What can I tell you about the American box office from last year ? That is totally dominated by fantasy movies perhaps ? I did check with boxofficemojo and indeed my fears were confirmed . I say fears and that is indeed what they are . Every year Hollywood produces big budget movies with lots of special effects and screenplays that were written by not a screenwriter but some software program whose only interest is to show off its sister software CGI program . There will come a point in the near future where we no longer need actors , screenwriters or directors and what we'll have is a software engineer make an entire movie single handed . That said it was good that the biggest grossing film in America last year was the Clint Eastwood bio-pic about Navy SEALS sniper Chris Kyle that starred Bradley Cooper so here's hoping my abject fear for the future was allayed somewhat

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY was the third highest grossing movie from last year and I've got the sneaky suspicion it was one of the worst films too . It sums up everything I'm talking about in that you can spend as much money on a film as possible but if you haven't got a strong script you've got a poor film . I can see that the producers were going for a Hans Solo type of story where a likable naughty boy finds himself in a little bit of trouble of his own making but the audience are one hundred per cent on his side . It doesn't really work and the producers have only themselves to blame because the tone seems mismanaged . We get an opening that is emotional as a young boy watches his mother die and this seems totally at odds of what happens throughout the movie which is overblown and effects driven in tune with the average family Summer blockbuster for the most part then we get scenes that just sit uneasily with the rest of the film like the prison scenes

I'm probably in a very small minority in saying I didn't enjoy this film at all but I am willing to concede that it made a massive amount of money for the film company and at the end of the day that's all that matters . What I do take exception to is the ridiculous high rating GOTG has received from my peers on this site that saw it rated as number 37 on the IMDb Top 250 movies which is an absolute travesty . Looking on the bright side it's quickly slipping down the list and won't be there for much longer . Good