Overproduced Fanfiction

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2016)

The First paragraph of this review consists of exposition. If a potential reader wishes to read about my opinion on the movie, skipping to the second paragraph is advisable. It's been about two years since I saw this movie at the cinema - something is compelled me to organize my thoughts and write this now. Why? I'm not entirely sure, I guess "Guardians Of The Galaxy" was always kind of an enigma to me. How could a movie so inept in everything it tries to do be so praised? It's not your typical Michael Bay-esque Hollywood cookie-cutter garbage, so It's success can't be attributed to following the same, overused, cliché-infested formulas. It could be that I am insane in my own specific way, but outside of production value I found no redeeming qualities here. I know the movie is an adaptation (of sorts) of a comic book series. My knowledge of comics is incredibly limited, so I'm judging this thing on it's own merits.
"Guardians Of The Galaxy" reminded me of one of those sci-fi stories I would come up with when I was 10-13 years old. It was a favorite pastime of mine, coming up with characters, who were blatant rip-offs of others from franchises I enjoyed at the time, putting them in nonsensical situations (of course, to 12 year old me it all made perfect sense) and just admiring my creation as any narcissistic child would. Of course, my stories didn't have movie adaptations with astronomical budgets.
I compared "Guardians Of The Galaxy" to a child's sci-fi story because of it's complete lack of direction - too many plot lines (more akin to plot doodles) that are individually unrefined and irrelevant to the overall story, which somehow manages to be even more undefinable. It's like a space opera chopped up and stitched together in some horribly messed up jigsaw puzzle. Now, some movies thrive on a lack of continuity and direction (Tarantino practically mastered that form of film-making), but this specimen is different. Again, it's as if the script was written by a child and the whole thing was directed by some individual who somehow had the skill of a top-notch director, but again possessed the mindset of a 12 year old.
What's even more surreal about the whole thing is that it feels incredibly solid - it's not "The Room" where every seen is irrelevant, because of the writer/director's sheer incompetence. Somehow, "Guardians..." holds itself together quite well, again everything else is top notch: Excellent CGI, detailed land/spacescapes (albeit of unoriginal, uninspired design) and pretty good acting with some minor exceptions. As I said before, this movie doesn't play out like a typical Hollywood schlockfest would - there are too many plot lines and too much time is devoted to character development - if this was typical garbage, we would have had a lot more action scenes and female characters in suggestive positions. All these attempts at complexity feel sincere, again, it's like a child trying to do his best, but they have no purpose. To illustrate: why should it matter that the green chick and the blue chick (sorry, too lazy to look up names) are sisters - it could matter, but the movie makes no attempt to give some importance to this statement, they share some scenes, the talk about about each other, they fight, but nothing really comes out of it. It's the same with every single plot point you can think of. The Villain? Well, he's pale blue and angry and he has this massive spaceship fortress and wants to rule/destroy (not sure) the universe, but wait it turns out he's not the main villain, there's another guy and he's even...yeah a 12 year old might buy into this being legit character development, but I've grown far too old and cynical.
In the end, "Guardians Of The Galaxy" feels like it starts from nowhere, goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing. A very empty, yet confusing (albeit visually spectacular) experience. But all the glitter in the world can't make this shine. Sorry.