Alright it's time for the
Review That No One Asked For™:
This movie is like some old hobbyists' dream machine on a lift. It needs some fine tuning, but I can see where they want to go with it and I like it. By sheer force of will and absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G CGI, Marvel is a guitar sliding all the way to the bank. Those alien worlds easily set a new benchmark in visuals for me. The action was perfectly executed. Loved the punchy-punchy, the zappy-zappy and the Yondu-yondu. The only downside here is the character work wasn't drawing me in as much as I know they could have. The cast has a load of charm and by no means do I think they got close to maximizing their potential on screen... yet. It's the biggest thing I hope they can improve on in the sequel.
-The Quill flashback went against the tone/pace I felt they were trying to set for him and it was just badly performed. They could have kept that part of his life more mysterious rather than awkwardly injecting drama which was so out of place. For some reason his mom looked like Angelina Jolie fresh off a round of plastic surgery.
-I expected Gamora to be tougher to turn around into a hero. If they spent some time showing us she had a reason to stick it to Ronin, I might have gone along with it more. Taken for what it was, it just sounded like a load of BS so Quill and the rest would get behind her. She is forgiven though because Zoe is so very easy to look at.
-Draxx seemed the most limited of the bunch. Of course a good portion of that is meant to be part of his character, but with so many characters going for the laughs, I wouldn't have objected to making him more intense and a lot stronger. The scenes I was hoping to really see him step up, he sort of fizzled. That first encounter with Ronin should have left him with a couple good shots to remember the "Destroyer" by. The minute he got out of the prison was the minute he lost a good part of his presence on the team.
-Speaking of the prison, that was were Rocket and Groot really convinced me they worked for the film. They could have used a few more moments in the film where they took over like that but they definitely made their mark. Though the final "We Are Groot" line wasn't close to the heart-tugging "Superman" at the end of Iron Giant, it was still fun to watch him branch out... Pun intended, get the sticks out of your asses!
-Yondu should have been in there way more. Rooker ate it up and spit it out.
-Ronin was another inexplicable uber-powerful bad guy with a badass weapon to compensate for his blandness. That's fine for most heroes to look good fighting against, but that scene with
actually worked against both of them. It made Ronin look extremely stupid for defying him and it made
look ever so slightly ineffectual. Nothing that can't be remedied in future installments I'd wager.
-The Collector is actually the least involving character in the film and after the fairly lame
I hope he's done eating screen time. He was basically a meeting point here, that's it. Benicio should have let an unknown play him because he's so utterly vacuous.
Anyway, happy to see Marvel find a new strength to work off of. There is evidence of undercooked material and I'm relying on Whedon to charbroil AOU to crispy goodness. Good times and great soundtrack.
Pretty sweet. Its not going to be long before he's rubbing shoulders with Stan Lee in cameos in these films 
Going to see it again today.
