I wasn't really as high on Guardians 1 like everyone else was. I thought it was pretty good, but I placed it around the same spot I placed Ant Man...except I'd much rather rewatch Ant Man. Aside from recapping lore, I had no desire to re-watch Guardians 1, so I forgot a lot of the details. And because of it I was probably lost for the first 15 or so minutes of Guardians 2.
It picked up whenever Michael Rooker's character came on screen and I started to enjoy the characters interactions, humor, and story. That whistle kill scene was dope as hell, and I was laughing hard at baby Groot. Felt like it had found it's footing but then the villain reveal and climax dropped my enjoyment down again. I was hoping the villains motivations would be more interesting but the more he kept explaining, the more it sounded like every other villains plan. The same thing we do everything Pinky, try to take over the world.
I think I've just accepted that the cosmic stuff doesn't work for me. The colorful cotton candy vomit look to everything is just too fake looking for me to immerse myself in it, especially with the jokes flying. For the other marvel movies, I have frames of reference to "ground" myself to the reality, familiar weapons, streets and buildings, airplanes, etc so it just works well there. But in the cosmic universe, my brain just cant latch on to anything grounded enough for me to find the plot interesting, and eventually I just tune out whenever the big dumb action starts.
I did enjoy Drak, Groot, Michael Rooker's character, and the chick Drak called ugly
and I did enjoy the middle of the film and it's subplots, but the actual main plot of the film with Starlord was
and the final set piece was just a blob of colorful CGI that just completely took me out of what I was enjoying.
6/10
Fwiw, my complaint about the cosmic shyt also is what is keeping me from being too excited for Infinity War. I guess I'll see how I like Ragnorok, because I am cautiously optimistic for it.