I am absolutely astonished how critics are rating this higher than TWS and DoFP. I'll probably be a heretic with my opinion, but this was seriously disappointing on so many levels. Actually kind of depressing even, haha. Depressing if it is regarded as some sort of high water mark for modern blockbusters.
The movie got off on the wrong foot with the rather cynical-feeling opening tearjerker. Cynical because we don't know who the hell these characters are yet we are supposed to be emotionally invested right off the bat. It felt completely unearned and dishonest compared to, say, TWS's Steve-Peggy scene. Also, its later usage at the end didn't make much sense to me in context, so the movie basically used up valuable time to manipulate us to feel sympathetic towards a character we know is going to be a hero anyway. This to me is poor screenwriting, simple as.
But even worse was/is the inexplicable Quill dance sequence on the Indiana Jones planet with the awful CGI creatures. Why the hell do we need this scene for
anything? We couldn't just roll the credits in the already questionable opening scene?
After that it's pretty much exposition dump after exposition dump. Now, TWS and DoFP also have an exposition dump at the beginning but they manage to take it under control relatively quickly and spread the rest of it more evenly throughout. For whatever reason, GotG just decides "what the hell; more is more" and piles on the expo without any mercy or moderation. The unmoderated expo is made bad especially by the fact that the world-building in this movie is severely lacking.
Yes, we get several exotic-looking places, but we barely scratch the surface of these places. They feel more like placeholders for plot points rather than genuinely real worlds. We barely have time to 'breathe in' what makes these places 'them' in particular. That needn't be the case, though. We could have cut all of the above-mentioned crap and a few needless gags here and there. Hell, there could have been
less slow-motion to increase the time allotted to world-building.
Knowhere is a good example of the inelegance of the world-building and storytelling in this movie. When we arrive there, the characters' reactions confirm to us this is a big deal. An emotionally logical follow-up sequence for the audience would be to explore the place patiently in depth (even though it might look like a relatively uninspired mashup of Blade Runner and Nar Shaddaa), but again, the movie just decides to rush up to the next plot points, even though on a meta level absolutely everyone in the audience knows we are dealing with yet another boilerplate MCU magical MacGuffin plot. Bewildering stuff (and no, not in a good way).
It is made even more infuriating in Knowhere's case by the lazy and nonsensical plot points:
1) A contrived in-team bickering moment that comes completely out of nowhere (no pun intended, haha). It is apparently justified due to drunkenness, but that in itself makes very little sense for a group of characters in possession of an extremely valuable artifact in a possibly hostile and unpredictable place (said by themselves, no less!).
2) Coincidentally ironic or not, but the fact that possibly the most interesting combo of visuals and expo - The Collector showing and explaining the all-powerful MacGuffin(s) - ends prematurely in an inexplicable plot point and results in yet another explosion is pretty emblematic of the whole movie's problems.
3) Drax just decides to call Ronan, because... why the hell not. And of course he is contrite afterwards; he just got affected by the
Idiot Ball, one of the laziest forms of screenwriting.
Yondu and his gang also felt not only boring but pretty superfluous to the overall story. They only show up when it is plot-convenient for them to show up (in another bout of coincidental/meta-irony, the script has Quill freaking
call them to show up!). Not only that, but after Yondu is forced to crash-land on Xandar and informs he will rendez-vous with Quill - thus bound to happen anyway - we still get a scene with Yondu and his magic-whistle-arrow thingy which, while cool in itself, has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. And the final, inexplicable shot of Yondu - all grinning with his faux-artifact - apparently means none of this was that big of a deal for him in the end? Eh? So what the hell was his and his gang's point in this movie beyond a convenient plot carrier?
All in all this movie felt like some sort of reverse Occam's Razor, wherein you get lots of unnecessary crap that not only bugs the living fudge out of you but also prevents far more important aspects of the story from coming up. We could have dislodged all of the opening garbage (even Morag altogether, because it's just perfunctory stuff for Quill to get his MacGuffin which we knew he would get anyway), dislodged Yondu and his boring gang, and get a more relaxed pace of expo, better world-building, and actually something substantial from not only Ronan but also from the criminally underexplored relationship trifecta of Gamora, Nebula, and Thanos. There probably was at least some endgame dialogue between Nebula and Gamora on the Kree warship, but it seems it was cut, resulting in the awkward editing where Gamora arrives to Nebula's location seemingly out of nowhere and they proceed immediately to have that lackluster fight.
I've heard of the main notion of 'fun' for this movie. I hope it doesn't become some sort of ubiquitous excuse for major issues with script, pacing, editing, world-building, etc. There is a good film in here somewhere, but there are so many inexplicable decisions that render the overall taste foul for me.
Also, as an addendum, what's up with some movies now thinking light-hearted irreverence means sociopathy *cough*cough*TASM 1&2*cough*cough*? Rocket enjoying another guy's pain or almost psychosexually enjoying receiving a big gun by which to kill people felt more disturbing than fun. Rocket wanting a poor man's prosthetic leg or another poor guy's eye for no reason at all didn't feel funny in the least. It felt nasty and vile, and not relatable at all.
Rocket shooting holes into beer barrels to facilitate a creative escape from a bar (happened in a comic) is relatable and fun. We needed more that kind of fun.
