Regarding GOTG, I found it to be very good, and enjoyable. Not as wonderful as many others, in which group you may end up!
I thought the first half of GOTG was excellent. Fresh, distinctive, witty . . . . The second half, however, was very formulaic and was just the same as virtually every other action flick you've ever seen, with the addition of a handful of cool characters.
Overall, I'd say very good, but, IMO, it shows how piss weak the summer movie season has been that so many people have found so much value in this movie. It's like that first beer you have after a long, hot round of golf - you're likely to rate that beer much higher than you would the same beer drunk late at night after 2 others.
Planet of the Apes was a bit disappointing to me. Way too much Caesar contemplating life and not enough action, which the movie was ripe for. This movie could have been about apes defending themselves against aggressive humans and being forced to wipe them out - that would have been cool - instead, it was more about Caesar contemplating the nature of humans and other apes.
[SPOILER ALERT!!!!]
In GOTG, the scene that took much of the shine off for me was when they decided to band together as one. You've seen it a dozen times. The group of misfits, with one specific hold out, decide to join in a cause. In this case, the raccoon was the specific hold out, but eventually, as always, decided to join the group for the greater good. He was, in effect, Han Solo, deciding in the end to fight for good rather than latvium. It was like LOTR forming the fellowship. Or any number of other movies. A really worn out trope.
In POTA, they footed around the imminent war for most of the movie, then 4,000 apes get shot while attacking the humans, even though the first 80% of the movie made it clear that there were not more than a few hundred apes to begin with. Too much Caeser contemplating the good and bad in humans and apes, trying to prevent war, and so on.
But you can have fun at these movies if you don't think to much.
