Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2
WARNING: The following 1,000 words or so may cause offence to butt hurt Marvel fanboys. I ain't sticking this one on a pedestal guys!
So Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is directed by James Gunn and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Kleimtiff, Karen Gillian, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, Elizabeth Debicki and holy crap that's a large main cast list. The story follows the Guardians of the first movie as they meet Ego, played by Kurt Russell, who (as all the trailers show you) is Peter Quill's father. That's as much as I can say really about the plot of this movie without spoiling anything because in truth, the script feels very disjointed.
Now the original Guardians of the Galaxy was pretty much a universally well received surprise. It's pretty much regarded as up there with the best of the best in the Marvel Cinematic universe so in short people wanna know, is Guardians 2 as good as the original? And that is a solid no from me my friends. But it still makes a great movie with a lot of positives and a fair few negatives of which I will be running you through today.
Fair warning this will be spoiler-free as best I can. A lot of the negatives I have do however hinge on revealing certain spoilers so I will put these across as best I can without spoiling them. I will be revisiting this film probably toward the end of next week to give you all a bit of a spoiler filled discussion. I will be doing that as a collaborative piece with a few of my friends as I can already tell, this movie is gonna be divisive as shit.
So the positives!
The ensemble cast performances are still as great as ever. From the get go, Quill and co all kill it in their respective roles. There are bigger roles in this story for Yondu too and when I was walking out of the cinema at 3am I really stood and thought for quite a while and came to the conclusion that Yondu's character arc and performance really made him the MVP of this movie. He gets the same treatment in this movie as Hawkeye did in Age of Ultron in that you spend a lot more time with him and really start to understand and sympathise with who he his. With the nature of his surrogate father relationship to Quill, there will obviously be a lot of stuff for him to do when the main part of the movie is dedicated to Peter finding his real Dad. Groot was the stand-out character in the original and hell who'd have thought it but Yondu stands out here!
Side note on characters is definitely Sylvester Stallone. You'll see what I mean when you go and see this movie but I can just imagine Stallone in contract negotiations telling James Gunn the director, "I'll only star in dis movie if I don't have to wear no stooped alien prosthetics." That thought went through my head every time he was on screen and it really started to make me laugh.
The central relationship between Kurt Russell and Chris Pratt is also very good. A great bit of casting their as side by side you can really connect with them and the troubles they face as Ego is explaining why he left and how he loved Peter's mother.
You also get a lot more interesting interactions between Gamora and Nebula and a lot of this centres around their past with Thanos. And what this movie does well is really put the overarching baddie of the MCU into a quite horrifying perspective. You never see the character on screen but through the story's of Nebula and Gamora you see that Thanos isn't just a brooding purple dick who sits in his floatie chair all the time. This dude is actually a serious threat and is gonna do the Avengers some pretty serious damage next year (Infinity War).
The opening title sequence really stood out to me as being especially fantastic. It's kinda similar to the first one in that you have a character dancing to the opening track of the Awesome Mix but the context it was in and the dressing around the dance was phenomenal with some excellent camera work and some brilliant CGI.
Speaking of CGI the colour pallet used is also a lot brighter in this movie. Whilst the original felt quite grubby in parts, visually speaking Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is a treat for the eyes. And to go alongside that we also have a significant shift in tone to the soundtrack. It's a lot more upbeat with a few more love songs thrown and some songs about family which really fit into the main themes of this movie. Once again the soundtrack is one of the stand-out features of this Guardians movie and I will definitely have it stuck on repeat for the next few months.
All that being said... that now takes me onto the negatives.
The humour of the original Guardians movie made what was a wholly alien concept feel very human and down to earth. Everyone loved it but I think what the studio took that to mean was, crank up the jokes to a solid 11 and rip the fucking knob off. I never thought I would reach this point in the MCU but there was way too much humour in Guardians 2 and a lot of it didn't stick with me. The punchlines didn't all make the landing they intended too and the one running joke in the movie really shouldn't have been a running joke in my opinion. To make that joke once, it wasn't really that funny, to make it ten times really kinda killed it stone dead for me.
The script overall feels very choppy and disjointed. There's this whole subplot with these gold people that served a purpose in the opening 10 minutes or so but they just kept dragging them back time after time again throughout the movie and all I'm thinking to myself is, what's the fucking point in this? Now I've already said on social media that this movie suffers from Age-Of-Ultron-itis and this is why. Age of Ultron was so concerned with setting up the next few movies in the MCU at the expense of a smooth, free flowing plot and James Gunn kinda does the same here. It definitely isn't to the same extent but he is guilty of this a little. The whole subplot with the Sovereign gold people could've just got lifted straight out up until one of the last post credit scenes (of which there are 5 btw) when I got really quite annoyed to realise this whole disposable race of people had actually only been shoehorned in to act as an origin arc for a character in the next movie. Huff. It really makes the overall flow of Guardians 2 suffer and this is by far my biggest grope with this movie. The first movies plot was slick and precise enough to entertain a wide spectrum of people, this one not as much.
Not every character has a lot to do here either. When the main focus of the movie is one in an ensemble meeting his Dad, that great! But what are the others gonna do? Not a lot. There is solid purpose to Quill, Ego, Yondu, Nebula and Gamora because this whole movies main theme is family conflict but everyone else, especially Drax and Mantis, are kinda just there.
Guys in the end Guardians 2, like Avengers 2, had an impossible task really. They had to live up to, or exceed, the success of the first movie when people really have to remember that the success was probably down to those movies being first time things. A lot of things went right in this movie and a lot of things unfortunately went wrong. Is it as good as the first one? No way. Is it a good movie though? Yes definitely. I had a lot of fun still watching this.
I feel like I might get some hate for what I've said here fro any Marvel fanboys out there cause I didn't love this movie. But please remember that doesn't mean I hated it either. It's perfectly serviceable and when we're 15 odd movies into a franchise then not every movie is gonna be as great as the likes of The Winteer Solidier. There is middle ground here where there's a bunch of people who think Guardians 2 is just okay and I'm one of them.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 gets a C+.
So what! Come at me Marvel fanboys! Thank you once again to all 2 of you out there who take time out of your days to read my nerd ramblings and remember, keep watching guys!
So Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is directed by James Gunn and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Kleimtiff, Karen Gillian, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, Elizabeth Debicki and holy crap that's a large main cast list. The story follows the Guardians of the first movie as they meet Ego, played by Kurt Russell, who (as all the trailers show you) is Peter Quill's father. That's as much as I can say really about the plot of this movie without spoiling anything because in truth, the script feels very disjointed.
Now the original Guardians of the Galaxy was pretty much a universally well received surprise. It's pretty much regarded as up there with the best of the best in the Marvel Cinematic universe so in short people wanna know, is Guardians 2 as good as the original? And that is a solid no from me my friends. But it still makes a great movie with a lot of positives and a fair few negatives of which I will be running you through today.
Fair warning this will be spoiler-free as best I can. A lot of the negatives I have do however hinge on revealing certain spoilers so I will put these across as best I can without spoiling them. I will be revisiting this film probably toward the end of next week to give you all a bit of a spoiler filled discussion. I will be doing that as a collaborative piece with a few of my friends as I can already tell, this movie is gonna be divisive as shit.
So the positives!
The ensemble cast performances are still as great as ever. From the get go, Quill and co all kill it in their respective roles. There are bigger roles in this story for Yondu too and when I was walking out of the cinema at 3am I really stood and thought for quite a while and came to the conclusion that Yondu's character arc and performance really made him the MVP of this movie. He gets the same treatment in this movie as Hawkeye did in Age of Ultron in that you spend a lot more time with him and really start to understand and sympathise with who he his. With the nature of his surrogate father relationship to Quill, there will obviously be a lot of stuff for him to do when the main part of the movie is dedicated to Peter finding his real Dad. Groot was the stand-out character in the original and hell who'd have thought it but Yondu stands out here!
Side note on characters is definitely Sylvester Stallone. You'll see what I mean when you go and see this movie but I can just imagine Stallone in contract negotiations telling James Gunn the director, "I'll only star in dis movie if I don't have to wear no stooped alien prosthetics." That thought went through my head every time he was on screen and it really started to make me laugh.
The central relationship between Kurt Russell and Chris Pratt is also very good. A great bit of casting their as side by side you can really connect with them and the troubles they face as Ego is explaining why he left and how he loved Peter's mother.
You also get a lot more interesting interactions between Gamora and Nebula and a lot of this centres around their past with Thanos. And what this movie does well is really put the overarching baddie of the MCU into a quite horrifying perspective. You never see the character on screen but through the story's of Nebula and Gamora you see that Thanos isn't just a brooding purple dick who sits in his floatie chair all the time. This dude is actually a serious threat and is gonna do the Avengers some pretty serious damage next year (Infinity War).
The opening title sequence really stood out to me as being especially fantastic. It's kinda similar to the first one in that you have a character dancing to the opening track of the Awesome Mix but the context it was in and the dressing around the dance was phenomenal with some excellent camera work and some brilliant CGI.
Speaking of CGI the colour pallet used is also a lot brighter in this movie. Whilst the original felt quite grubby in parts, visually speaking Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is a treat for the eyes. And to go alongside that we also have a significant shift in tone to the soundtrack. It's a lot more upbeat with a few more love songs thrown and some songs about family which really fit into the main themes of this movie. Once again the soundtrack is one of the stand-out features of this Guardians movie and I will definitely have it stuck on repeat for the next few months.
All that being said... that now takes me onto the negatives.
The humour of the original Guardians movie made what was a wholly alien concept feel very human and down to earth. Everyone loved it but I think what the studio took that to mean was, crank up the jokes to a solid 11 and rip the fucking knob off. I never thought I would reach this point in the MCU but there was way too much humour in Guardians 2 and a lot of it didn't stick with me. The punchlines didn't all make the landing they intended too and the one running joke in the movie really shouldn't have been a running joke in my opinion. To make that joke once, it wasn't really that funny, to make it ten times really kinda killed it stone dead for me.
The script overall feels very choppy and disjointed. There's this whole subplot with these gold people that served a purpose in the opening 10 minutes or so but they just kept dragging them back time after time again throughout the movie and all I'm thinking to myself is, what's the fucking point in this? Now I've already said on social media that this movie suffers from Age-Of-Ultron-itis and this is why. Age of Ultron was so concerned with setting up the next few movies in the MCU at the expense of a smooth, free flowing plot and James Gunn kinda does the same here. It definitely isn't to the same extent but he is guilty of this a little. The whole subplot with the Sovereign gold people could've just got lifted straight out up until one of the last post credit scenes (of which there are 5 btw) when I got really quite annoyed to realise this whole disposable race of people had actually only been shoehorned in to act as an origin arc for a character in the next movie. Huff. It really makes the overall flow of Guardians 2 suffer and this is by far my biggest grope with this movie. The first movies plot was slick and precise enough to entertain a wide spectrum of people, this one not as much.
Not every character has a lot to do here either. When the main focus of the movie is one in an ensemble meeting his Dad, that great! But what are the others gonna do? Not a lot. There is solid purpose to Quill, Ego, Yondu, Nebula and Gamora because this whole movies main theme is family conflict but everyone else, especially Drax and Mantis, are kinda just there.
Guys in the end Guardians 2, like Avengers 2, had an impossible task really. They had to live up to, or exceed, the success of the first movie when people really have to remember that the success was probably down to those movies being first time things. A lot of things went right in this movie and a lot of things unfortunately went wrong. Is it as good as the first one? No way. Is it a good movie though? Yes definitely. I had a lot of fun still watching this.
I feel like I might get some hate for what I've said here fro any Marvel fanboys out there cause I didn't love this movie. But please remember that doesn't mean I hated it either. It's perfectly serviceable and when we're 15 odd movies into a franchise then not every movie is gonna be as great as the likes of The Winteer Solidier. There is middle ground here where there's a bunch of people who think Guardians 2 is just okay and I'm one of them.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 gets a C+.
So what! Come at me Marvel fanboys! Thank you once again to all 2 of you out there who take time out of your days to read my nerd ramblings and remember, keep watching guys!
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