Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel

It’s been a week. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is now playing and if you’re a Marvel fan, you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy. And you loved it, because everybody loved it. It was smart, witty, and broke new ground. Only it didn’t, not really. In fact, it was a lukewarm affair, tonally scattered, awkwardly plotted and too crowded.

For the uninitiated, Guardians of the Galaxy is the tale of a group of misfit renegades who must overcome their own selfish intentions to fight a great threat. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside The Avengers and Iron Man. However it is something of a standalone feature, pulled from decidedly obscure comic origins. As such, it represented something of a gamble for Marvel and Disney, being a previously non-established property with brand new characters in a foreign outer space world. It has been enormously successful and will spawn sequels and probably Avengers tie-ins in the future.

But it was weak. As a film, as the film it needed to be, it failed. The reasons are small, but important. We’ll start with the justification. For all intents and purposes, Guardians of the Galaxy is a completely unknown story line. That means that as a film, it carries the task of introducing the audience to the world in which its characters inhabit. Who’s good, who’s bad, who’s worth rooting for, the politics, the philosophies. All of that is imperative because the audience is going into the theater completely cold. I don’t know who Peter Quill is, who Ronan is, who Nebula is. These are the things we need to know so that we can empathize with the right people and jump along for the ride.

This was Guardians of the Galaxy‘s first mistake. Plot points that should have been made early and clear were not. It took me until at least an hour into the film to remember who Ronan was, the film’s main bad guy. That’s important because the protagonists are acting and making decisions as a result of the antagonist’s apparent pressures. Drax the Destroyer is on a suicide mission to stop Ronan, endangering his shipmates in the process. But I was confused about who that was so I didn’t care. Drax’s reckless and shortsighted actions, calling the cavalry on the Guardians because it would guarantee a showdown with his nemesis, held no weight because Ronan’s evil intentions were not made clear to me early on. It was only days later that a comic book fan friend of mine explained to me what his whole deal actually was. And that’s a problem. The filmmakers assumed that I was clued into the mythology, despite being from unknown source material. Now of course today there are avenues by which I can educate myself on character’s back-stories, but to assume that I’ve done my homework with untested material like this is missing the mark entirely.

It pops up in a number of ways, too. Most notably with Groot, the seven-foot tall walking tree that can only announce who he is. “I am Groot” is the character’s main joke. But it’s set up so poorly, so flatly, that while watching the movie I could only explain it like this: The filmmakers knew that I had watched the trailers to death, read up on the character, and was already sick of Groot’s one note that they didn’t need to deliver it properly. And that’s lazy.

The second problem is of personnel. There are way too many characters in this movie. Seriously. Let’s count. There are: five protagonists, five villains, and a dozen supporting characters each given minimal screen time but enough gravity in the plot to warrant deep characterization. The medium of film just isn’t long enough to cram all of that in effectively. It is a mess. I submit that to properly give the protagonists ample characterization, there should have been only six people in this movie: The Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ronan.

And what’s frustrating is that there have been ensemble precedents. X-Men for example did it right. Its was the story of a group of misfits who were able to overcome their differences and counter a dangerous man who threatened other people. Serenity was the story of a dysfunctional family who had to come together and uncover a truth to save people they didn’t call friends. But importantly, in both of those films the antagonists were clear. The X-Men battled Magneto and his minions; the Serenity crew tried to stay one step ahead of the Operative, the physical embodiment of the Alliance. In both cases, the scripts understood that the focus is on the protagonists, and since there are many, it’s best to keep the important villains to a minimum.

What’s more, it dilutes the potency of a bad guy to show him taking orders from someone else. Sure, Darth Vader is Emperor Palpatine’s protege, but that relationship is only introduced later, when escalating and expanding the plot dictates a zoom-out in scope.

Here’s what I mean: Thanos is completely ancillary to the plot of Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course he only appears because he’s being set up as a villain for future Marvel pictures, but this was the wrong place to introduce him. What it does is confuse the motivations of the real antagonist, Ronan, and dim his own menace as the mastermind. It turns Ronan’s actions into rebellion, not evil. Snore.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the remaining three bad guys: Nebula, Korath, and Yondu. Under-cooked and boring, I can’t figure out why these people were even in the film at all, if not to fill seats with Dr. Who fans. Without going through them one-by-one, let’s investigate what they represent for the protagonists. Clearly, the writers decided that the Guardians’ back-stories needed to be different for each member. Everyone’s selfish, everyone’s got their own problems. Fine. But by essentially giving everyone there own villain, it detracts from the group dynamic and the growth it needs to experience as a unit by the end of the movie. Is the film any different if Peter Quill doesn’t reconnect with his adopted alien father figure? No. The audience wasn’t even clued into that fact until the very moment it’s necessary for Quill to do something. How about some lead-up? Let the audience come to the conclusion themselves that in order for Quill to be the man he should be, he’ll need to confront the man who put him in that situation to begin with.

Even the Guardians themselves are drawn thinly. In the opening scene, we’re introduced to Peter Quill, a young boy who’s about to lose his mother. On her deathbed, Quill’s mother notices that he’s sporting a fresh shiner from a recent fight. He explains that he confronted a group of kids who were harming a frog with a stick and took some heat for it. Great. We’ve established early on who Quill is. Deep down he’s a compassionate person, willing to stand up for the helpless and risk his own safety to be good. But then in the next scene he’s an adult, romping around an alien planet antagonizing small creatures. He literally kicks one square in the abdomen, sending it flying, just for being in his way. Now, I understand that the film might want to establish how jaded Quill has become, how far from his principles he’s drifted, but dashing an important characteristic without explanation, so early, doesn’t work. What made him like that? Why does he all of a sudden regard woman and animals as disposable? It’s crumby storytelling. Here’s what should have happened: Quill’s a renegade, he’s clever when he needs to be, but he’s careless and self-centered. That’s Quill. We get everything we need to know about him without even showing him as a kid. That way, it simplifies his arc to the core necessities. Quill was selfish, he became heroic and empathetic.

Anyway, the ending was crap. The movie wasn’t funny enough. The raccoon was stupid. I wasn’t compelled to really care. I’ll sum it up like this: Serenity did it better.

Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver

(SPOILERS)

The bar for indie movies is thus: If you can justify being more than a Sunday night Netflix curiosity, you’ve done alright. Safety Not Guaranteed, Frances Ha, In Our Nature; are examples. And it’s hard to pin down why. But there’s a tendency for these sorts of films to devolve into basically fantasy, be it with stupid characters, unrealistic situations, or glaring logic inconsistencies. There’s a “twee allotment” that I like to assign. I’m more liberal than most but there’s certainly a threshold. Basically, it’s the amount of precious bullshit that can reasonably be passed off as drama. (Think Juno’s burger phone.) So when a film takes more than it deserves the suspension of disbelief is broken and I’m taken right out of the movie. It’s actually surprising, given the closeness and intimacy one expects small filmmakers to have with their material, that the core tools for storytelling (characterization, empathy, struggle, growth) are so often thrown out the window.

What If is on the good side of that spectrum. The dialogue is snappy which keeps the melodrama at bay. The characters are idealistic in a grew-up-on-Disney kind of way but tempered believably by life’s disappointments and challenges. Med-school dropout Wallace is in a funk when he meets animator Chantry. The two instantly hit it off and slowly become more important parts of each other’s lives, despite Chantry’s long-term relationship with her successful boyfriend Ben. It’s clear right off the bat that the two have chemistry, and they hint at their mutual feelings in moments, Wallace tiptoeing around the treacherous territory and Chantry torn between potential lives she isn’t even sure she wants.

The narrative framework is familiar, young people and their problems. But Wallace and Chantry have a playful repartee that infuses levity into otherwise mood-flattening proceedings. Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan play well off each other, often in conversations that look and feel at least partially improvised. Kazan is believable as a young woman at a loss answering the big questions, and Radcliffe is able to shed his Harry Potter typecasting, coming off very un-earnest, un-heroic, and down right funny. I’m not sure if he’s a leading man yet, (it’s the patchy stubble) but quiet material like this suits him.

Importantly, the characters are smart, which is appreciated. Reactions are naturalistic without drifting into mumblecore. The dialogue is peppy and post-modern enough to not some off too sappy. There is a bit of sap, of course. The wedding ending was wholly unnecessary, if flat out out-of-place for the genre. But these people are just cynical enough to be convincing as human beings that have lived and loved.

Oftentimes, people in these types of movies are bumbling and introspective to their own detriment. They act like they just woke up after being frozen for twenty years, plopped into adult situations with a child’s understanding of how the world works. And yes, there’s an argument to made for retaining a child-like wonder for the world. But that sort of reductionist thinking is merely a consequence of nostalgia, a rose-colored glasses view of yesteryear. Miranda July in Me and You and Everyone We Know is basically a little girl, getting into strange cars for no reason and resisting everything uncomfortable. She’s weird, but for weirdness’s sake. In real life, even shut-ins are pessimistic enough to not act like that. In contrast, Kazan’s Chantry is alluring in that manic pixie dream girl way, but also motivated by realistic expectations, plugged into communities that define her in complex ways, and is capable of self-actualization unrelated to her relationship with a man. An exciting executive job in Asia might not necessarily be what Chantry wants, but the point is that her character is not static like many quiet auteurs want their women to be.

I’d like to see Kazan next play completely against type, makeup, attitude, everything. Because unfortunately, even when she’s attempting to criticize the manic pixie dream girl, playing the titular character in her own film Ruby Sparks, she fits that archetype effortlessly. She’s alternatively pretty, intelligent, and effervescent enough to fall into that trap. She’s good though. She’s a talent.

When it comes to these movies, you have to go all the way. If you’re striving for different, something to put your audience on edge and compel them to see life sideways, make your film bonkers. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, Amelie. You can justify the weirdness of your characters if your setting is also sightly twisted. It doesn’t have to be dark and nightmarish, but if your protagonist is a cartoon, attempting to sell an intimate, realistic slice of life premise is disingenuous.

What If plays it just about straight, with enough humor and wit from its cast to elicit a compassionate response. As a mature piece of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles counter-programming, it was enjoyable.

Marvel was the model. Star Wars will continue the practice.