Expectations Exceeded

Rating: 9/10 (31 July 2014)

I went into this films with sky high expectations as both a fan of the DnA run on the comic and Gunns previous work as a director (Slither is awesome).
The ting that baffles me most is that, as a fan of the comic, I should be pretty ticked off by the film as they have changed many things from the source material. Drax has a completely different back story and personality, Ronan is just a "bad" guy, Nova corpse can't fly etc etc.
The thing is the film was just too much fun for me to care about those things. Everyone is saying its like "star wars" or "raiders" etc, in my humble opinion they're wrong. For me it reminds me much more like Ghostbusters than anything else. Not just because its more blatant in it's humor (although it is), it's because its about a group of dropouts and losers who are way out their depth saving the world/galaxy.
The film truly rocks! From the great visuals, to the cool story, to the action set pieces, to the emotional scenes, to banter, right through this fully realized universe that Gunn has created.
If I had one nit to pick I do think that Ronan is slightly under served due to the film having so much to do as a first outing like introduce an entire galaxy as well as a whole team of heroes. It would have been nice to have more of the history of the Xandar/Kree war to add more weight to Ronans actions but the rest of the film is that good its easy to ignore that small fault. Hopefully now they have already done most of the set up work they can flesh the other aspects out more in future Guardians films
However the biggest and most pleasant surprise of all for me was Drax. Like I said earlier, he is the character that has been altered the most, he is also played by a professional wrestler (who haven't had the best track record for producing acting talent) and in the heaviest make up out the bunch. I thought he was going to either suck or be the weakest link by a long shot but no, he flat out gets some of the biggest laughs in the film and some of the most touching scenes too, no spoilers but there's a bit with him and rocket towards the end that made my "hay fever" play up.
Going to see it again on Wednesday and cant wait for July 2017 so we can do this all over again!