Film Guardians of the Galaxy

In all honesty the soundtrack and the inclusion of objects from the '80's is more closer to hitting the nostalgia button than anything. After all nostalgia is defined as "a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations."

Even if Guardians is vaguely similar to Star Wars/Trek, that's more of a coincidence than anything. If you want to see pandering to nostalgia go look at the Expendables, those films are a walking talking pander fest to '80's action flicks to absolute ridiculous extremes.
Note: Just because I said see the Expendables that does not exactly mean I am recommending it.

 

In terms of the marketing campaign, I agree that Guardians was trying really hard to capitalize on connecting to Star Wars mostly (you could argue Star Trek as well but Star Trek is more proper scifi than Star Wars & Guardians, which are more of space fantasy imo). In terms of the movie I agree with burnitup that it was more leaning on 80s music & pop culture references, which to me got... excessive really quickly. The music was nice in some places but felt too much of an attempt to pander to the audience.

What I still can't resolve about Guardians is its complete lack of emotion. It seems to have traded developing characters and having the viewer emotionally invested in them for enjoyable but far from witty humor and pop culture references that I assume are lost on some of their major target audience (kids). It's just such a strange movie because I genuinely want to like it but there's just so little there for me to like... not to mention its incredibly spotty and generally awful treatment of women.

It's not a bad movie. It was fun but I just couldn't love it like I wanted to or like everyone else did. I don't know.

 

OH SHIT I FORGOT TO GIVE MY FIVE CENTS

Guardians of the Galaxy is my favorite film of this year so far, though I find Captain America: The Winter Soldier to be more well put together. I absolutely love the characters, especially Chris Pratt as Peter Quinn. And honestly? I actually was emotionally invested in the team. Every member felt strong. It felt like watching my favorite parts of Mass Effect 2's "get a band together" put on film, with a great soundtrack (that I understand was to cash in on nostalgia but to me actually fit the film well) and awesome cinematography. Perhaps my one beef with the film was how uninteresting the main villain was. I think we needed more scenes of him, showing different facets of his character and personality (I mean, if there is much more to him.)

I kinda think you're exaggerating on this. Yeah, there's the pink girl Peter's with near the start of the film who's not really doing anything substantial, but...what other bad examples are there? The Nova Corps (or whatever association) lady was perfectly fine, I loved Gamorra's story, and Nebula was fine.

I don't think it's fair to call this film a nostalgia cash-in. It's great on its own merits, and the only reason I would bring up Star Wars is to give the film SOME comparison for people who want to know what it kind of feels like, but even that's not too accurate. It really is, to me, its own film, and I loved it.

 

There was an article that talked about it quite well, I'll just quote some of the important parts from it.

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/guardians-of-the-galaxy-fails-women/

Aaaand then a tumblr post (again quoting key parts / parts that weren't already covered above). There is a little bit of overlap in topics though but this one is good because this person is at least familiar with the comics, which I'm not, and I don't think the DailyDot author is.

http://americachavez.tumblr.com/post/93949483878/what-was-wrong-with-guardians-of-the-galaxy

I don't expect anyone to read all of that (I swear I tried to cut it down) soooo key points:

• Peter starts out as a ****** but is never called out on it and never changes, unlike Tony Stark
• Rocket suggests that Gamora ****s someone to get out of prison when everyone pretty much wants her dead and she has a notable alternate skillset, being a deadly assassin
• Drax calling Gamora a whore (haha it's funny when men degrade women) and Peter calling Ronan a ***** (haha let's insult men by calling them WOMEN)
• Fridging of female characters from the comics, who also happen to be queer
• Peter is pretty much a womanizer which doesn't have any basis in the comics
• Advertising the film with naked shots of Gamora (to be fair they definitely capitalized on how ripped Chris Pratt is but it's still not okay either way)
• The film is 100% about Peter, not the GotG
• Gamora's backstory was done extremely poorly, her relationship with Peter was pretty poorly done as well

 

I don't think I necessary called it a cash-in. I just said that one of the reasons I didn't really got into the film is because a lot of it relies on that kind of nostalgia. Peter is an action hero straight out of that era of film. The story is a wild space-opera. For me, I don't have any nostalgia for that kind of stuff, so it doesn't affect me the same way a lot of audiences have reacted to it. I still find it an okay movie, but the feelings that it wanted me to have just couldn't connect with me because it wasn't there for me to begin with.

 

Well that was a damn doozy to try reading. Anyway

• This I can agree with. Womanizers are getting tiring, and I really dislike the treatment of the pink girl as nothing but an offensive joke.
  
• Rocket's a dick and barely knew her. Not that hard to understand.
• I don't remember when this is, but is it even really that major? (though I do get that Drax of all people shouldn't use that term with her.)
  
• I can't even find this one valid; it's a film, not a video supplement to a comic book, even if that's how the comic fans want to view it as. Judge the film as its own entity.
• Kinda repeating the first statement. Again, judge the film on its own.
• ....naked shots of Gamora? Where were these? I never saw any.
• Well, yeah, it's a film. Hard to base a film around multiple characters equally; hell, even Avengers has this issue; its mostly Iron Man's.
• How was it done poorly? Is this another "the comics did it differently" thing? I thought it was alright.

In all, I really think people are trying to stretch whatever holes they can find in this film, at least with these issues. I'm all for feminism, but this is straight up nitpicking.

Oh, I didn't intend to mean that you said it; it was just the general notion I was perceiving. And I still do disagree that the film rides on nostalgia; who's to say people who aren't familiar with films like Star Wars won't like Peter? Who's to say space operas only belong to an earlier time period? Don't judge it on how new and original it is; that'll make you hate a majority of film. Just judge it on how well it delivers on its premise.

 

I know that most stories aren't original. I never said that I disliked it because it wasn't original. As long as a story relievers a good experience for me, I don't care if it's the first or thousandth time I've heard it. I just couldn't get a strong connection to this particular reason, and I'm trying to find a reason why I don't love it like everyone else.

It's like Misty said earlier, I really want to love this film, but I can't because I don't have a strong connection to it. It's not a bad film by any stretch of he imagination, but I feel that it fell short of being something great.

 

So Kurt Russel's character in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

He is playing Ego the Living Planet and he is apparently Starlord's (Peter Quill's) father.

Pom Klementieff is also playing a character: Mantis

Oh and Sylvester Stallone is playing a Nova Corps member but it hasn't been reveled who/how big his role will be.

I'm really looking forward to GotG2. I knew nothing about any of the characters of the first film and I LOVED it. I still don't know much about these characters comic book wise, but I'm sure the sequel will be great--especially the music!