Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2 review

James Gunn has made yet another family movie masterpiece. From dissecting his work on GOTG 1 and 2 he’s developed s formula for telling a story which just ticks all the boxes. He’s one of those film makers who has a natural talent and great respect for the film making process, the difference with working on a Marvel movie and his previous work is that he now has a huge budget and has nothing holding him back from making the movie he set out to.

The first Guardians movie introduced the team who have now become a family unit, all with their own place in it. The ingredients to volume 2 differ to the first which is natural as the story has progressed a bit, it’s like they asked “What worked” in the first movie and then just amplified those bits. The story did a lot for the franchise, it felt almost like how I thought the third would in the sense it closed a lot of doors, we now know who Star Lords father is, united Gamora and Nebula as sisters again, Drax looks to have found another soulmate and even Groot looks like he’s recovering well from being blown to pieces.

I guess by not dragging those plots out it’s going to give the characters a chance to grow for the next movie. James Gunn has adopted an interesting approach to the Guardians movies, it’s not a typical strategy where they start off with a story and then drag it out hoping for a trilogy, for example the Fantastic Four movies, none of them ever showed an actual Galacticus even though two of them had the perfect chance, because they chose to save the best thing til last they never made a decent enough movie to warrant another sequel. If I made a Fantastic Four movie, I’d forget about saving the best bits til last and open the movie with Galacticus destroying a planet and some cool scenes of the Silver Surfer. Just make a good full movie to begin with like Guardians or Iron Man and people will demand a sequel no matter what.

Similarities with Star Wars grow with each movie – every story borrows something from another, it’s unavoidable even if it’s just a coincidence. But if you compare Luke Sky Walker and Star Lord they have a few things in common including the fact they both wonder who their father is in the first movie and by the second wish they never asked. The Guardians also have that miss matched family feel much like Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie had.

Unfortunately GOTG didn’t break the “a hero must die” theme in the Marvel movies, it’s been a running theme with them for a while, as much as an opening action scene. On this movie we say good bye to Michael Rooker’s Yondu. I love how this movie turned Yondu from a selfish space pirate into a lovable father figure in the span one movie.

A few weeks before the movies release there were rumours going around about Michael Rooker saying he had signed up to play Yondu in the upcoming Avengers movies with Thanos. Either this was a very clever bluff or we will see him return in a flash back or something, I’d say it was a bluff because they ave him a noble death and then incinerated his body, not one of those deaths like Red Skull where his body was never found and it was just implied that he might have died. Unfortunately Yondu is very much dead.

The third Guardians of the Galaxy movie was always on the cards, the whole trilogy thing seems to be a popular approach with studios. With James Gunn being so involved in the GOTG franchise I wonder if he pulled some ideas from this movie just so he could same some for the third. Although it told a great story it didn’t explore as much as the first movie. There wasn’t an infinity gem and it was fairly self contained.

Bad bits – the movie is fan service from start to finish, its taken all the bits fans loved from the first movie and replicated them several times over. It worked but some of the jokes felt a little forced. Killing off Yondu was a major disappointment, they built him up into a great character and then took him away. Ego the living planet, I loved the concept but Doctor Strange was released not too long ago and that also had a giant evil planet type entity as a bad guy.

Mid Credit Scenes – Going back to the amplification of the best bits from the first movie, everyone loves a good mid credits scene and GOTG volume 2 has like five of them. Most of them are just for a few laughs but the big one leads onto the creation of Adam Warlock who could be set to play a big part in the Infinity War movies.

Overall it was a great movie and I hope Marvel manage to keep Gunn on their pay roll way after he’s done with Guardians of the Galaxy. I think what he’s done on this franchise will influence a lot of comic book movies in the future.

Posted by Adi Mursec on May 3, 2017