It was a wonderfully enjoyable movie. I laughed in all the right places, I sniffled in all the right places, and generally had a great time. No complaints.
For something that is explicitly sold as a wacky good time in space, the film sure is violent and, on occasion, foul-mouthed. The commercials - and the 17 minutes of preview footage screened for fans a month ago - really de-emphasized how brutal many of the fight scenes are. There are stabbings. There is attempted murder. There are impalings. There are stabbings and explosions and various other unpleasant ways to go out inflicted on various characters, some of whom even have speaking parts. Not that I’m going all Hayes Code or anything here, but if you’re bringing your kids expecting nothing but cute talking trees and raccoons, you might want to adjust those expectations.
Spiritually, this splits the difference between the ongoing Marvel films, which do an excellent job of mainstreaming obscure nerd properties with machinelike efficiency, and the mid-80s action comedies like Big Trouble in Little China or Buckaroo Banzai. It’s winkingly self-aware of the genre conventions it’s sending up, recognizing that they’re shared vocabulary that lets the film do something different. At the same time, the film is composed with mechanical, relentless precision. Every character gets their one moment of pathos, the climactic showdown plays out beat-for-beat like innumerable other action films, and there’s plenty of sly toy commercials built into the film. But that’s OK, because the craftsmanship of the film is so damn good.
Vin Diesel really is Groot. This may be the defining performance of his career.
I want some of the space technology that preserves audiocassettes, AA batteries, and earphone foam for multiple decades. Seriously. I’m not nitpicking. I’ve got a couple of aging cassettes that are shedding iron oxide faster than Donald Trump ditches creditors and if space technology is what it takes to save those suckers, I want it now.
Director/cowriter James Gunn does an impressive job of shoehorning a ridiculous amount of exposition about the Marvel Universe into the movie without turning it into Adam Warlock Studies 101. Those who are paying attention can squee to themselves over the nice little detail touches that get worked in; those who don’t care or who don’t realize that all this infodump is the setup for about six other movies can simply relax because the only bit’s that actually pertinent is “blue guy in a hoodie wants to blow up the planet.” Everything else? Details.
Complaining about the post-credits scene is self-entitled nonsense. What we get is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the film and a nice nod to a bit of Marvel’s history. No, it’s not splodey or ominous or plot-relevant; it’s fun. Talking yourself into thinking that it was going to be Ultron jello-wrestling Thanos while Nathan Fillion and the cast of Firefly cheer them on might have been fun forum fodder, but Marvel and James Gunn are under no obligation to match the fantasies you spun out of whole cloth. And besides, complaining about how the free stuff you just got is the wrong free stuff always kind of makes you look like a jerkface.
Whoever decided that Benicio Del Toro’s version of The Collector would look like someone trying to cosplay the abominable snowman from the old Rankin Bass Christmas specials may want to have others check their work on future character redesigns.
Part of me will always wonder how different a movie this would have been in StarLord’s mom had liked Yes, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull instead of early 70s cheese rock.
Did I mention I really enjoyed the movie? ‘Cause I did.