This movie was good except for the writing, acting and directing.
- Writing
Very campy, cheesy dialogue that probably looked awesome on script but sounded really campy coming out of human mouths. Though i'm not sure how much of it was the writing and how much was the god-awful acting. But i've never rolled my eyes so much during a comics movie. And characters exposition sharing their emotions and drive in the exact places they would tell you to in Film Studies 101. Maybe Winter Soldier spoiled it, but this was not a cleverly written movie at all. Or even a smartly written one. You could tell me any film school reject wrote the script and i'd believe it.
- Acting
Bautista is just bad. Aside from a few one-liners that made me laugh, his acting took me out of the movie and his delivery was wooden and cringe inducing. Zoe Saldana tried, God bless her, but as wooden as Bautista's acting was, her's was hurt by the script moreso. Prime Meryl Streep might not be able to convincingly deliver some of the dialogue she had.
- Characterization
Gamora and Drax were like two different characters than what i'm used to reading. Even when Drax tried to be menacing he still came off like a big puppy dog with a huge heart. His blissfully ignorant personality was charming but it wasn't what I wanted from him.
Gamora wasn't Gamora-like at all. From her threat level, which was comically low, to her sweet, amiable personality, her character was the one I was most disappointed in. Way more docile and even-tempered than she's historically been in the books, and deadliest woman in the universe sounds like a joke now - thank God they didn't drop that in the movie.
Space Merle was so disheartening. I couldn't buy him even as an alien for a second. How hard could it be to drop the hick south accent? He didn't look anything like Yondu, didn't act like him, and that voice....sigh. Space Merle ftw I guess.
- Directing
The music. Not a bad element, just way too much of it.
Chris Pratt I liked. But it got hard to take him seriously at times with how cheesy/funny they tried to be. I'm sure Gunn wanted to put his own twist on it and make it fun, which everyone obviously enjoyed as the majority of people loved this movie. I wasn't one of them.
- Others
Glenn Close as Nova Prime.
Nova Corp as glorified cops, with not a human rocket to be seen.
John C. Reilly in the Nova Corp, who's just so ridiculous looking/sounding its hard to take him seriously.
Only one small shot of the Supreme Intelligence, which was barely visible. And no real delving into the kree as a race, which would have been awesome.
Thanos looked off. And his voice wasn't quite as commanding as I imagined.
Surprising lack of interesting easter eggs in the Collector's exhibits. Saw a dark elf, a couple other mildly amusing things. They could have really gone to town there and just declined to.
End credit scene. That's all...?
Cosmo didn't talk at all.
Eh, that's not all but how much does it really matter when people loved this so much. Overall it felt like a campy big budgeted syfy channel movie with amateur dialogue and cringeworthy acting, set to beautiful cinematography and impressive space CGI.
Which were, admittedly, very cool to watch.
t:
They're clearly setting it up so Howard takes over as Cap when Steve is killed off!
