"Guardians of the Galaxy"

We interrupt the MCU to bring you a group of misfits that tried their hardest to get you to like them, and it almost worked. Don’t get me wrong, there were scenes where I hinted a smile, maybe a chuckle.

But why should I care for these people? We got a junker, an assassin, a raccoon, a tree and a warrior who just all happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, all hunting for the mysterious orb. They all go to prison, bust out of the prison, deliver the orb to Gamora’s dealer, this movie’s bad guy, Ronan, steal’s the orb, which has an Infinity Stone, and they steal it back and hand it to the city that was threatened with annihilation.

Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, is supposed to have a killer soundtrack, but even for an old song lover, I don’t know any of those songs, nor do I care. I only recognize the beginning song because JC Penney has been using it in their ad campaign.

"Convergence" by Jackson Pollack. Oil on canvas  ©1952

He is also too grounded and relatable with some things we just don’t talk about. When Gamora calls his ship filthy, he says, “If I had a black light, the whole place would look like a Jackson Pollack painting. Those of you who haven’t taken an Art class, have you seen a Jackson Pollack painting? Do you know what one looks like? If you haven’t, turn your attention to the picture on the right. And certain bodily fluids can glow under a black light. THAT’S DISGUSTING! My mother had to pause the movie to get her “EWWWW!” out.

So, the purple alien we see at the end of The Avengers is called Thanos. He wants the orb for some reason, only you nerds out there know, so shh!

Guardians actually broke new ground by not having the main character kiss the love interest. Gamora may have seen the other movies in MCU and said “nope!”

I gotta side with Star-Lord on one thing. Yondu screaming “I saved your life because they wanted to eat you” isn’t something you can throw into people faces. Would you swear loyalty to someone who keeps yelling stuff like that? 

We get to see Yondu’s mysterious arrow in action only once, and it was unsatisfying. It plugged through fifty men and a spaceship, woohoo. K

Groot is obviously the most loved character, and his death was tragic, but he is a representation of the kid you have to tell to not touch anything. In the end, when he plows his branchy arm into those soldiers, waves them around, drops and turns and smiles, he’s like “hee hee, look what I did.”

Rocket acts like he doesn’t know what a raccoon is, and then he goes on a drunken tangent that he never asked to be torn apart and put back together again. So, does he know what a raccoon is? Is he from Terra/Earth? Or are there raccoons elsewhere in the galaxy? What kind of other Terra like creatures live in other parts of the galaxy?

We hear more of the Infinity Stones. In Thor: The Dark World, Jane says the Aether told her that Kreacher the Dark Elf used it to destroy a planet. The Collector says that the Infinity Stones are forged from the concentrated matter left over from the destroyed planets. That links to the red stuff that Thor’s buddies hand over to the Collector in the end credits scene of that movie. I wish the movies would bring more insight about them instead of just implanting seeds of the next adventures to come.

Oh and this end credits scene brings back Howard the Duck. Never saw his only outing, but is he going to be important in the future?

Calling this a win is an overstatement. It is definitely different from we've seen before. But we don't know how they relate to the rest of the MCU. The closest thing that could tie them is Peter Quill being from Earth. I think this movie only exists to distract us and give us a new story to focus on. Iron Man is pretty much done, The Incredible Hulk fell off the face of the planet, Thor is dragging its ass, Captain America is the only one that's on top, I think. So this is probably a good thing the Guardians have a movie. We need new characters. I'll call it a win to keep the peace. Which brings it to 5 wins, 4 losses, and 1 draw.

I hope you liked this. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment about what you thought or if you want to recommend a movie for me to review. Thank you for reading. I'll return next week with another movie. See you then.

P. S. If you like this, checking out my new blog Before I Go See It, where I give upcoming movies a taste before they hit the theaters. My new post on Alita: Battle Angel is now available. 

Released On: August 1, 2014
Rating: PG-13
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Michael Rooker
Director: James Gunn
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91% Certified Fresh
IMDb Score: 8.1/10

Awards
Academy Awards

• Best Visual Effects Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner & Paul Corbould - Nominated
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou & David White - Nominated

Grammy Awards

• Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 - Nominated

(Click here to view more awards for "Guardians of the Galaxy")

Videos
Screen Junkies - Honest Trailers - Guardians of the Galaxy
CinemaSins - Everything Wrong With Guardians of the Galaxy
How It Should Have Ended - How Guardians of the Galaxy Should Have Ended

"Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Season 1

Wow, what a ride. You know my feelings on Agent Coulson. This season alone changed those feelings. Everyone wants to know how Coulson lived after being stabbed by Loki. Guess what, so does Coulson. I can't believe they would lead us on a wild goose chase because of one question. But they did.
One element to the show is Skye. Skye is the Logan of the group. She has no memory of a family but somehow is related to S.H.I.E.L.D. It turns out she was sent to the orphanage by a former agent who died keeping her safe. She was related to a group of monsters that destroyed an entire village coming after her. And she doesn't know that last part.
Agent May is living proof that not only can you be a Disney Princess (Mulan), you can be a badass super agent. However, I feel her character was wasted a bit with every bad guy coming up to her thinking she can take her. Then there was a bit of a twist to find out she was monitoring Agent Coulson on his recovery and him figuring out how he recovered. Then when Hydra rose, it was a little hard to believe her when she admits she isn't an agent to Hydra.
Agent Ward is a man who prefers to be alone until he has a secret relationship with May until it blows up in his face. More on that later.
Then there are Fitz-Simmons, the comic relief. The scientist duo is always arguing to our amusement. But after every adventure, they make up. This includes the season finale when Fitz admits his feelings to Simmons.
The end of the season was outright stupid. Mike Peterson, the horrible tease that could have been Luke Cage, snaps out of his eyeball camera orders and attacks Bill Paxton by stomping on what I thought was his head. But then the next shot, we see Bill's face in pristine condition. That was so we can have a cheap gag of Bill getting the upgrade only to be casually obliterated by Coulson. Then it ends with a reminder of a snide comment that Coulson has seen the past, present, and future, and Coulson started drawing the message the Voyager probe has been carrying since 1979. And it ends.
While it isn't as loud as the movies in the MCU, the show is a little disappointed if you're not watching the movies. It's a bit passive aggressive about it. In fact, the show starts with the rumor that Coulson was dead and he steps out of the shadows to prove that he is breathing. That's mild, though. Even if you haven't seen The Avengers, you would still be confused as to why he is alive. But it's worse if you HAD seen the movie. We saw him die. We watched Loki stab Coulson in the back. He was DEAD! HOW IS HE ALIVE?
Other parts include mentioning names of people who don't show up ever in the show, like Romanoff and Alexander Pierce, secondary characters from other adventures making their appearance, like Lady Sif. Then it does a sort of one-eighty by tying episodes to the movies, such as cleaning up Greenwich after Thor: The Dark World and Hydra reemerging. That last part is affected more in the show than in the movies. It gives a new perspective on the issue.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cap, Sam, and Natasha were on the run but they took down Hydra. End of story-ish. I mean Hydra is still out there, but it's no longer the main plot of the story. In the show, however, you have thrust in with the others that Hydra is a very real threat. The USS Coulson-prise was tractor beamed to the Hub to be eliminated. But the show did something that the movies would never do, despite any possible rumors and storylines if you catch my drift. The show made a character we've learned to care for a member of the enemy. We're approaching the second anniversary of Bill Paxton's death, so I was surprised to see him show up, and he was awesome. Every word out of his mouth was hope, from "knock-knock" to "surprise party." But he's not only the enemy, but he's also the guy Coulson and Company were chasing the entire time. In retrospect, it should have been a warning sign that the most charismatic character would be the psychopath they are looking for.
Then they go one step further by making one of their members a Hydra agent. My God. I was bewildered and full of questions. I wondered if Ward was a double agent for S.H.I.E.L.D., posing as a Hydra agent. Then I thought that maybe he was a Hydra agent posing as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent but was going to bring down Hydra from the inside. They played with that a bit, I believe because he seemed to feel remorse looking at the body of Agent Hand. Then we dig into his past, to find that he was picked up from juvie by Hydra, but he seemed not okay to kill those he cared.
Overall this was a decent start to an MCU TV show. I'm very excited to start the second season.

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I hope you liked this. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment about what you thought or if you want to recommend a movie for me to review. Thank you for reading. I'll return next week with another movie. See you then.

Aired: September 24, 2013 – May 13, 2014
Rating: TV-14
Stars: Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge
Directors: Joss Whedon, David Straiton, Milan Cheylov, Roxann Dawson, Jesse Bochco, Vincent Mizziano, Bobby Roth, Jonathan Frakes, Billy Gierhart, Holly Dale, Kevin Hooks, Kenneth Fink, Paul Edwards, John Terlesky
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87% Certified Fresh
IMDb Score: 8.2/10 (Average)

Awards

Saturn Awards

• Best Network Television Series Release - Nominated

Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards

• Outstanding Special and Visual Effects "T.A.H.I.T.I." - Nominated

(Click here to view awards for "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Season 1)

"Captain America: The Winter Soldier"

Captain America is at it once again in his second solo movie, which exceeds the first on several points. This is one of the few film series where the sequel can build on from the original. Even though the events take place after the Battle of New York in The Avengers, we really continue to see how Captain Rogers is adjusting to 21st-century life. But he is called again to rescue a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship taken hostage. Soon afterward he begins to suspect Director Nick Fury is hiding something. Then Nick is attacked and is forced to hide in Captain’s apartment before getting shot for real by the mysterious Winter Soldier. With Fury dead, Captain Rogers has only Agent Natasha Romanoff and Sam Wilson as the people he can trust despite Fury’s last order to not trust anyone. They discover that the former Nazi group HYDRA has resurfaced and have been infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. from the very beginning. In an ultimate fight, Rogers manages to damask the Winter Soldier to discover that, surprise, it’s Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes. Bucky was Rogers’ friend and comrade in his team to take down the Red Skull, but he fell from a train on a snowy mountain during a mission. But we didn’t know that Johan Schmidt’s lackey henchman, Dr. Zola, was able to rescue him and give him powers similar to Steve Rogers.

Rogers and Romanoff are arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA but are saved by, surprise, Agent Robin Scherbatsky. She then takes them to a secret location to find that, sur—oh forget it—Nick is still alive. Rogers helps devise a plan to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. for good.

Okay, was this movie trying to set up Natasha and Steve? The running joke in this film is that she keeps suggesting available women for Steve to date, including one hot nurse that is actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent assigned to watch and protect him. But Steve saves Natasha twice from a bomb blast, they banter like a secret couple they didn’t know they were, and Natasha seemed almost delighted they she was Steve’s first kiss in 75 years. I bet her inner girl is squealing with delight and fireworks are going off.

The only Easter egg I was able to pick up in any of these movies was when Agent Sitwell mentions enemies of Dr. Zola, including Dr. Banner and a mysterious Stephen Strange. Hmm.

After seeing him in Indecent Proposal, Robert Redford made an excellent bad guy, and he looked so cool doing it. I think he may be the best Marvel villain ever. So far.

This is the Falcon’s first appearance in the MCU, and it’s starting to get frustrating how many superheroes aren’t actually super. Iron Man is a billionaire genius who built an indestructible suit, Black Widow is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent relying on an array of weapons and hand-to-hand combat, Hawkeye is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who is basically Katniss’ distant cousin, Falcon uses a grounded military program to fly and get visuals from the air. The only real superheroes are Captain America, who got his strength from an experimental serum that went right, The Incredible Hulk, who got his strength from an experiment that went wrong, and Thor, who is a f*cking god (or not, as we discussed last week).

Nine movies in, is Nick Fury a superhero? Or is he some guy the great Samuel L. motherf*cking Jackson was forced to play? All he does is read from an imaginary script that does not scream Samuel L. motherf*cking Jackson. I understand at one point Nick Fury was white, but when you cast someone else in a role, you got to write lines that will sound natural coming from the actor or actress. You got the guy who double dared someone to say “what” and the guy who pointed a gun at the Abomination from The Incredible Hulk, and you got him saying the whitest lines on earth.

The Captain America storyline may be the only success Marvel has ever done outside the Avengers team movies. They pack more exciting action and a more wholesome storyline that makes Steve Rogers grounded and relatable.
I forgot to discuss the impact of The Dark World. After the success of The Avengers, we are having a hard time finding anything to at least match that success. Iron Man 3 failed and The Dark World failed. How can we be expected to take this seriously because we've only had three good movies? This movie changes the game by being the first good movie since The Avengers. I haven't had this much fun since rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy. I can't wait to see more of Cap.

I hope you liked this. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment about what you thought or if you want to recommend a movie for me to review. Thank you for reading. I'll return next week with another movie. See you then.

Released On: April 4, 2014

Rating: PG-13

Stars: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan

Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89% Certified Fresh

IMDb Score: 7.9/10

Awards

Academy Awards

• Best Visual Effects Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill & Dan Sudick - Nominated

(Click here to view more awards for "Captain America: The Winter Soldier")

Videos
How It Should Have Ended - How Captain America: The Winter Soldier Should Have Ended
CinemaSins - Everything Wrong With Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Screen Junkies - Honest Trailers - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

"Thor: The Dark World"

Okay, so I guess gods CAN die. Frigga, Thor and Loki’s mother, is proof of that. Odin himself says that they aren’t gods. They’re born, they live, they die.

Thor is back to bring order and peace to the Nine Realms only to be interrupted by the girl he somehow forgot about wakes up some ancient evil and it burrows into her body like a tapeworm. The said evil is called Aether; you never trust anything called Aether/ether. It's sought out by the once thought dead Dark Elves, which sounds like something left over from The Lord of the Rings. Thor returns to Earth to kidnap Jane in a Crocodile Dundee kind of way to find a way to get the Aether out.

Meanwhile, one of the Broke Girls is trying to keep the band together in locating Dr. Selvig to continue his research on the coming Alignment/Convergence, which sounds like it’s something out of Tomb Raider. The AnJolie one. If that’s not her shortened name, she should consider it.

This brings back my original point from the first Thor; this story is something out of English literature, but here it is with Marvel’s name slapped in front of it.

Loki gets retconned into a good guy because the story demands it, where Thor and his friends pull off the second most infuriating Ocean’s Eleven plots ever to break Jane and Loki out of Asgard to the titular Dark World, which wasn’t so dark. Bleak for sure, but not dark. Then Jane is free from the Aether, and the main leader, Kreacher, consumes it and heads for Greenwich, apparently the center of the universe. I always thought that it was weird how they chose Greenwich to be the center of all time on Earth, as the clocks are adjusted accordingly, but those guys might have been on to something.

In a fake-out fight, Thor loses his hand, that was masked by Loki, and Loki ends up dying. Thor uses the Alignment to extract the Aether somehow and kill Kreacher. After a heart to heart chat with Odin, Thor walks away, and Odin shifts into…sayeth WHAT? Loki? Can he simulate death? I’m starting to wonder about Odin says about death. But wait, Loki is a Frost Giant. Are they tricky to kill? But Loki shares the shape shifting traits from Frigga. Is she a Frost Giant? Can the sorcery be taught? Does this mean that Thor is the jock and Loki is the bookworm? This whole movie is basically the jock seeking help from his nerdy brother to save his girlfriend from destroying the universe? That’s just crap, man.

Watching Mew-Mew (Mjolnir) fly around the realms makes it confusing on what it can do. We’ve seen it on other occasions making a beeline to Thor, destroying everything in its path, but when it struggles to reach Thor due to him jumping between realms, it adheres to traffic and tall structures.

In the first of two end credits scenes Thor’s friends meet someone The Collector. The Tesseract is a what now? An Infinity Stone? What’s an Infinity Stone? And there are two of them? Sorry, SIX OF THEM? They hand the Collector something red. Is that Aether? Is the Aether an Infinity Stone? It makes sense; any bit of it that was thrown at Thor in the ultimate battle looked like bits of mineral. But what is it? I want to know.

The second is Thor keeping up on his promise and returning to Jane.

Heimdall says he can’t see the Dark Elves’ ship, which is some BS, we just watched him jump into air at nothing and destroy one of the ships. And the invisibility cloaks suck in this universe. The S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers seem to have the same crappy technology.

I think this a good time to point out something. Asgardians are armed with nothing but swords, shields, hammers, axes, and lightning spears. And they managed to vanquish enemies armed with weapons from Star Wars. This doesn’t make any sense.

I will say that my favorite part was during the Great Escape, Loki shifts into a guard, changes him and Thor into a soldier and Sif, the Xena extra that obviously likes Thor but gets glossed over, and then Loki turns into Captain America. I laughed out loud at that.

I hope you liked this. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment about what you thought or if you want to recommend a movie for me to review. Thank you for reading. I'll return next week with another movie. See you then.

P. S. I am very sorry. I have started a new blog, Before I Go See It, and I forgot to link it to here.  I take a look at the trailers of upcoming films and give them the Movie Thoughts treatment before they hit theaters. Click on the links below to view the first three posts.

"Men in Black: International"

"Captain Marvel"

"Avengers: Endgame"

Released On: November 8, 2013
Rating: PG-13
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston
Director: Alan Taylor
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 66%
IMDb Score: 7.0/10

Awards
Saturn Awards

• Best Comic-to-Film Motion Picture - Nominated
• Best Supporting Actor Tom Hiddleston - Nominated
• Best Costume Wendy Partridge - Nominated
• Best Make-Up Karen Cohen, David White & Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou - Nominated
• Best Special/Visual Effects Jake Morrison, Paul Corbould & Mark Breakspear - Nominated

(Click here to view more awards for "Thor: The Dark World")

Videos
Everything Wrong With Thor: The Dark World
Screen Junkies - Honest Trailers - Thor: The Dark World
How It Should Have Ended - How Thor The Dark World Should Have Ended

"Iron Man 3"

How many times must the Stark Mansion be destroyed? How many people are going to don the Iron Man suit? How many other movies and TV shows follow the same plot line?

A person from Tony’s past has created a terrorist out of Ben Kingsley as a distraction while he plots to kill everything and anyone Tony ever loved or cared for, including Pepper. It’s only the best Iron Man because it’s the most action-packed one of the three. However, the action doesn’t involve the suit at all; instead, Tony is MacGyver but not as fun.

I take back what I said about Don Cheadle. He was much better in this movie, but probably because he was kidnapped early in the movie.

So, the vice president is involved with taking out the president because Killian promises to heal his daughter. Was she injured during the oil spill Killian mentioned? Can crude oil cause gangrene, which is probably what happened, or perhaps she was caught in an explosion? Does the vice president know the potential side effects of his daughter spontaneously combusting?

Back to the old formula; Tony has to prove to himself and Pepper that he is more than Iron Man, and he has to say the old line, “Pepper was already perfect.” You can only say that in a meh third installment. So Pepper turned into Sarah Conner in the end? And come on, killing Pepper for a split second isn’t going to erase the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts.

The Mandarin is Ben Kingsley with a drug addiction. That’s the best you got? I literally went, “WHAT THE HELL?”

In one sentence, Iron Man has become a joke. I mean he has to destroy his suits to prove a point. In the first movie, the only major beating it took was a few bullet holes and someone messing with the power source. Now he can set them to self-destruct for a Christmas fireworks display. And the movie missed an opportunity in which the kid Tony befriends is the son of his former girlfriend, who works for Killian, but Killian then kills the girlfriend, and Tony adopts him to show that he can assemble not only the Avengers but a family as well. The movie totally forgot that she’s a mother, so there is a thirteen-year-old orphan wandering who knows where.

At least Jarvis didn’t become sentient with one of the suits and leaves Tony.

The end credits scene in this film was just as pointless as the diner scene at the end of The Avengers. Poor Dr. Banner had to sit through an entire movie with Tony. Is Tony bunking with Banner? I thought Banner went back to Calcutta. And where is Pepper in this scene? And also, they take the arc reactor out of Tony’s chest and extracted the shrapnel floating around in his body. Should he still need the arc reactor? His body probably has become too dependent on it now. Without it, he could die.
As I watched these movies, I noticed something. Up until The Avengers, you could watch the movies in any order with the exception of Iron Man and Iron Man 2. Now I can sense that all the movies are connected somehow. Even the solo movies are involved. But seeing the first third-installment in this massive franchise is making me a little nervous. It was hard to take Tony seriously because he wasn't his normal self. But I don't think that was his fault. After the Battle of New York, Tony has been experiencing post-traumatic stress. But it's not like him to basically say "bring it, b*tch!" to the Mandarin. At this point, I think Marvel knows they have us in the palm of their hands, so they aren't too concerned with how spectacular their movies are, we're going to see them. But because of that, I consider this a loss. If it's the end of the Iron Man storyline, then they could have done better. So that makes it 3 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw.

I hope you liked this. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment about what you thought or if you want to recommend a movie for me to review. Thank you for reading. I'll return next week with another movie. See you then.

Released On: May 3, 2013
Rating: PG-13
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley
Director: Shane Black
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79% Certified Fresh
IMDb Score: 7.2/10

Awards
Academy Awards

• Best Visual Effects Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash & Dan Sudick - Nominated

(Click here to view more awards for "Iron Man 3")

Videos
How It Should Have Ended - How Iron Man 3 Should Have Ended
Screen Junkies - Honest Trailers - Iron Man 3
CinemaSins - Everything Wrong With Iron Man 3 According To Our Viewers
CinemaSins - The Island Of Misfit Sins - Iron Man 3