Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction

Left 4get

I played a bit of Left 4 Dead 2 recently to bust some stress. What could relieve stress better than killing zombies?

Boy oh boy, was I wrong. A lot of the people don't play L4D 2 anymore and guess who's left? Noobs, that's who. It was pure horror; friendly fire every second, complete lack of awareness, horrible skills and lots and lots of lag.

I think my blood pressure shot up instead.

Short Cuts: Guardians of the Galaxy

I've been a little busy and in a very bad mood lately so let's do this quickly.

I didn't like this movie. I just didn't. Entertainment is subjective. What one person finds entertaining may be boring to others. That being said, if you already saw this movie and enjoyed it, good for you.

Well, that's all.

Just kidding. I guess I owe it to the almost-handful of people who read this blog to explain my reasons for disliking what appears to be the movie everyone just loves to death.

"Humor"

This movie has only three things going for it: its humor, its retro soundtrack and its comic book nerd appeal. The humor wasn't very funny. Sure, it may have been amusing the first few attempts but it got old fast. The "oh, look at me, don't take me seriously" kind of humor where the characters point at themselves or at their situation and expect us to laugh didn't really work for me. I find absurd humor funnier when the characters do not point out or acknowledge their own situation and instead, leave it to the audience to get it on their own. But such a manner would need subtlety in a movie that's filled to the brim with audience pandering. There was too much expository dialogue at certain points and not enough "set-up then pay-off" kinds of humor. I didn't help that I disliked our main hero played by Chris Pratt. I didn't find Chris Pratt particularly funny and I'm not sure why. The other actors were just okay I guess.

Pandering

Anyway, back to the pandering. My inner cynic was attempting to eat it's way out of my chest again when it came to the soundtrack.  This movie was downright low in shoving in as much old 70's hits as possible. I knew what this was. It was meant to appeal to the old nerds in the audience as well as the people who would feel so happy about themselves in hearing the old pop songs and then congratulate themselves for knowing the names of the songs. "Hey! I remember that song! Cherry Bomb!" It's hipster garbage calculated to stick in your ear and make people feel good and nostalgic and remember the movie in a positive light. The movie takes special care to insert oh-so-serious scenes in between the action and laughs. It felt jarring and poorly done. We go from comedic to super serious like a flip of a switch. The tone whiplash is annoying. In fact, the rather heavy opening sequence doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the movie except to be called back at the end just for the audience to go, "Awww, now Chris Pratt has a chance to do what he couldn't as a kid." How cheap.

Enough

As for comic book nerd appeal, it's already obvious at this point with the over-saturation of comic book based movies today. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of it. I think the only reason I can say I didn't like the movie is because I don't care much for comic books in the first place. I'm not really invested in this universe or any others. Sure, I read a few and can appreciate it for what it is but I'm not so attached to it. You know what, I take pride in not knowing the in-jokes or gags that only the "real fans" would get. At least I know that all that is just pandering. Hollywood can take that nostalgia, "feel good" crap and shove it up its ass.

 The Ugly Truth

Take away these three things and what do you have? Take away the brand name appeal, copyrighted characters and franchise and then what do you have? You have a movie that can't stand on its own. A lazy, bog-standard mediocre space adventure film with a few cool looking fight scenes that treats its audience like easy-to-please dumbasses. I wish the movie tried a little harder to be clever. I wish it didn't act as if it knew it was already gonna make millions of dollars anyway regardless and tried a little harder in general.

It's been a rough couple of days by the way. Just saying.