So the A-holes are back and after setting such high expectations and such a huge box office result with the first film, how do you really follow that up? Well, with a whole lot of close-to-the-bone daddy-issues peppered through a series of huge set-pieces, massive splashes of colour, on-point musical cues and mostly well placed humour. They’re off to save the galaxy for a second time, but can this band of misfits win the audience over for a second time? The short answer: yes!
Set six months after the original film, the Guardians Of The Galaxy essentially are guns for hire, not necessarily mercenaries, but they are willing to do the jobs that others are not. After pissing off their latest employer, the guardians have a chance encounter with none other than Peter Quill’s dad, Ego The Living Planet (or Ego The Living Human who looks frightfully like an aged-up Jack Burton who went full-Big Trouble In Little China all up in his own planet). The team get split up, The Ravengers get involved, there’s lots of quips, lots of action, and if you allow yourself, maybe a tear or two come the end.
When comparing this to it’s predecessor, I have to say that honestly, I enjoyed it more than the original - however I might be in the minority in that department. I personally, was not as big a fan of the original as many other people were; I felt the humour beats were always half-a-second out of whack, I thought the action sequences were too “wire-worky” and the characters were a little flat. This sequel has improved on all of those aspects. The humour hits, the action looks and feels a whole lot better and a lot of the characters, including second-tier characters such as Yondu and Nebula get really fleshed out in this film. There are a few similar story beats to the original such as a visit to Earth, a music-lead title sequence amongst other things, but each of these beats are done in a refreshing way which doesn’t make it feel like they’re just retreading the same formula.
This film thankfully steers away from the Star Wars feel of the original and now appears to be veering more into the Star Trek tone, which I believe the series is all the better for, but most enjoyably, writer/director James Gunn has taken influences from beyond just the Trek and Wars Universes and you even have the look and feel of other great Sci-Fi series such as Firefly and the criminally under-appreciated Lexx.
The film also delivers on the soundtrack once again, playing a key role in Peter’s relationships with his many different family quadrants within this film. There are songs that will make you smile, songs that will amp you up and songs that will hit you in the cavity where your heart used to be. Much like the original, the songs help shape the overarching themes of the film, and this time the film goes much deeper than a normal Marvel film and far deeper than anything Star Wars has ever done. The theme of family is strong in this film, and not in a Vin Diesel having a barbecue and saying the word “family” as many times as he can in the run-time kind of way. No the family themes go deep in this film and are centred very much around Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill - exploring the differences in fatherly-relationships - the difference between the biological father and the father that raises you, the family you are born with and the family that you choose.
Of course, in-between all this heavy “family stuff” there are some cool sequences such as a really inventive Yondu whistling spear sequence, a Rocket holding his own set-piece, cameos from Sylvester Stallone that are brief, but clearly world-building, plus we get a Stan Lee cameo that finally supports one of the biggest fan-theories that people have had since Stan started appearing in the MCU. We get a whole bunch of post-credit scenes, some funny but some that are making bold statements about what to expect for the third Guardians movie, and of course there is Baby Groot. Many will call him the scene-stealer, but I wouldn’t go that far, I found many other things that were more enjoyable than Baby Groot - but none the less, he was still awesome.
The film isn’t without its’ faults though: It’s easily fifteen minutes too long, and there are one of two sequences where you feel the need to call B.S. on how the characters survive some of the big explosions and fights. The film also suffers from one of the big problems that struck Avengers Age Of Ultron; some moments are just undercut by the desire to make a joke - it’s not as bad as Age Of Ultron in many respects and admittedly the third act negates a lot of this complaint, but it would be nice every now and then not to be reminded every twenty-five seconds that these characters are funny. Thankfully though, one of the biggest complaints about Marvel films is notably absent in this movie: the “death from above” trope has been replaced with a “death from everywhere” approach. It’s coming from above, below, the left, the right and places we haven’t even thought of yet - and this certainly makes for a refreshing change passing through Phase Three.
Overall, if you fell head-over-heels in love with the original, then you might feel just slightly let down by this film because you are not necessarily getting “more of the same”, however, if you’re like me, and felt the original was just slightly lacking, then this might just hit all the right notes. With a whole universe of cosmic possibilities on the horizon, Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2 will have you buying soundtracks, have you buying Baby Groot figures and will have you rewatching Kurt Russell’s back catalogue of films.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2 gets Four and a Quarter out of Five Stars (or Four and a Quarter out of Five questions about where Baby Groot got that severed toe from…)