Come a little bit closer
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
The first Guardians of the Galaxy is, to date, my favourite Marvel movie. It’s
the perfect blending of humour, heart, and excellent story for me, with
fantastic characters and worldbuilding. Knowing this, I had my doubts that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 would top
it. After seeing it, I can safely say that while it won’t be replacing the top
spot in my Marvel rankings anytime soon, it’s an extremely fun and satisfying
sequel to the original that fans will surely enjoy.
This movie definitely feels more like
a one-off story than anything Marvel’s done in years. Thanos and Infinity
Stones are only mentioned in passing, leaving more room to develop the
characters. All of the original characters get several moments in the
spotlight, leaving it difficult to pin down who exactly stole the show at the
end. Everything you loved about Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot and company shines
brightly through here, and it makes the entire movie a complete blast to watch.
After saving Xandar from Ronan, the
Guardians of the Galaxy have earned their fair share of fans and enemies. While
on a mission for the Sovreign race, Rocket pulls a trick on them, leading their
leader, Ayesha, to pursue the five of them. This leads to another wild
adventure across the cosmos, including a Ravager uprising, joining up with Yondu
and Nebula, meeting new characters, and even encountering Peter’s true
biological father: Ego the Living Planet.
As I said before, the story is much
more self-contained than the previous film, which I think works for where these
characters are right now. They won’t meet up with the Avengers until next year
(it’s crazy to think that, right?), so it’s fun to have a cosmic Marvel movie
that stays in the cosmic realm, with no real ties to the overarching plot right
now.
The characters are all their fantastic
selves, and they each have an arc of their own to go through. Peter comes to
grips with his relationship with his father, Gamora tries to reconcile with
Nebula, Drax finds a companion in the new character Mantis, and Rocket helps Yondu
take back the Ravager ship. All the arcs are very fun and give all the
characters a much stronger depth, especially Peter, Rocket and Yondu.
Speaking of Mantis, it’s hard not to
adore her by the end of the movie. She unfortunately doesn’t do much past the
first half (the same can be said for Drax), but when she is onscreen she is a
complete delight. Her emotion-reading powers are fun, albeit underused, and her
innocence towards the more beaten-down and grumpy Guardians is hilarious.
It’s also hard to talk about what
makes the movie so great without mentioning Baby Groot. Groot spends the whole
movie in his tiny baby form from the end of the first movie (sans flowerpot),
and he’s both completely adorable and hilarious. He opens the movie in a way
that I won’t spoil, but I will say that it blows even the first film’s “Come
and Get Your Love” dance number away. The movie definitely makes Baby Groot
work in a way that few others would be able to, leaving him as one of the
highlights.
Finally, while I won’t spoil who it
is, I’m personally in the opinion that the villain of the movie joins the ranks
of Loki, Winter Soldier-era Bucky and
Civil War’s Zemo as one of Marvel’s
best. He gels with the main cast in a way most of Marvel’s previous villains
never came close to doing, and while the big reveal is kind of easy to see
coming, it nonetheless comes with several big surprises that left me with my
jaw dropping.
But don’t be mistaken: the true star
of the movie is the humour. Vol 2 left
me laughing more than any other movie in recent memory. It has the exact same
delightfully crude sense of humour the original movie had, except dialed up to
eleven. There are so many one-liners, visual gags, and references to everything
ranging from classic Marvel properties to 80’s arcades that it definitely feels
like the type of movie that you need to see more than once to catch everything.
But this isn’t to say the movie is
perfect. The pacing is really all over the place, especially in the middle when
the Guardians separate into two groups and Peter, Gamora and Drax are sort of
stuck listening to exposition courtesy of Ego. The soundtrack is also
significantly less memorable than the original. Listening to the whole thing
the morning after seeing the movie I actually was having trouble matching songs
to the scenes they played in, unless they were featured in a big action
setpiece.
Despite these problems, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is a very
satisfying sequel to the original modern classic. The characters are all
fantastic, especially Rocket and Baby Groot, the action is some of Marvel’s
best, the humour is near-perfect, and it really packs an emotional punch
towards the end. I think that if you enjoyed the first film, you’ll like Vol 2 just fine. It’s the characters you
loved on a new adventure, and that’s all it needed to be.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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