87% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
Watch it in cinemas;
I'm buying the DVD;
Low-energy entertainment
Watch it if you: Are a fan of the first Guardians movie;
Want a fun and banter-filled movie;
Want to watch a beautifully colourful superhero movie
Our favourite jackasses are back to save the universe again, finding out more about Peter Quill's father along the way.
I remember when I first saw the trailer to Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and I just thought it would be the stupidest, most try-hard movie ever. Then I watched the film and was pleasantly surprised, but still didn't love it. I've since seen it maybe another one or two times and I have ended up loving it a whole lot more.
So I went in to Volume 2 with really high expectations, and it did not disappoint.
The first thing that we obviously need to discuss is the soundtrack. Could the soundtrack live up to Awesome Mix Vol. 1? While I don't think any of the songs are the new Hooked on a Feeling, I thought that Awesome Mix Vol. 2 was great! Anyone who knows me knows how much I love me my karaoke, and it honestly took so much self-restraint not to sing along in the theatre.
The film is also, I think, funnier than the first one. I don't know if this is just because of the other cinema-goers laughing a lot (the guy in front of me looked like he was having a seizure every time he laughed at a one liner), because I don't think I watched the first Guardians in cinemas and so I didn't have that added effect of others laughing around me to make me laugh.
But regardless, I found it hilarious. The actors in this movie have such great comedic timing and facial expressions, I can't imagine anyone else playing these whacky characters.
It was also surprising that Drax was the source of a lot of the humour in this film, with Peter taking on a more serious role in his quest to understand his father.
Baby Groot was so adorable in this but dayum they really capitalised on how much we liked the baby Groot scene at the end of the first Guardians! He was really funny, but I'm glad he doesn't really stay a baby for too long. By the end of the film I was getting worried that we would keep seeing him in future movies and Marvel would follow the dreaded epidemic that is the Minions.
Baby Groot and other scenes made it feel like they were milking out certain jokes for way too long, trying to just exhaust all the potential that a joke had.
This made the film seem really really long, and it was! Its runtime is 2 hours and 18 minutes long, yet it felt even longer, not just because they dragged out jokes, but they also dragged out a lot of scenes (for example the opening credits scene, getting Baby Groot to find the prototype, etc.), and they had a lot of plot elements that they were cramming in together.
This made the pacing feel kind of weird, because they had a lot of unnecessarily long scenes that didn't add much to the plot, however since even the slow scenes were funny and/or badass, it wasn't too bad. The film did feel a bit choppy, and sometimes the scene transitions were a bit awkward and roughly edited. The first film is a tighter film in terms of plot and editing but as I said I still did really enjoy this one.
In terms of the characters, we have a lot of additions to the team. Old characters like Yondu and Nebula have a bit more of a focus so we can see their background a bit, and I loved this because I was really interested in the relationship between Gamora and Nebula from the first movie.
Yondu's story was... decent I guess. At first I didn't like the added focus on him, but by the end his character arc is pretty interesting. I'm surprised at how well they integrated his character though, and it was still very touching. I also love his arrow-whistling, and it gets even more epic here.
I also started getting really sick of seeing the Sovereign people keep popping up, but they did allow for a really cool quantum asteroid belt scene so I'll give them a pass.
And finally, stuff got really weird with the Peter's dad plot, though. I won't talk about spoilers but it just got really weird and a bit too spiritual, and in the end it was just so bizarre and insane. It was disappointing because I think we were all very curious to find out more about Peter's heritage, and it just didn't seem to fit in with the tone of the rest of the film.
But overall I loved this movie. It's not as good as the first one, but it was colourful, vibrant, retro, and hilarious. The story line was a bit weak, but the characters and the lore made up for it. I love space movies because there is an endless world of imagination and possibilities out there, and this film definitely made use of that. The songs here are great, and it's just a feel good movie that makes you leave the theatre with a huge smile on your face.
A few side notes:
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