Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014)

7.5/10
There's very little not to like about this movie as popcorn summer fun which I guess explains it's near-universal acclaim. It doesn't re-invent moviemaking but it knows what it's supposed to do and goes out and does it. I thought it relied very heavily on the formula Joss Whedon had a lot of success with in The Avengers, with the gentle, easy-going camaraderie of the ensemble cast. It had a nice "eighties" feel to it (the soundtrack certainly helped) and it generally was enjoyable the whole way through.
My biggest complaint was about the final fight with Ronan. The movie skated by on glib humor but employing that same kind of humor in the big final fight with Ronan (Chris Pratt dancing to distract him) was extremely cringeworthy and only served to further undermine what was a pretty impotent villain to begin with. Even after absorbing the energy from the infinity whatsit, Ronan was still able to accomplish roughly jack all. Which made me wonder just how powerful this stone was in the first place.
Which sort of leads into my other complaint about these movies - the good guys are never in any real peril. I know nobody goes to a superhero movie to watch the superheroes die but you would figure with 4 or 5 or 6 of them teaming up eventually one of them would bite it at some point. Although I guess by their nature superheroes are more or less immortal, but I feel like that point is being acknowledged a bit too much up front. Almost as if the writers aren't even trying to hide that the good guys can't be killed, and so write ridiculous scenes where Chris Pratt dances in front of the big bad because what the hell, we all know he won't actually die anyway so why not have fun with it?
I mean, this Ronan guy is Thanos' right hand man or whatever who absorbed this crazy purple energy thingy and he can't even stomp out a raccoon? Well of course he can't, because then there won't be any raccoon toys to sell. And I'm sure, no doubt, the main cast is already locked into making Guardians of the Galaxy movies until 2038, so the characters are contractually obligated to survive.
And yeah, Groot "dies", but he's already on his way back barely even a scene later, ready to return for GotG2. It struck me that if the original Star Wars trilogy was made today, Obi-Wan would never have been allowed to die, or he would have already been back as a spirit in the very next scene.
Anyway this ranting makes me sound angrier than I really am, because taken at face value it's a fun movie, and I'm obviously overthinking it. It's just a trend I'm noticing in the few superhero movies I do go see these days.