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Mandalore76 on 29 December 2017
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mZuzek said:
Mandalore76 said:

I have seen 3 of them, so I can say "eww".  One of them I saw for free, 2 of them I regret paying for.

So are you in?

Sure, count me in.

mZuzek said:
Smartie900 said:

I watched GotG 2 once back in May. It was enjoyable and is definitely a solid 7/10, which is actually pretty good for the MCU. I can see why other people don't like it since it tries to accomplish a lot plot-wise in a 2 hour time slot. All of the subplots are well executed, but putting them all into one movie makes it feel incredibly congested. It's the same problem I saw in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Age of Ultron, and BvS. It also suffers from sensory overload as the audience has to take in so much visual information in the final act that it starts to feel exhausting. Filmmakers should use their resources sparingly with scenes that have large amounts of spectacle as having too much of it dulls the impact. Man of Steel had this problem too... and it made many of the scenes very irritating to watch. Regardless of some of the issues, the camaraderie between the cast, the soundtrack, and the overall visual design of the movie was well executed. If I had to give it a rank, it's probably my 6th favorite in the MCU.

Nah most of the complaints I see are a lot more shallow than that. Like "it was too childish" or "too many jokes means you can't take it seriously" (I actually can't take seriously anyone who doesn't understand how GotG storytelling works) or even "too much drama". (edit: or actually in the case of Angelus here, which seems to be most people as well, simply "it wasn't as good as the original" or downright "it was bad" for no apparent reason.)

I disagree about the movie being congested, I think all of the subplots worked really well and all of the characters had a very well-developed arc that was fulfilling as hell by the end. I think the pacing is nearly perfect - there's at least one little scene I would personally remove from the movie, and one or another I'd trim down a bit or partially cut as well -, but those are so few it's basically nitpicking.

Funny enough, there's a certain other blockbuster this year that absolutely did suffer from a far too congested story with too many characters and too many subplots in a running time that, while not enough for everything, still felt much longer than it actually was (and also the subplots weren't well executed at all). But, I guess that's the sort of discussion we really don't need here.

I absolutely loved the first Guardians of the Galaxy.  I was amped just by the initial trailer alone, and the movie delivered beyond my wildest expectations.  It was a very hard act for itself to follow.  Having said that, I am one of those people who thinks that James Gunn did try a little too hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice when it came to the script of the sequel.  I'm not saying there were too many jokes, because yes, in the Guardians of the Galaxy format, that works.  But it works, when it is done well.  I get that humor is subjective.  But for me, part 2 had jokes and sequences that felt way more forced than the original, trying too hard to be funny without actually being funny.  The Taserface bit comes to mind.  I didn't find it as laugh out loud funny as Gunn apparently did.  And so for me, it was a joke that fell flat initially and then gotten dragged out and beaten to death.  Anyway, I don't hate the movie.  It had a very moving and impactful scene at the end, and plenty of light-hearted fun sprinkled throughout for me to say that I enjoyed it.  Some of the comedy bits just didn't feel as organic to me as they were in the original is all.