The difficulty of this movie with having to weave between 5 new major characters while explaining background, relationships, etc is high enough...and then you add in the emotional depth, the humor, the personality, the musical additions (just genius)...and to have it be done in such a natural manner. Incredible about sums up the job done by Gunn.

Ronan's depth as an antagonist had to be sacrificed imo in order to not make the movie too convoluted with all the new characters that had to be established so I'm ok with that. Groot and Rocket were fantastic (the CGI as a whole is prob the most seamless I've seen, with these two being damn near impeccable), Pratt was perfect, Batista as Drax was perfect (stilted and all), and Zoe played her part.

Just an extremely fun yet emotionally compelling and funny film that weaves a level of balance while integrating so many moving pieces...damn near genius. Ranks 2nd for me in terms of Marvel movies behind IM1 but in terms of direction and difficulty of execution, it stands alone imo.

Will certainly be watching again.