Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - A Marvel-ous animated adventure

 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman - 2018

★★★★★-I was more or less done with superhero flicks, but I kept hearing about how great this and the new one are. So here I am, back in the Marvel Extended Universe. And glad to be, as this film was great. 

Drawing inspiration from the "Spider-Verse" story arc and the debuts of Miles Morales in the Ultimate Marvel comics. Gist of the film is that Miles assumes the mantle of Spider-Man and joins forces with other Spider-People from parallel universes to protect his own reality from the villainous Kingpin, among other familiar foes. 

Computer-animated Marvel flick that follows the Miles Morales as Spider-Man storyline. Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman in their feature directorial debuts. Solid ensemble cast includes Shameik Moore as Morales, accompanied by the voices of Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Vélez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber. 

Nothing but positive things to say. Soundtrack was dope. Really felt the going from public school and quietly killing it to struggling at private school. Though I wanted to be there. Smart, rich girls was indeed where it was at. Great depiction of a father-son relationship. Pretty beautiful really. 

I loved all the Spider “People”. I'd watch a short about each of them. One of my favorite things about the flick. 

Overall take: Great story. The art looks great. Well acted. What sets it apart is the skillful balance it strikes between embracing its source material and cleverly satirizing it. From the very start, viewers are drawn into an immersive world, filled with vibrant colors and thrilling adventures. Probably my favorite animated film I've seen since Coco back when it was in theaters. Can't wait to see the new one. 

Deadpool is the great movie of all time

IMO this is the best Marvel movie. I've watched it five times, the most recent in prep for the sequel, and it is still dope. Here is some masturbatory preamble... I didn't get into comic books until my mid 20s. At that point it was mostly just because and my literary tastes had already been long established (self-aware meta shit was my jams). That being the case, I went into a comic book store and asked the stereotypical fat comic book dude what I should read. He gave me Planetary and Deadpool both of which I still love. For DP it was the series "The Circle Chase" which featured The Juggernaut who was mad hot at the time because of that "I"m The Juggernaut, bitch," video that my girlfriend of the time found to be the most offensive thing of all time. Shout out to Clare (she definitely had a point). Later he became my go to hero whilst playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, probably my favorite game of all time. Gotta love that regeneration and teleportation, main. This, more than anything else, got me into the character. I mention all this to let the world fucking know that I was into that shit before anybody. I'll cut you if you accuse me of jumping on that bandwagon. Cut you. Anywho, love a character who can enjoy a good chimichanga is what it comes down to. So I was stoked to see the character on screen. And the shit did not disappoint. Knocked it out of the goddamned park and Deadpool was indeed the greatest movie of all time.

Colossus. Russian. Metal. Good job.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Fast, funny, and gleefully profane, the fourth-wall-busting Deadpool subverts superhero film formula with wildly entertaining -- and decidedly non-family-friendly -- results.

Pros: Solidly funny. Pokes a lot of fun at the superhero genre like Scream does with horror. Ryan Reynolds is dope. Great pacing. Gina Carano is a pretty lady. The first X-Men movie to not fuck up Colossus.

Cons: Some may call it crass and juvenile. It is but it was fun in the end.

Carano. A pretty lady

Gist of the first one is that mercenary Wade Wilson meets a chick, they get engaged, he gets cancer, undertakes experiment treatment that is basically just torture which leads to disfigurement and superpowers, becomes Deadpool, tells jokes, searches for the guy who fucked his shit up (Ajax), meets up with X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (meh), kicks ass. The movie stars Reynolds as Deadpool, Morena Baccarin (who I'm pretty sure was crazy eyes in How I Met Your Mother) as DP's love interest Vanessa, Carano who was an MMA fighter, Brianna Hildebrand as NTW, Stefan Kapičić voices Colossus, T.J. Miller who played Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley, Ed Skrein as Ajax, Karan Soni as the annoying cab driver, and Leslie Uggams as Blind Al who I fucking swore was Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek) but I'm an idiot apparently. It's technically the eighth X-Men movie but has to be in a different universe and is hard to tell where in the universe it fits in which it pokes fun at. It also shits on several timelines including the first movie Deadpool appears in, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Some of the best shit from the flick is the opening scene, which is one of those stopping time dealies. It is a moment in time right before a bunch of carnage in the middle of a big highway fight scene where the bad guys are getting thrown from an SUV that is flipping sideways. They lay nonsense credits over scene--stuff like staring "a hot chick," "a CGI character," "god's perfect idiot," "written by the real heroes here," and so forth--while the song Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton (it's that song that goes "Just call me angel of the morning, angel. Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby"). Once time starts moving again one guy is decapitated, one guy is thrown 30 feet into an exit overhead sign, and one is crushed under the SUV. Deadpool, in this moment, worries about if he left his oven on. In case you haven't seen it, here it is...

The post-credit scene is also a nice bit of nonsense. Deadpool, donning a bathrobe, says something to the effect of "why are you still here," Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off style in a total nod to that scene. Makes sense that they would reference that movie as both are solid examples of metafiction where both characters tool on the audience for still being in the theater after the movie is technically over. Bueller is sort of Deadpool's brethren when you think about it. Snarky all nonsense characters that like to break the fourth wall. I love that shit. Deadpool also goes a little further, as Marvel movies are wont to do, when he talks about the sequel which he says will feature Cable and then goes into possible casting before finally making a few more little jokes how the Marviel Cinematic Universe teases the next flick in the series during the post-credit scene in every fucking movie. We then get the final "chika-chikaa" from the song "Oh, Yeah", by Yello, that's featured in FBDO. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

Anywho, the movie is basically one-liners and action. I like the one-liners more than the action which I think is sort of universal but don't know. The action is pretty cool, especially with Colossus who finally looks like the comic book character and is finally Russian for Christ's sake, but it's still watching someone else play a video game. Probably the most humorous stuff though is how he makes fun of superheros. Like how cool NTW and Ajax's names are and the super hero landing they are always doing. Shit we've all thought about and are hip to as lame devices. So yeah, a solid first feature film for the character with a bunch of ridiculous jokes, disembowelment, a raging superhero, and sympathetic alter-ego. Shit is dope.

Avengers: Infinity Wars is the greatest movie of all time

Avengers: Infinity Wars. Spoilers. Mad spoilers, bra. With a decade of Marvel Studios flicks, Marvel Cinematic Universe has all been building up to this. To give you an idea of the size, it is one of the most expensive movies ever made, Wikipedia lists the budget at $300-$400 million, it has the highest grossing weekend of all time and is already in the top 50 highest-grossing films ever. Most critics love that shit, too. All the action. All the feels. Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Avengers: Infinity War ably juggles a dizzying array of MCU heroes in the fight against their gravest threat yet, and the result is a thrilling, emotionally resonant blockbuster that (mostly) realizes its gargantuan ambitions.

Meh

Pros: Story is fucking solid. Even though there are like 400 people in it they do a good job of getting everyone a lot of screen time and telling how everyone sort of fits in. So much star power it is insane. Some truly shocking moments that are quite emotionally affecting. Thor continues to be hilarious and awesome.

Cons: Feel sort of nitpicky listing any of these as "cons" because the movie fucking ruled. It was just with the movie being so long there were just several little things to list, some more valid than others. First, I was not emotionally ready for the ending. Plus, knowing the bare minimum about comics, the weight of that ending is undercut by the fact that no one in comics ever dies. Thanos is sort of lame. Too much of the story relies on us giving a shit about Gamora (who probably gets the most screen time) which is tough because she has basically just been the love interest up to this point. Not enough Captain America and his click.

Gist of the Infinity War is that most but not all of the Avengers (notably missing were Ant-Man and Hawkeye) and some of their super buddies (the Guardians of the Galaxy, basically, and Dr. Strange and some Black Panther) get it on with the most powerful villain in the Marvel Universe, Thanso, who is going about trying to complete his little set of Infinity Stones which he wants to use to kill half of living things in the universe because of resources. Like Killmonger in Black Panther, he's not wrong, he's just an asshole.

The movie was directed by Russo bros Anthony and Joe features the ensemble cast of all the usuals. Going back over the cast, this shit is insane. Basically this is a who's who list of Hollywood talent. See it listed is pretty cray. A partial list, in alphabetical order, includes Dave Bautista as Drax, Paul Bettany as Vision, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, Josh Brolin as Thanso, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon, Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange, Benicio Del Toro as The Collector, Vin Diesel as Groot, Peter Dinklage as Eitri, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Holland as Spider Man, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk/Bruce Banner, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky. This only scratches the surface.

A lot of stuff I have been thinking about that I loved here. First, the film is book-ended by two scenes that were shocking as fu-uck. The one at the beginning which was just fucking nuts was when Thanos, already with the Power Stone in hand, hops on the spaceship with all the Asgardian refugees on it following the events of Thor: Ragnarok to strong arm the Space Stone in that there old Tesseract cube from the various flicks. In the process Hulk comes out of the woodwork to end this bullshit and gets beat the fuck down which was a serious WTF moment. With him out of the way, Thanos and his group of underlings called The Children of Thanos (consisting of Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Proxima Midnight, and Cull Obsidian), they easily bitch Thor, kill Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston), and Heimdall (played by Idris Elba) before blowing up the ship, killing everyone but Thor (who just floats through space until the Guardians find him) and Hulk whom Heimdall beamed to Earth with the Bifrost before he met his end. Hell of a way to start things off, I'll tell you.

Then there is the ending which was a complete fucking shock. Obviously spoiling shit here so don't give me shit. At the end we have all the characters coming together in Wakanda, getting it on with Thanos, and seemingly sort of stopping him by destroying the final stone in his collection, the Mind Stone, by killing Vision. Woohoo. No. Thanos, who can bend time, space, reality, so forth, but generally chooses close quarter hand-to-hand, turns back time reassembling Vision and plucks the stone from his melon, killing him again. If you've seen Dr. Strange you should probably sort of expected this but if you are like me then you didn't think of it until it went down. It was cray AF. Thor shows up here with his newly forged hammah and smacks the shit out of Thanos who teleports the fuck out of there. Sort of think it is over or whatever but then they start disintegrating with half of them and half of all life in universe fucking dying. When Black Panther blew away it was too much, main. "No!" I yelled in my car at the drive in. We also lose all the Guardians except Rocket. Damn. But, yeah, after it's over its hard to know how to take all this death/the movie in general. Obviously all the ash characters can't stay gone. There are two more Black Panther movies coming out for Christ's sake. 

Anywho, another thing of note here was that Thanos knew Tony Stark by name, which is interesting. Tony, for his part, claims that Thanos has been "inside my head"--or something like that--for six years which was the whole shit that went down in New York in the first Avengers movie. Thanos, on the other hand, seems to only have respect for one human,Tony, whom he sees as the main Avenger aka protector of earth or whatever, I guess. Regardless, they are obviously connected and what not and I'm thinking Tony will have to sacrifice himself or some such shit since Dr. Strange gave up an Infinity Stone to save his life though he said he would not do that just a few scenes before. But after Strange had his little vision, which is the only way it played out that they defeat Thanos, so he must need to live for that shit to play out. 

Chris on Chris action

Some other shit that I'll mention was that Dinklage shows up out of nowhere. He is a fucking dwarf but is a giant dwarf. He ends up being the tallest person in the movie which is probably a fucking wet dream for dude and what not. The best shit of the movie though was the Chris Hemsworth vs Chris Pratt doofus off where they both crack wise at each other despite Thor having just lost all his people in mass genocide and Star-Lord having just caused the end of half of all life in the universe because he is an idiot.

The last thing I shall mention is that this flick has really put out some dank ass memes. Most of them revolve around Thanos either looking ridiculous or being an asshole or obsessing over his stones. I leave you with these, some of my faves, for your viewing pleasure.

Black Panther is the greatest movie of all time

Black Panther (BP). So hyped I thought it was going to be impossible for it to live up. For the most part it does. It's a super solid movie and is at worst a top three Marvel Cinematic Universe film. I'd put it at second behind Ragnarok and just ahead of the first Guardians movie. Dope but not perfect, basically. But culturally it is what we need, or at least that is my unoriginal take.

Fake news

Forever it's been the unspoken rule that black movies don't sell. Just like R-rated superhero movies would sell tickets before Deadpool.  This became the spoken rule when the Sony leaks came out. But it's the foreign audience that is racist... Right... But here we are.  With this dope black movie that is fucking crushing it. Right time? Right circumstances? Definitely. Yeah, what we need. Also a dope movie in a kick ass universe. Hopefully studios learn the right lesson here which I shan't get into.

Just stop

The dumbest shit I've seen said about this movie is from fucking Breitbart which I shant link to (ever). At first the right said it sucked. Created Facebook events to flood Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews to tank the audience score and shit. This was the alt-right reaction to what they call "social justice warriors" or SJWs. When that didn't work they took to condescending everybody with their "hey black people, Wakanda does not exist." No fucking shit. No one fucking thinks that. Gotham, Metropolis, Atlantis. No one believes they exist either. When Justice League came out no one said anything like this. Shit is racist. Now, typically, they are claiming as their own which is fucking absurd. The dumbshit at Breitbart in "The Movie’s Hero Is Trump, the Villain Is Black Lives Matter" trolls us with shit like "If T’Challa is Trump, Killmonger is Black Lives Matter. Did I just write that? Yes. I. Did." At first I thought he had only watched the first half of the movie because T'Challa abandons his isolationist philosophies but then we get this shit: "By the end of the movie, T’Challa is even more like Trump inasmuch as he sees that his country of Wakanda cannot completely isolate itself from the world because he has a moral responsibility to help others," and "if T’Challa were a left-wing Democrat — a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — he would oppose bringing people together." What's that now? This has to be a fucking joke. Not funny though. And the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Black Panther elevates superhero cinema to thrilling new heights while telling one of the MCU's most absorbing stories -- and introducing some of its most fully realized characters.

Pros: Story is fucking dope. Get some vegetarian representation, finally (though that character does make a joke about feeding a dude to his kids ["JK. We don't eat meat."] which was sardonic and hilarious). The cast is sick.

Cons: The action is meh, like always. Every movie is Some of the CGI was shockingly bad. Like in the scene during the big battle near the end when BP tackles a rhino I laughed out loud it looked like such shit. It was worse than anything in the Lord of the Rings movies from 15 years ago. Definitely the worst CGI I've seen in a MCU flick.

To start, if there is hot black actor in a show or a movie you've seen in the last couple years, they are probably in this movie. Got Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther. Was James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and Jackie Robinson. Lot of sweet historical roles there. Michael B. Jordan who was Creed in Creed, Wallace in The Wire, and QB1 in Friday Night Lights, is Killmonger (or as I call him, Murdergasm), the main villain dude. Lupita Nyong'o who was in 12 Years a Slave, Star Wars: The Forece Awakens, and The Jungle Book is one of the female leads/love interest, Danai Gurira who is Michone in The Walking Dead, Daniel Kaluuya who is the main dude in Get Out, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker who need no introduction are in it, as is Sterling K. Brown from This is Us and played Christopher Darden in American Crime Story. Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis (who was really dope) are the white dudes that are also in the movie.

The films gives us T'Challa who rises from prince to king--which comes with the perk of receiving the powers of the Black Panther--of the technologically advanced isolationist nation state of Wakanda. As seen in Captain America: Civil War, the previous king, T'Challa's old man, was killed in a terrorist attack. After a brief reign on the throne, Killmonger, T'Challa's cousin who's dad (T'Challa's paternal uncle), seizes power with the intention of using Wakanda's tech to cause worldwide uprisings for oppressed peoples (he isn't wrong but is sort of a total asshole [with his {spoiler} dying breath he basically tells T'Challa "You still a slave, bitch" but much more eloquently). Shit then hits the old fan.

Two things I've been focusing on with this movie--one of which came up in conversation while the other came up in a podcast--were how his suit works and vibranium as a metaphor for culture. The suit comes out of the dueling black panthers' necklaces. It sort of engulfs them. But late in the movie, at a point when the vibranium that they run on is neutralized, we sort of see the suit pealing off sort of thing where we get bare skin. So are they naked underneath that? Are their clothes like stuffed in those little teeth on the necklace? How are they clothed when the suit completely disappears? So forth. The vibranium as a metaphor for culture is the hottest take I've heard on the movie. Heard it on the podcast The Daily Zeitgeist. The guest was talking about an African friend of his who came up with this. Slick viewing, this guy. This guy says vibranium is "a treasure trove of artistic and spiritual resources that, like Wakanda, are 'hiding in plain sight'-- disdained by whites, but also always at risk of being exploited by them." So basically look for academic study on this film in the future (which I'm totally into).

Only thing I can really shit on besides the CGI are the weapons that Okoye (Gurira) and Shuri (T'Challa's sister who is played by Letitia Wright and is like a super genius) use in the battle scenes. Okoye has these magic frisbee golf  discs while Shuri has these lame wizard hands that shoot concussion blasts of vibranium. Shit is whack. But, yeah, other than that shit is dope. You should watch it as it is the greatest movie of all time.

Spider-man: Homecoming is the greatest movie of all time

Out of the three Spiderman reboots I've seen in my adulthood, I'd put Spider-man: Homecoming slightly above the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire iteration. People that hate on either of those don't fucking know. What puts this one above the other two is, more than anything, its tying into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. First Spiderman movie to do that since that has been a thing, which is dope.

Having just come off his debut in the MCU in Captain America: Civil War, this film follows young Peter Parker as he adjusts to life as a superhero whilst going through normal, infuriating high school drama. After helping save the world or whatever, Parker finds life with his guardian Aunt May (the still lovely Marisa Tomei) to be pretty fucking boring. Plus he has father-figure Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Happy (Jon Favreau), Stark's bodyguard, monitoring his every move. As Parker hones his skills as a crime-fighter, the blue-collar villain Vulture (Michael Keaton) shows up to fuck shit up because reasons. It's not super clear but just roll with it. 

Noice

Pros: Fun. Funny. Solid cameos. Keaton. The beautiful Tomei. They skip the origin story. Outstanding soundtrack. Solidly grounded in the MCU. The twist at the end. Cool Stark engineered suit with the Iron Man talking computer thing.

Cons: Villain is sort of weak/small timey. A lot of the high school kids are sort of annoying. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Spider-Man: Homecoming does whatever a second reboot can, delivering a colorful, fun adventure that fits snugly in the sprawling MCU without getting bogged down in franchise-building.

Notes: The movie opens with an origin story for the bad guy rather than yet another rehashing of Peter Parker's transformation. With Spiderman we just get a little bit of a rehashing of what happened in Captain America: Civil War. I still like that they use a person that could actually pass for a high school student instead of someone in his mid to late 20s (although actor Tom Holland is in fact 21). They even portray him as sort of a screw up. Like when his buddy tells everyone at school that Parker knows Spiderman most no one believes it, especially this raging prick who is more or less Parker's bully. There is some humor that comes about as a result of this like when Spiderman pounces down on his car or something while fighting crime, smashing the car, as Spiderman swings away the dude asks him "if he knows Peter Parker." That dude is a fucking hater. Anyway, after that little recap of Civil War we jump right in. All of this is appreciated. Have a lot of time to do some character developing and what not instead of giving us a bunch of shit that everybody already knows.

He'll always be Troy to me

This is the funniest/most fun of all the movies in the MCU. We get humor almost right off the bat with Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr.), whom is a father figure as both a business man and as a superhero in his alter ego Iron Man, ending a conversation with Parker in a limo by reaching over him to open the door. Parker thinks he was coming in for a hug. Stark goes out of his way to explain that was not in fact a hug and that he just wanted him out of his car. Lot of the other humor somewhat relies on the cameos and your having to know who several B-listers are and their appearance is amusing. One is Hannibal Buress, Peter Parker's gym teacher, who is in no way athletic and might genuinely be insane. His role as a teacher and coach is absurd in that he has obviously not one for physical fitness and is more one for getting stoned and eating garbage. He is also into showing his students videos of Captain America, as any true gym teacher would be. The other stellar cameo is that of Donald Glover who is Troy on Community, the main dude on Atlanta, and soon to be Lando Calrissian in the Hans Solo Star Wars prequel. He plays some sort of stoner drug dealer dude who is not phased by anything and super unimpressed with Spiderman. Also of note are small roles by Kenneth Choi (Lewis from Last Man on Earth, Judge Ito in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story), Martin Starr (whom you may recall from Party Down and Freaks and Geeks), and the Tom Hardy doppelganger from Prometheus (Logan Marshall-Green). Also get a glimpse of a picture of Kafka, one of my heroes and why I'm a vegetarian, who wrote the story "The Metamorphosis" about a dude who turns into a bug. It's god tier.

Way to crush those dreams, yo!

Another solid little thing I appreciated was that there were no Maguire spidey lips. When Parker scales the Washington Monument when his academic decathlon team travelled to DC and saves them from falling down an elevator shaft, his love interest, who has a thing for Spidey, stands near the elevator with Spiderman dangling upside down. She sort of starts to go in for the kiss but his web busts. No stupid kiss. Yay!

Anywho, I'm not going to spoil the twist at the end other than to say that there is one and woah ho ho. Also, the outro credits are really cool to watch while you wait for the standard post credit scene at the end of every MCU movie. This one was dope. The best, I say. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the greatest movie of all time

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 in the 3D which I'd recommend as it looks pretty good. Movie is solid. Lot to like here... buuuuuuut there are some things.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's action-packed plot, dazzling visuals, and irreverent humor add up to a sequel that's almost as fun -- if not quite as thrillingly fresh -- as its predecessor.

Russell mansplaining about what being a god is all about

Pros: Beautifully done with great visual effects. On point cast as the previous one with a few really solid cameos. The Watchers show up for the first time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least that I recall. Very funny.

Cons: Tries a little too hard, maybe. Sort of like a more eh version of the original.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Little guy

Start with the stuff I really liked. Going in, I was concerned about the baby Groot. Watching previews and for around the first quarter of the movie, I was like, “eh, little guy.” But by the end, I was all, “aw, little guy.” He's so dumb and helpless. He also does just enough where he isn't annoying, for the most part. Really start to like him when the Ravagers shit all over him (metaphorically) and when he is put in charge of helping out his mates, he generally fails spectacularly.

Basically, if you were into the characters in the first one, empathized with them and what not, then you'll get lots of that. Pratt is cool. His relationship with Kurt Russell's character, Russell fucking rocked by the way, involves lots of blue lightning, be warned. The big dude is funny as hell. The green chick gets lots of screen time to deal with her shit. Same with Daryl's brother from The Walking Dead. He is sort of the one you really feel for in this one. We also get a glimpse of what it would be like for an everyman type of guy to have godlike powers, which is cool. 

The last thing worth mentioning, which I will try not to give too much away on here, is Stan Lee's cameo adds credence to a theory that has been posed about his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel movies in general. Overall, the movie is funny as hell and lots of fun.

Now the other stuff. It doesn't really seem like the series is really going anywhere except for maybe exploring Quill's (Pratt) origin story. I know how this fits into the MCU but it feels totally isolated from all that shit. Also, the fight scenes are sometimes just way too long. Often get the feeling in films like this that I watching someone else play a video game.

A gold chick looking fucking cool

It's obviously not a serious movie. Lots of jokes and gags and lots of over the top action. But it's like they are seriously trying to funny which works but sometimes sort of doesn't. An example of this is with this character that chooses to call himself Taserface. He basically goes into this long monologue where he is telling the former leader of his Ravager Clan, Yondu, whom he is just successfully mutinied against, that he is weak and stupid and taking them down the wrong path and that it is time for their clan to rise to glory under the leadership of a new captain: Taserface! Rocket the Raccoon then just rips on him for the next five minutes of the movie. None of it is really funny. Then when he gets his comeuppance, all fucked up, barely alive from various injuries, he crawls over to a monitor to summon the Sovereign, one of the several groups the Guardians have beef with here that are solid gold and look fucking cool and fight using these sweet drones that they control from video game console type things, and tells them the group's coordinates so that they can come and kill them and in his mind avenge his death. He just wants them to tell the Guardians that it was he, Taserface, that did them in. The chick he talks to, however, just laughs at his name as he explodes and dies. Weak. There is some other stuff like this that is like, “whatever.”

Looking at some reviews, which I usually don't do, to find ways others explained it, I came across this in the Times, “The difference (between the original and sequel) is that while the first 'Guardians' earned that love as if by accident, this one begs for it,” which is spot on. Other than some of that stuff though it is fucking great and is totally solid by anyone's standards. I'm sure it's gonna be huge.