I think it's more complex than outright dislike, but in the end, no, I just don't see what was the big deal. Now when it started with the death of Peter's mother I had high hopes. Seemed quite different than other Marvel films up until then and the lip sync part where Quill acquires the artifact was enjoyable. I thought "This film is going to balance the pathos and the humor if the first 15 minutes is anything to go by..." but... that wasn't my experience of the rest of the film. It's all really surfacey to me. Quill is just a dude bro hero which are actually a dime a dozen these days, and there's a thinness to any actual characterization which for sure is not the case with Mal Reynolds or my main man John Crichton. Granted, those were series that had the time to add lots of layers. Still, the depths are there to be seen in any given episode. Quill is just a dude bro to me. There are other even bigger issues I have though CC.
For one, as a space action adventure I thought the action adventure parts were pretty pedestrian. I wasn't feeling it at all. Look if others enjoyed the action and characters that's good for them but I think that the characters were actually just cliche's for shtick and not much else, and the charcterization, what was there then get's undermined by the humor rather than what happens on Farscape or Firefly where the humor enhances the characters. The characters are all mostly defined in big exposition dumps and too often what we learn doesn't really add up, which is something used to bash most other films by the online fanboy set but Guardians got a pass. We are told about Peter's time with the ravagers but we never see it. We are told about the relationship between Gamora and Nebula but we really never see it. We are told about the death of Drax's family but... We never see it. We are told Gamora is supposedly this incredibly capable agent for Thanos but... Well that capability seems to come and go at the whims of the scipt. You know what I think is the best moment of characterization in the whole film? When Peter sees Rocket's back. That says more than any line of dialog in the entire film. This thinness of real characterization thought again, gets a pass. In fact it gets a pass for a lot. It got a pass for the "show don't tell" rule. It got a pass for the incredibly uninteresting villains (Pace is so terribly boiler plate as Ronan and Gillen... I LOVE KAREN GILLEN ON DOCTOR WHO... But she gives a terrible performance as Nebula), whose conflict with the Nova is never really explained. Why were the Kree at war with the Nova exactly? No one knows. The film never goes into it. It gets a pass for an ending that is both hoary (everybody holds hands to beat the bad guy) and a bit insulting (that dance off is just the worst... I mean truly the worst. The film stops being anything attempting to be three dimensional and might as well be a cartoon at that point). And there is maybe the biggest thing that puts it over the edge for me. Look is it underwhelming me action and stakes wise? Okay, but maybe I could have been lenient on that. Are the characters being used more for jokes than anything else? Well... Okay. The jokes actually are mostly fine and I understand why these characters went over well with others. But overall, there is a free floating smugness to it all. A prancing "look at how FUN we all are vibe" that in the end just rubs me wrong. Again... Is there anything particularly insulting in the film? Probably objectively not. But taken all together, speaking for myself, I just saw a mediocre space adventure film with at best good gags but nothing, not production design, story, villains, themes or anything else to recommend. All slathered in a glistening flop sweat of "we're so fun and cool you are just gonna love us" that I just feel cold to the whole thing.
