Get off my lawn you darn kids! So, yes its official I am a grumpy old man. I thought Guardians of the Galaxy was a charming, funny, thrilling big budget extravaganza and it more or less bored the shit out of me. I get it. This is not like Transformers 4. GOTG is a well made film but I didn't care about anything on screen. The villains in the Marvel movies are getting worse and worse and the stakes are constantly so high that I think I've been burned out and don't care what happens to any of the characters.
The villains. Who are they? What are they doing? I have no idea. I pay attention and try to follow the story but the big blue guys and the petite blue woman are so devoid of nuance or subtext that you don't really need to pay attention to follow the story. They want to blow up the universe, spoiler alert. That's all you need to know. The rest of it is a bunch space talk that sounds like nonsensical garbage to my ears. Look I'm aware that I am rarely if ever the smartest man in the room but I'm not dumbest and this shit makes no sense. The plots in these movies are so interchangeable that its easy to forget what men in tights summer smackdown you are watching.
Side note; why are fanboys the ones who seem to be so crazily obsessed with spoilers? How can they tell the difference between these ridiculous movies? How would finding out that the big blue guys want to blow up the galaxy with shinny rocks or that the big tree guy doesn't die in the end be a spoiler? It wouldn't be and it can't be because Marvel has let us know what characters will have movies for the next 50 years. That's great for them. I'm really glad they have a plan for this multi-billion dollar business but when you let us in on the plan it kind of kills the stakes. We know that Captain America will make it out of this one intact because he will be in the next Two Avengers movies.
Where was I? Villains. A good villain should be scary or intimidating but they shouldn't see themselves as a villain. In the 214 Marvel films thus far the only memorable villains are Loki and Sir Ben's Mandarin. The rest of the villains in the 212 films are utterly forgettable. Something about a villain should crawl under your skin or at the very least you should want to see them get their comeuppance in the end. The Villains in GOTG are big blue and boring, I watched the film last night and I can't remember one of their names, I can remember the names of all the heroes but none of the villains, that's a bad sign.
Just so its perfectly clear. I am not trolling. I sort of liked this movie. If this movie would have come out prior to the other Marvel films I probably would have loved the film. Its the repeated formula of the 9 other marvel movies that killed this one for me. They let us in behind the curtain and it killed the tension. I just don't care about these characters and sadly they are the best Marvel characters to date.