Which one is better ? SW Force Awakens or Guardians of the Galaxy ?

[Batmannerism]

Okay, I can hear the teeth gnashing now and the knives coming out, but
I think it's a valid question.

Which film do people think is better, or like more

Star Wars the Force Awakens

or

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Now, no doubt the rabid SW fanboys are all like " You can't be serious"
well, I am. I actually think that while SWTFA was hugely entertaining
GOTG was actually a better film. SWTFA was a very, very good film, but
GOTG was actually a great film.

- Why ? Well, SWTFA was pretty much a rehashing of the first StarWars film

Plot synopsis:

Spoiler

" young person eking out an existance on a desert planet finds a droid that contains a secret message of great importance and has to get the message into the right hands. Mystery surrounds our hero's parentage and family connections play a part. The main character finds a connection to the Force, which they later use at a critical moment, and is helped along by a wise older mentor -who is then killed by the main villain, who wears black and fights for a vast, evil imperalistic group of facists.
And in the background a huge planet-sized weapon of mass destruction is used to intimidate the galaxy into submission."

Which film am I talking about ?

Okay, yes there are a bunch of differences, John Boyega's character being the most welcome of those, but pretty much they're the same story.

While I thought SWTFA was a very good movie ( John Boyega and Daisy Ridley were terrific and Harrison Ford gave his best performance in decades. And I actually really enjoyed Adam Driver

Spoiler

especially his tantrums, I liked that his character was more conflicted and tormented than just irredeemably evil, which is what Vader appears to be when we first meet him.. Love that bit where he's throwing a fit because Rey escaped and the Stormtroopers turn around and head back the way they came....that was a bit of JJ Abrams' magic !

) .....it still fell short of greatness due to a lack of originality.

Now JJ had to integrate a lot of familiar elements and story points, but I think he went a bit too far.

But let me say, SWTFA is a billion times better than any of the prequel movies. I would rate it tied for my 3rd favourite SW movie Return of the Jedi.

My only big complaints were that

Spoiler

the Starkiller base wasn't really built up enough, unlike the Death Star, which sounds damn scary, although I loved the size comparison between SKB and the DS, that was funny, and also I think the final scene needed to be a bit shorter, no need to watch Rey climb all those stairs, although it was almost worth it to see Luke

In comparison, GOTG didn't have much of a story, other than "find the orb"
but was enormous fun. It acutally made me care about a walking tree and a talking raccoon. It was emotional and hilarious and visually breathtaking.
The feeling I got walking out of GOTG was sheer joy and satisfaction (kind of like when I saw the very first star wars as a kid). Somehow GOTG took a bunch of characters I'd heard of, and had no interest in, and made me give a **** about them (which is not easy ! )

Walking out of SWTFA I felt satisfied that Star Wars was in good hands, at last - but if GOTG is a 10/10 then SWTFA for me is an 9/10, close but not quite as great.

Interested to hear what people think. And hey, I should say I saw SW when it first came out in 1977, and it was the greatest movie ever (although Superman came close in 1978) I've seen it so many times I've lost count.
I grew up a huge SW fan, and still love the series.

I just think that GOTG was something fresh and fun and actually captured the feel of SW 1977, even more than perhaps SWTFA did.

Okay.... enough from me. Go !

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Wait so SW only has rabid fanboys,but not the MCU? I am a big fan of GotG, but TFA is better in all aspects imo. Characters, story, cinematography, editing, sound design, score and writing.

 

[Greens]

Wait so SW only has rabid fanboys,but not the MCU? I am a big fan of GotG, but TFA is better in all aspects imo. Characters, story, cinematography, editing, sound design, score and writing.

Agreed.

 

[Snow Queen]

Great movie, or one that gets worse every time I see it? No contest here.

 

[Visualiza]

TFA by far for me. I was never as impressed with GotG as most others seemed to be, which especially bugged me since I loved the books so much. Star Wars did everything better. Although Kylo wasn't quite up to snuff, he was leagues better than Ronan. I even preferred Snoke to Thanos, given their similar roles in each film. And ultimately...for as much flak as TFA is getting for resting on its laurels, GotG is an even bigger offender. I haven't seen a movie coast to such heights off the back of so many pop culture references since that Seth Rogen movie about the end of the world.

Guardians wasn't bad, but it was a cut above...well...."above average" for me. TFA was deftly executed in nearly every regard. This is coming from a Marvel guy first, btw; I'm the furthest thing from a Star Wars fan, but I can't deny when a (very) good movie is just a damn good movie.

 

[Flint Marko]

I'm not going to vote in this thread just yet, but TFA didn't blow me like it apparently did for some of you. Is it better than Guardians? Possibly, they're both great, but I'm going to let the hype settle down and see TFA again before I make a decision.

 

[Drz]

GOTG made me laugh more.

Now if this was A New Hope vs. GOTG, Star Wars would win, but Force Awakings is just a studio reboot.

 

[Victarion]

If I could take the Guardians and the Collector and put them against Kylo Ren an TFA's villains, that would be better than either of the two alone.

 

[def28]

Overall as a whole I actually enjoyed GOTG more. I was not expecting to say that a few days ago.

 

[Mightmitenot]

Star Wars wins.

My objection to GotG is

1) Retroing out the 31st Century originals. No Vance Astro, no Aleta and Starhawk etc.

2) Making a joke out of the once serious (Mostly under Claremont - I can pretend Englehart's Astrology based origin was a misfire and Rick Marshall's revamp was a Brand New Day/Teen Tony retro waiting to happen) Star-Lord.

3) Making a joke She Hulk ally (Rocket Racoon) into a Batman level hero.

Ain't buying it.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Great movie, or one that gets worse every time I see it? No contest here.

To be fair, you likely haven't rewatched one of them enough to make an accurate judgement on that level.

 

[Snow Queen]

To be fair, you likely haven't rewatched one of them enough to make an accurate judgement on that level.

I feel confident enough with it to say so. It's not like I find Guardians difficult to top to begin with, I'd give it a 6 if I'm feeling generous. Two good characters, uninteresting story, emotional beats don't hit, off-putting smug vibe the whole film gives off, an awful villain, a tedious final act and an unfunny script that thinks it's hilarious.

 

[Visualiza]

I feel confident enough with it to say so. It's not like I find Guardians difficult to top to begin with, I'd give it a 6 if I'm feeling generous. Two good characters, uninteresting story, emotional beats don't hit, off-putting smug vibe the whole film gives off, an awful villain, a tedious final act and an unfunny script that thinks it's hilarious.

That's about how I'd critique GotG, albeit a bit less harshly, and I do mean a bit. I wanted to love that movie, but it didn't hit the right notes for me.

 

[Flint Marko]

Guardians had a "smug" vibe? Explain, because I don't see that.

 

[Snow Queen]

Guardians had a "smug" vibe? Explain, because I don't see that.

To me, it gave off the impression that it felt as though it was being quite clever when never actually being so. It's something that's a bit hard to explain, it's just the vibe it gave me.



And yeah, I know this is all really unpopular.

 

[Sithborg]

This will be interesting to watch.

 

[TeeKay]

Both were trying to achieve different things here. I don't hold GotG to that high regard that most fans do. Sure it's a good film but yeah, talking as a film.fanatic in general, I got more out of TFA than I did GotG. So TFA for me.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Wait so SW only has rabid fanboys,but not the MCU?

Looking at Star Wars as a bigger franchise, and how it affected these big budgeted movies, particularly Guardians of the Galaxy, I can see why he said that.

I feel confident enough with it to say so. It's not like I find Guardians difficult to top to begin with, I'd give it a 6 if I'm feeling generous. Two good characters, uninteresting story, emotional beats don't hit, off-putting smug vibe the whole film gives off, an awful villain, a tedious final act and an unfunny script that thinks it's hilarious.

Gamora and Drax?

 

[Rowsdower!]

Guardians. But TFA was pretty damned great too.

 

[KINGTHANOS]

GOTG hands down, it was too entertaining, but I did love TFA.

 

[HaplessHenchman]

SWTFA and it isn't even close.

GOTG was a fun movie but it fell down with yet another lame Marvel villain. Oh, and please don't even get me started on the whole "I'm going to dance to distract the villain" scene.

 

[Batmannerism]

Man, this is closer than I thought. I was anticipating rabid SW fanboys to tear up the place with their outrage (I was expecting to feel the Dark Side unleashed !) - but I'm pleasantly surprised to find the discussion very civilized so far.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a rabid SW fanboy -

Anyway, I'm really surprised that anyone, besides myself, actually enjoyed GOTG more.

To reiterate what I said earlier, I'm not saying SWTFA is a bad movie - quite the opposite. I'm just saying I enjoyed Guardians more, and quite a bit of that had to do with Guardians feeling a bit more original ( yes, all Space Opera and Sci-fi films are derivative in some way - in fact most of them are derivatives of Star Wars) but for whatever reason I enjoyed Guardians more.

I should say for the record that Rey's character is a nice reflection of how society's moved on since 1977 - in that now the series can have a female lead, as the central protagonist, who doesn't have to be a princess, and certainly doesn't need rescuing.


Anyway 13:8 in SWTFA's favour ....much closer than I would have expected.

 

[harryoscop]

TFA was pretty good (wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did). But I gotta go with Guardians. That film was just thoroughly entertaining, one of Marvel's best.

 

[Decepticonus]

Hard to say. I was not familiar with the comics at all before seeing GoTG. I just "knew" of them, knew the Nova Corps and seen Rocket but I couldn't tell you more than that.

At the same time, I know and do love Star Wars. However, I did not grow up on them like some people did. Hell Ep. 1 was the first SW film for me, for some reason my friends and family had no interest of introducing me to SW, and when I asked they'd say "no" or "maybe later". Fair to say I did not see the original triology until junior high or maybe high school, can't remember. Now, I've seen all of them now but I don't have the inner, steadfast, fay boyism in me to defend the trilogy and ***** &moan how Lucas ruined my childhood with the prequels (yes they suck but seriously there are better things to do).

The films are too different to compare, I think this is a ridiculous contest, so I say tie. For I LOVE the villains in SW but I think I like crew more in GoTG. Music was rather weak in SW, but loved it in GoTG. However, SW has a great story and mythology to it.

 

[BH/HHH]

Can I just say that I like the idea of this thread but as with most of these types of threads I think this ones a little premature. Star Wars is on a major hype train at the moment so I imagine most are gonna vote for that anyway. Not that Star Wars wouldn't win say if this thread were done a year from now but still I think it's best to wait on these things as people often get their real feelings about a film when they have had some distance.

But I voted for Star Wars anyway, I did really like GOTG but SW was a better film in terms if acting, production and it had nostalgia.