Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
It's not bad, before you pull out all the pitchforks... it's a very enjoyable two hours, but it's got its fair share of weak moments alongside the first movie.
The movie begins with the Guardians basically being space bounty hunters, fighting against this huge eldritch octopus alien beast, and in typical comedic fashion, the movie then focuses on the antics of Baby Groot as he stumbles around and dances to the music while the rest of the team does battle with the Abilisk in the background. It's actually a problem that plagues much of the movie. If the Baby Groot scene took place for half of its length it would be absolutely hilarious. The fact is, though, the joke was overdrawn way too long that I went, 'okay, come on, get on with the movie'. There were many other jokes whose pacing could've stood to be less repetitive and less dragged on, like Nebula and the space-turnip, or Star-Lord and scotch tape at the end, or Drax's continued HAHAHAHAHA moments, or Drax's too-much-information jokes, or Star-Lord and Gamora's romantic plot tumour. Any one of those could've been cut to half their length and be a lot funnier, in my opinion, but instead stretching them out for so long ends up making the joke exhausted. There's also a fair bit of pacing problems, and I actually groaned out loud when the Sovereign fleet randomly shows up at the final climactic battle, which seemed pointless and just to be a distraction. Like, Drax making a TMI joke or Baby Groot being adorable for the third time is fun, but doing the sixth or seventh joke in the same movie? Jeez, I love these characters, but it's a bit too much.
The main plot of this movie is also very much centered on three characters -- Star-Lord, Rocket and Gamora; plus Yondu and Nebula to a lesser extent. Star-Lord ends up dealing with his daddy issues as he is approached by his mysterious, biological father, Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russel), who reveals himself to be a Celestial, meaning that Star-Lord's heritage would allow him to do some truly godlike stuff. Star-Lord has been established to have a lot of daddy issues from the first movie and throughout this one, and his struggles with accepting his father is pretty well done. Rocket, meanwhile, kick-starts the whole plot by stealing the very batteries that the Guardians were supposed to protect, earning the group the wrath of the
The Guardians find themselves smack dab in between the pursuing Sovereign fleet, and Yondu's group of Ravagers, who are hired to hunt them down. Yondu easily fits the bill as the character who gets the most improvement in this movie. We discover that Yondu's group of Ravagers are actually outcasts from the main Ravager fleet, led by Stakar (Sylvester fucking Stallone, which in itself is a surprise casting I didn't see). The actual Ravager fleet functions more as a group of thieves-with-honour, and Yondu was cast out for breaking their code and dealing in child trafficking, and Stakar promises Yondu in uncertain terms that none of the Ravager's Viking Funeral will ever be applied to the disgraced member of the Ravagers.
Yondu himself goes through easily the best-written character arc in the movie as he is faced with a mutiny from the hilariously-named Taserface, watching helplessly as the Ravagers loyal to him are thrown out of airlocks one by one. Seeing that one screaming dude who's dragged into the airlock and slowly freeze to death while the broken Yondu can do nothing but sit helpless tied to a chair, and the camera pans out to show the trail of frozen bodies... yeah. It's easily the darkest scene in the movie, one that's absolutely the hardest to watch. And the subsequent follow up as Baby Groot gets abused just makes me want to see all the Ravagers die.
Thankfully, Yondu teams up with Rocket, Baby Groot and the only Ravager still loyal to him, Kraglin, and recovers a huge, cool mohawk thing, unleashing his whistle-arrow and, in easily the best action scene ever, Yondu and Rocket murder the entire ship's worth of traitorous Ravagers all set to upbeat music, without breaking stride. It was an amazing, cathartic moment of pure badassery. Yondu also gets some of the best lines in the movie. "I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!"
The second-best action scene is Rocket Raccoon's single-handed takedown of like thirty people through just jumping from trees and activating insane gravity traps and darts.
Yondu and Rocket eventually bond over their similar histories. They were outcasts, unloved by anyone, and we briefly learn about Yondu's history as a child sold by his own family as a slave, and they bond with each other, and Yondu himself notes how his lashing out against his own family -- Stakar's Ravagers in this case -- ends up alienating himself not only from Stakar, but also from his adopted son Peter. This ends up causing Rocket to have... well, a slightly different perspective on his role as part of the team, noting that, yeah, he has a family and a good thing now and he's acting out by doing bullshit like stealing batteries that they don't even need.
Of course, as much as I love Yondu's BSOD and eventual return as an atoner, the heart of the story is still Star-Lord's meeting with his enigmatic father, Ego, and the revelation that, yeah, Peter's mother is the only other person that Ego loved in his long, long life. Gamora goes from the supportive not-girlfriend who encourages Star-Lord to at least give his daddy a chance, but also the one that starts to realize that something's not quite right in Ego's paradise, and that Star-Lord would be exchanging a family he already has for another.
Drax and Mantis, as well-acted as the pair are, are actually a plot point that I didn't really feel worked out. Sure, they are both more or less emotionally stunted people who work on a different wavelength, and Mantis's emotion reading powers is interesting, but I honestly feel that the writers have no idea what to do with Drax and Mantis other than joke around with them a little, and have Drax see Mantis as... a surrogate daughter of sorts? I dunno. I felt like they were enjoyable, but hardly necessary to the story.
Nebula starts off the movie as an uber-villain and a wild card, betraying everyone and inadvertently leading to the jackass Taserface's takeover of Yondu's Ravagers, before going on a one-woman manhunt for her adopted sister Gamora. Her story of anguish, how Thanos would pit her against Gamora, and every time Gamora beat Nebula (which was every time) Thanos would take a part of Nebula and replace it with a machine. Mother fuck, suddenly poor Nebula goes from a vendetta-ridden psychopath into a very sympathetic character.
Also, worth noting that this is actually, I think, the first time that Thanos has been established as a huge, huge asshole. Sure, he's the boss of the Chitauri and Ronan and all that, but other than the fact that he's aligned with villains, you don't really get that Thanos is a being of ultimate evil.
The thing is, none of the sub-plots are actually bad, it's just super-unbalanced. Yondu's greater role, as well as new characters Ego, Mantis, Ayesha and Stakar are all amazing additions to the movie, and you really wish the movie would pick a couple of characters and focus on them more. As it is, some parts of the story felt more like a distraction (Drax/Nebula in particular) some felt unsatisfying (Gamora/Star-Lord; Gamora/Nebula) and the sudden change in Ego and Peter's relationship could definitely stand to be fleshed out a little more. I felt that the sudden revelation that Ego's actually evil, and working on a wholly different level of morality than Peter and wants to assimilate the whole universe, happened a bit too fast. Ego's immortal, so why not wait a little longer than like two days to try and get Peter on his side? And why even bring up the fact that he was the one who put the tumour in Peter's mother's brain? Regardless, Kurt Russel plays Ego's very eccentric moral codes and motivations very well, as you'd expect Kurt Russel to be.
Of course, the moment that Ego gave his bullshit reason for killing Meredith, it broke any chance of Peter joining with him, and it was climax final battle mode. Which was... definitely entertaining, for sure, but I honestly wished the buildup was better handled. It's significantly more epic, with so many characters thrown into the mix (Kraglin is actually pretty dang useful in this) and the fact that these are all characters we're invested in, Star-Lord's anguish against Ego is very palpable. Ego himself is probably a lot better than most Marvel movie villains in that he's got a fair amount of personal reasons and motivations in regards to his 'rivalry' against Star-Lord, too, a huge improvement over the likes of Ronan, Kaecilius and Malekith. Ego's not the best villain the MCU has to offer, but he's pretty fun. I just really wish that his scenes and buildup were done a bit better. And for being a living planet, he ended up being... pretty underwhelming. Sure, his grand plant of assimilating other planets via flowers is different, and some of the stone constructs were pretty cool, but considering he controls everything going on on his planet the Guardians are remarkably effective at just doing whatever the hell they want until, like the last five minutes of their fight.
Overall, though, Ego dies thanks to a very ironic death -- the fucker killed Meredith with a brain tumour, and here Groot kills him with a bomb in his space-brain. Yondu's death came slightly out of nowhere, because I expected him to rescue Peter but not to die in space. His death is sudden, but definitely felt earned as in his final moment he acknowledges Peter Quill as his son, and vice versa, and by god it was a very hard moment to watch, and you can't help but have a huge amount of feels when he was cremated in space (the usage of rainbow flames kind of ruin this somewhat, though) and the rest of the Ravagers show up to honour his death, and later Sylvester Stallone even reforms the original Ravagers team in honour of Yondu's death.
I did feel that the movie played waaaay too much with the mid and post credit scenes. There was Kraglin learning to be the new Yondu, there was Ayesha creating Adam Warlock, there was Teen Groot, and the Ravagers being assembled. I dunno. A bit too much, IMO.
Overall, though, it's still a pretty decent movie to watch. It has its problems, and probably not as good as the first, but I find myself caring for all these characters and Yondu's story is just so well-told that I can't help but really like at least his side of the story. But there were way too many problems -- like not knowing what to do with half the cast, the Sovereigns which felt like a painful distraction after the opening scene, weak Star-Lord/Gamora romance attempts, overlong jokes, and multiple other problems mar this movie a fair bit more than it should. But on the other hand, the 'Father and Son' song playing during Yondu's funeral and the absolutely perfect reactions from everyone involved was the first time a Marvel Cinematic Universe work has actually drawn honest-to-god tears from yours truly. So yeah, any work of fiction that can do that definitely isn't something I'm going to write off.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- The timeline of this movie is actually only a couple of months after the events of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Of course, the events of any GOTG movie is so self-contained that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I guess the huge blue blob that consumed a Dairy Queen on Earth is going to be mentioned in other Marvel movies?
- Howard the Duck, previously only featuring as a cameo at the stinger of the original Guardians movie, shows up briefly at the same bar planet as Yondu.
- Star-Lord's half-Celestial ancestry was the reason that he was able to hold the infinity stone in the first movie without disintegrating, which is actually a more rational decision beyond the Power of Friendship bit.
- Stan Lee's cameo is him talking to a group of large-headed, white-eyed aliens, which Marvel fans (I did!) would recognize as the Watchers, a group of godlike aliens. Most famous among the Watchers is Uatu, who is a character that tends to be associated with the Fantastic Four.
- Stakar/Starhawk's reassembled Ravagers team (plus Yondu) at the end of the movie is actually comprised of the original Guardians of the Galaxy team in the comics -- Charlie-27 (huge black dude), Martinex T'Naga (diamond alien dude), Aleta Ogord (Chinese lady), Krugarr (the red snake-bodied alien who can make magical mandalas) and Mainframe (the cheery robot).
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