2 Casual 2 Biased Movie Review: Guardians (Minor spoilers, if anyone cares)

10:00 AM on 02.23.2017 (server time)0

Look at this trailer. It's obvious that this seems like a quick lazily-made Russian movie to cash in on the recent superheroes genre. (5 years too late IMO, back when the first Avengers was the hottest property) But amidst all the terrible moments, there's a few things that stands out for us, like the Bear Dude! Bear Dude throwing people! Bear Dude with Minigun! And... that's it, I guess. It looks like an awful movie, but at least it MIGHT be an awful movie choke full of hilariously awful moments.

At least I thought so after not even 30 minutes into the movie.

(I've watched the one with English dub, so I'm gonna say that I'm convinced that the English VAs are doing this to earn their hazard pay for this movie. Because all of them are bad to the bone)

By the dude who brought you American Heist (Not exactly a movie that help you get picked for a superhero movie), Guardians (Zashchitniki) begins with typical Russian military dudes showcasing their latest MGS/Ghost Recon-inspired military robots before they were being hacked by August Kuratov (Steroid Watch Dogs) turned against their masters and kill them through amateur editing. After a lengthy expository scene that gives the backstory of the major characters, Female Maverick was given two weeks to find Ler (Earthbender), Ursus (ManBearPig), Khan (Sickle Dude), and Xenia (Abyss Lady), and they have their own reasons on wanting to whoop Steroid Watch Dogs' ass.

I didn't know Winter Soldier have big-ass Soul Calibur-esque swords. And a big dong.

There's no denying that the 330 million rubles (USD 5 million) budget isn't enough to give this movie some convincing CGIs, but I can't believe that the filmmakers even failed to give us at least some bearable (Heh) scripts, decent story structure, and hilarious action scenes that could convinced me into getting the Blu-Ray version and enjoy with my friends. This could have been The Room quality of an enjoyable superhero movie. But alas, this movie turned out to be even worse than Thor 2. (And maybe BvS if I have watched that)

There's just too many scenes with people talking and not enough action scenes! Even the talking scenes was embarrasingly executed, as in shoehorning sad character backstories in the most awkward way, weird superhero meetups, and our heroes somehow have a month to prep themselves and play with nifty gears and toys within an immediate crisis, while our villains might be having very lengthy lunch breaks and partying with no military interventions off-screen.

The action scenes are sadly only a few and far between with little tension to make us pay attention, as the movie mistakenly focusing on the more boring Earthbender, Sickle Dude, and Abyss Lady. (Who flunged so hard on stealth, even your 12 years-old kids know how to properly stealth even if he/she could turn invisible) So how about ManBearPig? The filmmakers seems to not give a shit about our favourite character, making him suck most of the time in favour of the more attractive-looking characters. Which is sad, because ManBearPig is awesome for both us and Russia, and they decided that the best thing to treat their most popular character is to fuck him hard in the ass. (His pants is considered a major plot hole for those who pay attention. Seriously) Also, the last-minute "Friendship is Power" superpower is also pretty lame.

I WANT MORE SCENES OF MANBEARPIG!!!!!!!!!

Conclusively, Guardians could have been an awfully entertaining superhero movie that you could have a fun time with friends, but instead, it's just plain awful, boring, narratively confusing, and ended so abruptly and anti-climatic. The movie's just inoffensively bad, sure, but it sure is offensively bad to my time and ticket money spent on this bullshit. It's so bad, I'm not even sure if it's worth a watch when it arrives on home releases or on TV. Russia sure have a long way to go if they even want us to pay attention to their home-made blockbuster movies.