Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a movie that I’ve been looking forward to since the first one came out in 2014. It had the perfect blend of humor and killer fight scenes. The characters were perfectly developed and by the end, you felt truly concerned for the wellbeing of these characters. Now on to volume 2, I’m going to start spoiler free. The team has been hired by the Sovereign, a race of aliens, to protect their ultra strong batteries from some sort of weird space octopus-beast. Ultimately, the Guardians managed to piss of the easily offended race and they go after the team. Throw in Peter’s dad, which you see in the trailer, and that’s the movie. As always there are hilarious jokes and little dancing trees. As with the first one, I found the movie to be enjoyable. Starlord continues to be a strong central character and is perfect coupled with the rest of the team. The addition of people like Nebula, Mantis, and Yondu worked really well and you found yourself hoping they are brought on for future Guardians films.
Now onto the fun part, spoilers. I wouldn’t recommend reading from here on unless you want the film to be spoiled.
This movie was a good follow-up to what I would say is one of the best Marvel films. In a way, for me at least, it was destined to be a bit disappointing. When a movie gets such good feedback, the people behind it tend to go a bit overboard in films to come. These movies are intended to be funny, and rightfully so. When you have characters like Peter and Rocket, its impossible to not be. But weirdly enough, I thought the movie was too funny. It is difficult to take the movie seriously when everything’s a joke. For me this mainly happened with Drax, it gets mildly unpleasant when he just laughed loudly at everything anyone says. For me it felt like a laugh track which, for me, makes things not funny. I think it was a funny concept that they just went a bit overboard with. Don’t get me wrong, anytime someone insulted Rocket, calling him a trash panda for example, I couldn’t help but laugh. I just feel like I couldnt take anything serously. Now onto the Stan Lee cameo. This cameo was one of my favorites because it linked all his previous cameos together. It shows Lee talking to a group sitting in a circle about his cameo from Civil War. As a fan of the comics immediately recognized them as the Watchers. They are basically a group of aliens that just observe everything that occurs in the universe. I honestly really like this concept, there’s nothing I love more than some sort of crazy crossover type thing. Okay yeah I can’t conclude this without talking about something that probably only bothered me. Baby Groot. Now okay I will admit he was adorable at the end of the pervious film but by the end of Vol. 2 I was just really tired of him. Basically the entire opening fight sequence was missed because the camera was just focused in on him. I personally was really looking forward to this scene because of what we saw in the trailer. Baby Groot is cute but I quickly get a little tired after he dances for the entirety of Electric Light Orchestra’s Mr. Blue Sky. The reveal that Peter’s Dad put the tumor into his mother’s head caught me completely off guard. I thought that it really worked well to build Starlord and establish Ego as a character who I was pleased to see as a giant planet with a face.
Overall I quite enjoyed this film, it was a good follow-up to Vol. 1. Hopefully they keep getting better from here.
Rating: 3/5 stars
(I enjoyed it but I’m also a hard judge.)
Abby Reviews 