I saw it yesterday. It was… ok. I’m not sure if it was better than Avengers, although it was certainly better than Thor or most of the standalone movies.
I thought it was a bit stilted at times, the humor was a bit forced, and certainly the romance was completely not believable… But the show was worth it for Rocket.
Romance?
It was good and pretty fun, but ultimately not as fun as the trailer made it looked.
I wasn’t invested in the villians and thought the final third felt super generic, like any number of other superhero / Marvel films I’ve seen before.
Are we doing spoilers in this thread? Anyway, there is only pretty much one pairing that makes sense, and in the context of the movie, that pairing did not make sense. I did not have to see goo goo Gamora, and in the timeframe of the movie, completely unbelievable. It took me out of the movie a bit.
Same here. Ronan was a 2D character compared to Loki in the second Thor, or any of the Iron Man villians.
[Spoiler]Calling it “romance” is pretty strong. I thought it was just Peter Quill trying to sleaze his way into bed with Gamora, and she shot him down pretty quickly. I didn’t get impression that they were planning on going anywhere with it
Not that Gamora isn’t up for it most of the time. She once got annoyed with Nova because he came to her room for a chat, and actually wanted a chat
[/Spoiler]
Opens with $11.2m, the best box office for a Thursday so far this year…
I saw that! I was feeling pretty good at 75M-78M, but that’s looking light now. Even though the OP will be wicked high, if this comes in at 90M or 95M he probably gets a little moral victory.
Saw it today, loved it, hope it does well and catapults Chris Pratt into super stardom.
I have a question though: The pink skinned woman Star Lord finds in his ship in the first quarter of the movie, what the hell happens to her? As soon as he said “I keep on forgetting that you’re around”, I was waiting for that Chekhov’s Gun to fire but it never did. It seemed like a totally unnecessary scene and I don’t know why it was in the movie.
I may have been a little too enthusiastic with my numbers but FWIW I saw the movie in the middle of the day in a packed house. Loved it BTW
He’s already starring in the next Jurassic Park installment, so he seems to be well on his way.
Only if you consider jokes unnecessary 
I just saw an estimate of $98 million! It could happen.
Getting closer.
If it tops 120, you heard it from **Quimby **first.
First, you are misremembering his line; it was “I’m gonna be honest; I forgot you were still here”. He doesn’t “keep on forgetting” that she’s on his ship; she’s just last night’s hookup that hasn’t left yet. She’s there to establish that Quill is a Lothario; that’s all.
Guardians reported $37 million for Friday, which includes Thursdays shows.
Iron Man 2 did $51M on the way to $128M
Man of Steel did $56M on the way to $118M
Alice in Wonderland did $40 on the way to $116M
Deathly Hollows 1 did $61M on the way to $125M.
Those are the best comparables I could find in recent years.
The all-time record for an August opening weekend (not a Friday) is $69M for 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, which it should easily pass with 3-D money.
The thing is, all of those movies are about established franchises with huge fan bases. GotG is, IMO, best compared to something like Men In Black, which grossed $51M in it’s opening weekend (that’s US$73M adjusted for inflation). The reason I like the comparison to MiB is because very few people ever saw or knew about the comic books published by a small Canadian insulation-manufacturer-turned-comic-book-publishing-house, yet it became a huge hit. And so far, GotG is pretty much on track to shatter that number. I’ll be surprised if it goes over $82M this weekend, but I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t make more than $600M worldwide in toto (and frankly I think it’ll be closer to the $1B mark by this time next year).
As I said earlier, every high grossing movie this year is part of a series franchise. Most blockbusters are these days. There are exceptions: I left out Twilight 1 because it brought in $138M, too high to be comparable.
Men in Black is not really a good fit. It starred Will Smith and opened on the July 4th weekend, a year after he had become a star in the even-higher grossing Independence Day. That was back in the distant past of 1997. MiB is an outlier. In the 17 years since Smith has had exactly one movie match its total gross, I am Legend, and that’s only because of inflation.
GotG will do very well. But probably not triple digits. And absolutely not $120M.
Boxofficemojo now says $92-$96 is likely. Pretty good.
I just got back from a 11:45 show. The theater was 3/4 full. There was a huge line for the next show. Not bad for the 2-D screen.