Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Starman

I have no songs with "Galaxy", "Guardian" or "Star-Lord" in their titles. This was the best that I could do.

But over last weekend, we went to go see Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of my FB friends have already seen it, which means most of my blog readers have probably seen it as well.

I'm rarely first to the party with this big budget sci-fi movies, let alone ones that are derived from comic book characters. As I've said before, with the Avengers, Spider-Man and Captain America - I've never purchased or read a comic book in my life. Sad (?) but true.

How do I know everyone else has already seen it? There were six people in the 400 seat theater.....including 710 and myself. The Milk Duds I purchased had their own seat.

The buzz was incredible for this movie, and I'm still trying to figure out why. The story itself, is very formulaic. It is like every other comic book turned popcorn movie. It's horribly predictable down to the "killing" of the bad guys and how they always always always come back to life - or never die in the first place. At least the first time. Peace is ultimately restored along with a set-up for a sequel.

The acting is what you expect from one of these movies - slightly over the top with the suspected band of heroes and villains. None of it bad, but no surprises, no one was ever going to go out on a limb. It's all about the mighty box-office and the back-end receipts. (Rotten Tomatoes give is at 92%....MetaCritic gives it a 76. Quite a difference.)

Chris Pratt does a fine job stepping out of his role of Andy on Parks & Recreation, but we've known he has had that ability from Moneyball and Zero Dark Thirty. He plays an ok younger version of Han Solo - cocky with almost no reason to be. Everyone's talking about Pratt's "new body", which you see for a total of 48 seconds.

Zoe Salamander - or whatever her real name is - plays a character not too different than her one in Avatar. Or even as Uhuru on Star Trek. I'm not sure she's actually played a character that is situated on Earth. At least she's found her niche.

Is it wrong that I found Groot the best character in the movie? I hope Vin Diesel got paid handsomely for his 37 minutes in the recording studio to voice his four words. On the down side of him only being a voice, you don't get to see his face and body. On the upside, you don't have to see him try to act. Still, Groot exhibited the most emotion out of any of the characters....and he was an Ent.

And since we're going all Middle Earth, isn't the 'stone' in the orb, just a substitute for 'the ring' in Lord of the Rings?

Let's just say this:  poor John C. Reilly. I half expected him to be play a good and bad role simultaneously. Half the bad guys in space looked just like him with very little make-up done to their characters. Alas, he played no dual roles. Just an unfortunate bone structure coincidence.

I thought Benicio del Toro did a good job for what little he was in the movie, and luckily he had lots of make-up on to cover his ugly.

...and Glenn Close's hair....really?

Like most popcorn movies, they are fine for what they're there for - mindless entertainment on a summer's afternoon. There was nothing wrong with the movie at all, it's just like I've said with all the other Marvel movies, lots of action, no suspense.

Of course, they didn't answer the biggest questions of all: where the fuck does Star-Lord get batteries for his first edition WalkMan 28 years later? And better yet, who even had that WalkMan version in 1988?

I'm not tripping over myself like most folks who have seen this. It's fun but it's ok. Nothing more. Nothing less.

On a positive note: there were some decent trailers. I can (hopefully) overlook Matthew McConaughey's stupid ass drawl, hound dog face and one-note acting to deal with a new Christopher Nolan movie. I'm drawing a blank on the other trailer I thought was ok. But it might get us to our goal of 12 movies in 12 months.

We are a little behind track now, but with Boyhood coming next week (maybe), we'll be almost there.



2014 Movie Count / Goal:   6 of 12. 



Song by:  David Bowie

2 comments:

Bob said...

We haven't seen it, not sure we even want to, but then you said this ...

"...and Glenn Close's hair....really?"

And now we're intrigued.

Ur-spo said...

we saw it last weekend; we liked it a lot.