you're not suggesting that the seriousness of a film is determined by its body count.
Hah. Good question. I think in case of films that center on an open conflict (as in, with fights and shooting) of good and evil, it very much depends on the body count. If nobody (or nobody the audience would care about) dies in a planetwide confrontation of good guys and bad guys, this cheapens the story, cheapens the confrontation and kills the drama.
Well, I would agree that in certain types of stories, it tends to strain credulity for no one to die.

However, I also tend not to like the "everyone dies" alternate extreme. It works on occasion- I didn't mind Rogue One, and the relentlessly bleak 1984 is one of my favourite books. But it can be overdone by people who think that "darker" automatically equals better.

What it comes down to (like any other aspect of story writing) is thinking through the implications of your setting and story and writing in a way that is coherent and consistent in terms of plot, themes, and character.
You are right that sometimes it is possible to display a serious confrontation without a bodycount (it is implied that massive casualties would occur if the hero fails to win), but at some point, it becomes less believable (usually that happens at the second film, if you are quite lucky and talened, then at the third film).
See above, and I'll add that I think overusing a trope can dilute it. If characters die all the time, simply to make the story "darker" or more "serious", then that to me tends to cheapen character death, cause it to lose its impact.

I would also contend that variety is one of the essential components of both drama and comedy. Overplaying any trope tends to be bad writing in my book.

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I'll cite "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", because its one of my favourites (and I think can be considered a superhero series, at least if you stretch the definitions of the genre a little).

This was a show that was not afraid to kill characters, but it usually (when killing major characters) built up to those deaths and treated them as significant, and it usually restrained itself to about one a season (and not always at the predictable time, i.e. the middle or end of the season). Buffy's mum's death in season five being perhaps the best executed (no tasteless pun intended :wink: ).

Anya's death in the finale was probably the weakest major character death on the series because, while it makes sense to have some people die in a big climactic melee, it was just thrown in their suddenly at the end, with very little time to deal with the fall out for the characters.

And on the spin-off, "Angel", Fred's death in season five didn't work for me because it felt like they were trying too hard to make it as big a tearjerker as possible, and it just came off as manipulative.
Once again, sterile PG-13 fights "over the future of mankind" stopped working for me a very long time ago. So I go to the film and expect to be entertained with comedy if the dramatic component no longer works. And GotG delivers here, unlike most other films.

I also think reboots can add a new story to a beaten-to-death character, but they also have a bad success rate.
Oh, I don't know. Just off the top of my head, Daniel Craig's Bond and the Nolan Batman films are both fairly successful "serious" (at least relatively serious) reboots of long-running franchises. They have their flaws to be sure, but they were both, by and large, critical/commercial successes I believe.

Doctor Who is an endlessly fascinating one for me, because it has what amounts to periodic partial reboots built into the premise of the series.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by K. A. Pital »

I think that I thought way more about the thread-relevant MCU, of which this film is a part of, than about other franchises that had successful reboots or reimagining.

In any case it was a personal opinion of mine why GotG impresses us and remains likeable, whereas most of the other MCU films do not.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Well, I'm not sure how relevant the topic of reboots being viable is if you restrict it to just the MCU. Most of its characters (barring Hulk) didn't have much, if any, prior film presence.

But yes, I like GotG in part because it breaks, at least slightly, the usual Marvel film mould.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Steve »

I loved it, enjoyed it more than the first and that took a lot.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

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I never really bought the "more serious" line about new Bond or Batman. New coats of paint can't cover up what is essentially a clown-car of ridiculous premises. Batman was about nothing but stakes upping and wasn't remotely plausible, at least no more than any other Batman. The only Craig Bond film I saw was the one with one of the climaxes being the "last hand" of a Hold'em Tournament not even being about playing poker. It was just like 4 guys all getting ridiculously improbable hands to one-up each other, in a row. Honestly, felt more like the Futurama episode (EDIT: Think it was one of the movies) where Bender wins with 5 kings because "The King of Beers" coaster got mixed into the deck.

Demolition Man had a much more believable premise than any Batman. Jesus, nearly ANY movie from the "lol over-the-top red meat fest" era did.
K. A. Pital wrote:Once again, sterile PG-13 fights "over the future of mankind" stopped working for me a very long time ago. So I go to the film and expect to be entertained with comedy if the dramatic component no longer works. And GotG delivers here, unlike most other films.
I'm in the same boat. It's always about upping the ante all the damn time and I'm bored. Yes, Guardians 1 had another "save the world" plot, but it was so mind-numbingly simple in both planning and implementation, it gave most the movie to building up the characters. And I like the Guardians as characters. The actual plot resolution was the weakest part of the movie for me.

The desire to consistently outdo the last film in a franchise has me snoring, especially when the most convoluted writing has to come into play to make it work, such as with Civil War. Then I think back to Empire Strikes Back, widely considered the best Star Wars film, and it's a much more personal story compared to ANH or RotJ. Same thing with the Star Trek movies. What's Wrath of Khan's plot in the greater scheme of the movies? No Earth getting blowed up. No risk of war with the Klingons. It's just one dude with an axe to grind against Kirk and Co.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Vendetta »

K. A. Pital wrote: All or most of the other attempts at maintaining seriousness have fizzled. Look at the DC trainwreck - Batman and Superman and the sexually objectified "Wonder Woman", they suck. Big time. I'd pick Deadpool or GotG over any of the DC films. Look at Iron Man - at some point, the story degenerated into self-referencing bullshit. Thor - that is actually a funny one, has a fair bit of humour because otherwise the Norse god alien bullshit just would not work. Thor 3 looks like a flashy space opera thing, too, which shows just how quickly any pretense of seriousness flies out of the window.
There's several flavours of "seriousness".

The Marvel movies in general take the source material "seriously" in that they looked at the source material and worked from the starting point "there is something about this that people liked, what is it and how do we make a movie of it". And that's pretty much worked for them. Most importantly they've figured out that they should focus on the character's personal motivations and growth so the thing people have come to see resolved isn't "can the hero punch the baddie", but "how will the hero overcome his own flaws in order to punch the baddie".

The DC movies didn't do that, they took some iconography of the source material and grafted it on to something they percieved as "serious", but it was the Zack Snyder version of serious, like the teenager version of "mature" isn't what actual adults thinks is mature.

The DC version of serious is terrible.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

I just got back from seeing it, once again it was Groot and Rocket that stole the show; the scene where Groot was bringing everything but the kitchen sink to Rocket's cell was hilarious!
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

If characters die all the time, simply to make the story "darker" or more "serious", then that to me tends to cheapen character death, cause it to lose its impact.
The Walking Dead springs to mind, it has a serious case of "anyone can die" yet it remains popular.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by TheFeniX »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote:The Walking Dead springs to mind, it has a serious case of "anyone can die" yet it remains popular.
That's kind of their schtick though. Like Game of Thrones. Honestly though, that show became unwatchable to me after the prison finale. Gas is at a premium and they show up with a tank which measures fuel usage in Gallons per mile. Not to mention all the other insanity. At some point "anyone can die" also becomes "who gives a shit who dies?" I felt this way about stretches of Neo-BSG and Doctor Who as the shows became so incredibly grim for stretches it's hard to keep caring.

That said, TV shows are in a different spot than movies. Executives feel you can "waste" time on good character writing while movie studios seem more interested in starting with "Epic Fight SCENES!" and write in how to get to those scenes. I've found that all around good action-comedy writing is rare these days when I remember all the over-the-top shit from my childhood. It's possible I'm just jaded, but Deadpool was a solid throwback to this. As was Guardians. And, as "terrible" as the movies are, since adding The Rock to the roster: the Furious movies deliver here as well.

For TV, two incredibly popular series off-hand that come to mind which are near-wholly character shows are Seinfeld (literally, a show about nothing) and ER. Yes, "plots happen" in those show but they are far-far below the reactions and interactions of the characters.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Guardiangs was amazing, better than the first. Like, it is to the first one what Winter Soldier was to the first Captain America. Kurt Russell was 100% Death Proof and he and Yondu made this story work. It fixes the whole weakness of the first one, in which there was no credible villain (sorry Lee Pace... but I think having the blue makeup cover your eyebrows contributed to villain decay!)... and also props to Raccoon and Nebula and all the rest for the intersecting sub arcs that prop the Star Loyd-centric main arc's familial themes and at the same time build up to the eventual Thanosing we'll later see. Really well done.

Yes it's not wannabe SRS BSNSS murderfests or marthafests like in the movies based on Dulltective Comics but still the storytelling we see here is preposterously well made. Yes, these modern blockbusters lack originality but still there's a difference between a good DJ who mixes it up and something half-assed...

The humor was also cleverer than just Star Loyd's Space Seth Rogen impersonation (that got old fast) in the first one.
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Re: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 *spoilers*

Post by streetad »

I thought it was great.

It was kind of like watching an old episode of Kirk-era Star Trek. The plot was serviceable, and had some themes about absentee/abusive fathers etc, but you just enjoy spending time with these characters no matter what they are doing.

It was also legitimately hilarious. The most out-and-out comedic Marvel film so far, I think - but it completely worked. The routine involving Groot mentioned above had me in stitches - as did Yondu's triumphant line about Mary Poppins.

With regards to seriousness - although these films are inherantly silly, there is room for serious themes. Logan was able to tell a mature, adult story about ageing as well as being a solid superhero action film. The problem with the Snyder films is that they mistake angst and a bleak tone for 'serious adult themes'.
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