We're talking about a company that rebooted Spiderman with an entirely new cast only five years after the previous incarnation.   They'll keep all their current roster grinding out movies as long as they can because that's easiest.  But as soon as anyone can't or won't show up, Marvel will replace/reboot with new actors. 

The evidence clearly shows audiences will still keep coming, no matter what.   Pretty sure Marvel isn't worried at ALL about the individual actors.  And they don't have to be.   There've been, what, seven Batmans in my lifetime?  And that's just so far.

It's a co-production, yes, although Marvel's still involved.  Either way, the precedent is there to show the actor doesn't matter, just the property.  And Marvel's already replaced supporting actors in their own solo movies without anybody giving a darn. 

Twitter will light up for a couple weeks when they announce the new Iron Man actor someday.  But unless the bottom falls out of the superhero movie market entirely, the new movie will make a half billion like always.

Just saw it, and I'm gonna be in the very slim minority here, because, while I would by no means call it bad, I just didn't care for the film. It was certainly witty, but it was witty without possessing any humanity. I was amused by what the characters said, but I couldn't have given less of a damn about any of them. I was more invested in The Amazing Spider-Man II than I was in this movie, and I have an equal degree of unfamiliarity with each of the films' source material, so it's not just that. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that, for all ASMII's flaws, Peter and Gwen felt like real people with real emotions and relationships, and none of GotG's characters had that reality for me. The WTF-ness of the plot that Trey mentioned earlier certainly contributed to that feeling. Also, I think I'm just burned out on this kind of movie. Oh no, a new villain with no backstory and a desire to destroy an entire planet must be stopped. Again. And we will stop him in battle sequences full of over-the-top CGI and no real sense of danger for anyone. I've never been a fan of that kind of film to begin with, and I guess the catalyst for my getting utterly fed up with it had the misfortune of being this movie.

I get the feeling that they put Thanos at the end of Avengers expecting him to be the Big Bad for Avengers 2, but they changed their minds somewhere along the way. So they threw him in Guardians so that audiences wouldn't forget about him and took the opportunity to introduce the Infinity Stones while they were at it.

IMO, the worst part about Thanos was Josh Brolin. He was just...not bringing it at all. You expect a dude who looks like Thanos to sound like James Earl Jones or something. I think they made a bad call casting him.

Honestly, thanks for that write-up.

Quoted from the chat for posterity.

"It was exactly and entirely everything I hoped it would be."

I LOVED this movie. Every single bit of it. It's exactly the sort of movie I've been pinning for for a very long while, and it delivered on every single front.

I'll do a longer write up when it's not 1 in the morning, but damn, that was beautiful.*

*And I don't just mean Karen Gillan...although yes... yowza.