It was pretty pulpy eh? Definitely in that "planetary romance" vein.

Saw it the other day and thought it was quite silly to be honest. It contains the line "Necrocraft pilots, enact immolation initiative!" … in no way can it compare to the masterpiece that is Mockingjay: Part I.

It mixes being silly in a good way with being silly in a bad way. I thought it was a lot more entertaining than the usual Marvel stuff though. Too bad they completely wasted Lee Pace, who's one of my favourite actors. You couldn't even tell it's him beneath all that CGI.

Agree with that. The plot was the biggest issue for me. Get through the sub-bosses then the big boss with the "power of friendship" … ugh.

The juxtaposition of cheesy 70s/80s pop with the comic book sf imagery was really successful. They should've just turned that up to eleven.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

Saw it the other day and thought it was quite silly to be honest. It contains the line "Necrocraft pilots, enact immolation initiative!" … in no way can it compare to the masterpiece that is Mockingjay: Part I.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/312/563/05d.jpg[/img]
(Does the width/height function not work? When I post, the picture is as big as when I copied it).
I see that it's already fallen to 110th on the top 250 list. Hopefully it won't fall much further, an excellent comic book movie that merges humor and action in the way deserves to be up there!

How I see your situation in my head:

BW: Hey, I'll watch this movie about a talking raccoon and a living tree who can only say one single sentence.
One hour later
BW: Wait a second... Immolation initiative? Pft, this is silly!

Tsk, tsk, grasshopper.

There's something about evil done badly that's a real problem. A lot of modern pulp sf has this issue—see also Thor: The Dark World (Ecclestone), Chronicles of Riddick, and the Star Trek reboot.

You've got to do more than paint on furrowed brows in makeup, and the lack of motivation for the boringly intrinsically evil Ronan was a major problem with GotG, one which made the "immolation initiative" line seem about as tonally derailing as this:

I've spent long years learning to discern the difference between pulpy-cool-Weird (which can potentially include a talking tree or a man who doesn't understand metaphors) and deflatingly silly cartoonish bathos. Perhaps the distinction is pretty much what Klaus alluded to above. Because above all else, pulp needs to be cool. This is why Loki is so damn necessary to Marvel.

I see what you mean, but still disagree. As with the first (of the new) Star Trek, I think it's the right choice by the director to focus on the relationships between the leads who are supposed to form a team. In the second Star Trek - and eventually GotG, I think the relationship between heroes and villain become more important. I like Cumberbatch, but agree that he wasn't given much to work with and that's too bad. In the first Star Trek the villain was unimportant to me.

Interesting logic, but I can't accept the argument that villains should be poorly drawn and the tone inconsistent just to ensure the spotlight isn't removed from the team-building exercise in preparation for the next instalment. Fascinating insight into the franchise mindset though

I don't say that villains should be poorly drawn. I just don't think the villain is a big deal in a movie like this or the first Star Trek.

True, you didn't say villains should be poorly drawn—sleight of hand on my part.

What you said was that the entire dramatic conflict in Guardians of the Galaxy was more or less irrelevant except in so far as it dramatically justified a bond of friendship between the protagonists for the benefit of the inevitable sequels.

We're used to this kind of approach in serialised literature and TV I suppose. Call me old school, call me prescriptive, call me a sad old chap who just doesn't enjoy "entertainments", but I think a $200m pulp blockbuster that's over two hours long should arguably still be a self-contained dramatic experience full of light and shadow rather than a prolonged sfnal reenactment of a corporate team-building weekend.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

True, you didn't say villains should be poorly drawn—sleight of hand on my part.

What you said was that the entire dramatic conflict in Guardians of the Galaxy was more or less irrelevant except in so far as it dramatically justified a bond of friendship between the protagonists for the benefit of the inevitable sequels.

We're used to this kind of approach in serialised literature and TV I suppose. Call me old school, call me prescriptive, call me a sad old chap who just doesn't enjoy "entertainments", but I think a $200m pulp blockbuster that's over two hours long should arguably still be a self-contained dramatic experience full of light and shadow rather than a prolonged sfnal reenactment of a corporate team-building weekend.

Not necessarily because it benefits inevitable sequels. Simply because I enjoyed watching the chemistry between them and it didn't bother me that the villain lacked personality. I didn't notice anything wrong with the tone either.

Watched "The Hobbit" and I thought it was awful. I'm planning to see Bela Tarr's "Satantango"

The first one wasn't good indeed. Jackson should've kept it at two movies, not three.

The first Hobbit movie I was at times entertained, other times bored, the second one I just hated. Maybe the worst cinema experience I've ever had. And I say this as a big fan of Jackson's LOTR triology, which is underrated if anything. There was just no nerve what so ever in the last Hobbit movie. Every character with a name worth knowing narrowly escaped certain death every 15 seconds and soon you just feel a complete disconnect. The barrel scene was dreadfully overdone and the love triangle storyline was just embarrassing. To make three movies out of this source material was an obvious cashgrab from the start, but to shit the bed this much I would not have expected from Jackson.

I must say the second one was awesome, for my liking. So much better than the first one, that it could almost be compared to the LotR movies without sucking as bad as the first Hobbit.

The Love-Story was indeed a joke. Jackson was lucky to have had one in the LotR Trilogy, but to create such a comical one between an Elb and a Dwarf....well. He wanted too much I assume.

They've tried to replicate the LotR formula.

They've got a few Legolas-like characters, they've got a badass girl elf who looks like Liv Tyler, a massive battle scene coming up in the next one, moody songs … they've created a three-movie antagonist where there wasn't one … the tone is all fucking wrong for the book.

It should be different from LotR and not the same, it's quite faithless for them to put it together the way they have.

Good spot Burnwinter, the only real difference is the setup (CGI and all that), which didn't quite satisfy me, and the humour due to Freeman. I think he's the perfect Bilbo.

He's excellent, I agree. And he's got the right feel. I think the Dwarves are about right as well, as is Cumberbatch as Smaug.

It just feels wrong to me that these films are so similar to the LotR ones. The whole point of the Hobbit is that it feels completely different from the later works. I'm also quite fond of it—my dad read it to me when I was a toddler and I must've read it six times.

Anyway, the new one still looks like plenty of fun in bits so I'll go see it, it's just going to piss me off by being too long and having lots of flat bits.

I'm a lore-fanatic as well, so some of the adaptions for the Hobbit have been quite....interesting, to say the least.

I think the similarity is down to having the same producers - Jackson didn't want to make that movie at first, only after del Torro canceled because of paying-issues, he took over. You can see that with all the new-looks and CGI stuff, Jackson wanted to create something entirely different to the LotR movies, but that alone wasn't enough, I agree.

Little over three weeks until the last one launches, I'm surely going to watch it, even though I'm not sure whether to do that in 3D or not.

Haven't read the book. Neither of the Hobbit movies are close to LotR imo, and it seems like they couldn't decide between the tone from LotR and the Disney "slides everywhere" tone. Freeman is brilliant.

Saw Don Jon yesterday. It was okay I guess, but maybe more should be going on. Scarlett, though.