GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 *REVIEW* So in case you don’t know this about me,
Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my favorite superhero movies and maybe just one of my
favorite movies ever.
It’s really funny, it’s action packed, it’s actually got a few surprisingly emotional
moments, I love that movie.
So of course I was beyond excited for the sequel.
So, now that it’s landed (at least where I live, sorry to my viewers in America), let’s
get into it.
*clip* Also as I always do, first part of this review
will be spoiler free, and then after a very obvious warning I’ll get into the spoilers.
So to be completely honest, I was actually a little nervous going into this.
Because early buzz around this movie wasn't exactly what I was expecting.
It was mostly positive, rotten tomatoes score is pretty great, Mr Sunday said it was a good
fun time, but then I looked briefly at some other reviews and they gave it a really middling
review.
So I was cautiously optimistic going in, but still much more optimistic than cautious.
And was I really disappointed or really satisfied coming out of this?
Well I don’t think I can say I was disappointed, but I don't think it was truly incredible
either.
There was some stuff in this movie that I genuinely loved, and there was some stuff
that I wasn’t a fan of.
Firstly, the cast here as you would expect is great.
Chris Pratt I think is even better in this movie than he was in the last one, he’s
still very funny but he also manages to carry some emotional scenes.
Zoe Saldana was great as Gamora again, and this time we do get a little more fleshing
out of her character, as well as Peter Quill’s, which I liked.
The first movie these things about these characters were hinted at, but in this one we really
explore those more.
Dave Bautista I really loved as Drax.
He’s really funny, almost all of his jokes landed for me, he’s just a great part of
this movie.
I don’t know if I’d say he stole the show, but he was hilarious, really liked him.
Then there’s Vin Diesel as Baby Groot.
I was kind of worried going in that Baby Groot was gonna get annoying as the movie went along.
Like watching the trailers I was like, yeah, he’s cute, but I can definitely see that
whole thing getting grating after 2 hours.
But surprisingly I didn't really find that.
I didn’t think he was as adorable as apparently everyone around me in the cinema did, but
he was still funny and a good addition to the movie.
Bradley Cooper as Rocket there isn’t much to say, he’s just awesome as the character
like he was last time.
Michael Rooker is really great as Yondu, and they expand on his character more as well
in this movie, which I really liked.
The ways in which they explore these backstories and whatnot for these characters though, I
wasn’t a huge fan of.
We’ll get to that later.
Karen Gillan was good as Nebula, Pom Klementieff was good as Mantis, Elizabeth Debicki was
good as Ayesha, and Kurt Russell was great as Ego the Living Planet.
I’ll get into more about him in spoilers though, cuz they’ve showed basically nothing
of him in the trailers.
That’s another thing I wanna commend real quick by the way, this is how you should market
a movie.
THe trailers didn’t give really anything major away, there are quite a few twists and
turns in this movie, surprisingly enough.
Now, the action here is still great, it’s just as good as in the first film.
There’s one action scene in particular with Yondu that I’ll get to a little more in
spoilers that I absolutely loved.
Also, the visual effects I think are almost flawless.
Like even in movies with huge budgets I’ll find myself saying at some point, that just
looks like you’re standing on a green screen.
But here, i never found myself saying that.
This movie shows off some absolutely ridiculous and beautiful visuals, but they all felt like
they were actually there to me, which really impressed me.
Even shots from the trailer that I thought looked a little green screeny worked in the
actual movie.
Also, speaking of which, this movie, especially the second half, is an insane light show.
This is probably the craziest MCU movie, yes, we’ve had Doctor Strange, but I’m willing
to say especially the second half, this movie is just insane, there’s really no other
way to put it.
And it takes quite a lot of risks in that area, and I thought it actually worked.
Also, this might seem like a weird thing to comment on, but I think this is probably the
most colorful MCU movie.
It’s just recently, these movies have gone from this crazy technicolor to kind of mostly
greyer duller colors, so it was nice to see a return to just over the top crazy rainbow
color schemes.
Now something I was really excited for going into this was the soundtrack.
And yeah, it was pretty much what I was expecting.
I’ve listened to Awesome Mix Volume 1 consistently since the release of the first Guardians,
like i still listen to it to this day, so I’m sure I’ll listen to this countless
times and it’ll grow on me more.
I will say I was a little disappointed that two songs didn’t make it that were used
heavily in the marketing, those being Fox on the Run and Suffragette City, two of my
favorite songs.
But even besides that, this is another great Guardians soundtrack
Something else this movie is “the most of” in the MCU is the most jokey movie.
This is by far the most comedic Marvel movie, which is weird since all of these movies have
a ton of jokes.
But this is pretty much a comedy for most of it.
And when those jokes landed, they really landed.
I laughed out loud a lot.
But there were also a few misses in there that really fell flat for me.
I’d say joke wise it was like 85% hilarious, 15% ehhhh bit of a dud.
And really, my main problem with this movie lies in when it tries to be more serious.
This movie is crazy colors and joke after joke after joke and then about 10 times throughout
it’ll halt for a serious, trying to be genuine scene, and I’m thinking, I just saw this,
and now you wanna talk about how much you miss your family or something like that?
The emotional moments aren’t necessarily bad, some in particular I thought hit pretty
well, but the thing is they kept doing the same thing over
and over again.
Remember that part in Civil War?
Where Black Panther is talking emotionally and mysteriously into the middle distance
about some Black Panther tradition or something.
*clip* Ok, think that, now multiply it by about 6.
Because almost every character in this movie gets an emotional monologue about their past
while staring off into the distance.
And it started to get kind of old.
Couldn’t you find some other way of showing their past or conveying some feeling one of
these characters is having.
They do that sometimes where they show it in a different ish way, which shows to me
that they know how to do it, which kind of made all the other times when it’s just,
slow pull in on someone’s face as they talk quietly about their horrible past into the
distance, that much more repetitive and kind of lazy feeling.
Again, some of the less kind of cliched moments really worked, in particular involving one
where Peter has a revelation, that really hit me.
But by the end this felt like it was getting really repetitive.
Also, even with the parts that worked towards the end, nothing hit me in this movie emotionally
like it did in the first movie with that ending with the new Awesome Mix or the We are Groot
moment.
So before I get into the spoilers, I’ll just wrap this part of the review up.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 is a super fun time at the cinema.
It’s another really good Marvel movie, but in my opinion it isn’t their best work.
The action is amazing, the story and twists are actually pretty great, the humor is really
hilarious when it lands but didn’t always land, and the more serious moments didn’t
all work for me.
I would say this is a great sequel, I mean to live up to a movie that was not only incredible
but surprised everyone, that’s a tough job.
And this is a good follow up.
I can’t say it’s better though.
I’ll give Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 an 8.8/10.
Alright, now let’s get into the spoilers.
If you don’t want anything spoiled, click away from this video now.
Ok, first off, the cameos.
I knew Stallone was gonna be in this, and I liked seeing him here.
Maybe that’s just cuz I watched Creed again for the 9th time yesterday and Stallone is
fresh in my mind.
I guess we’ll be seeing him pop up in Guardians 3 along with the other Ravager captains.
I’m pretty sure I saw Ving Rhames in there, that was pretty surprising.
Howard the Duck makes another appearance, great.
The David Hasselhoff cameo made me laugh really hard.
I also noticed Jeff Goldblum popped up halfway through the credits, always enjoy seeing a
little Goldblum.
And the Stan Lee cameo was amazing.
Might actually be my favorite to date.
It’s pokes fun at the theory that he’s The Watcher as we see him actually talking
to the Watchers about his different cameos, the one mentioned being when he played Willy
Lumpkin the Fantastic Four’s mailman, I loved it.
It did get kinda old by the time it showed up in the end credits, but I still got a really
good kick out of that.
As far as the end credit scenes, there’s not much to note, they’re mostly continued
jokes from the actual movie, which were admittedly pretty funny.
But there was one future movie tease with Ayesha creating Adam Warlock.
I don’t know a ton about Adam Warlock, from what I’ve heard he’s an important part
of the Infinity War story, but I think they’ll be saving him Guardians 3 in this case.
On that note, this movie is totally isolated from the MCU.
There are really no connections.
Even when the movie goes to Earth briefly, nothing connected to the Avengers shows up.
Which, on the one hand, i LIKED that it didn’t have to get bogged down in set ups and continuity
and references and all that, but on the other hand, seeing just a little something would’ve
been nice.
Since these movies are built on that they’re all connected, just seeing a little character
pop in or just 1 reference could’ve been cool, but oh well.
The twist where it turned out Ego was the actual villain of the movie did surprise me,
although once I actually got into the cinema and the movie progressed it did become a bit
predictable.
That final battle by the way, when I said this movie is the most insane MCU movie, that’s
what I meant.
Suddenly Star Lord has rock powers and he turns himself into a giant Pac Man, look it’s
ridiculous but it made me laugh.
Also, I do wanna say I think my favorite action scene in the film, maybe, was Yondu going
through the ship while Come a Little Bit Closer played.
Just an extremely badass and awesome scene.
And finally, Yondu dying.
At first I wasn’t really enjoying that whole Ravager subplot, but as the movie continued
it kept getting better and better and this dynamic between Yondu and the everyone else
got better and better, and so when he died, it was actually pretty emotional.
I didn’t cry, but it felt like an earned send off.
And that whole Ravager funeral I think was a good end to the film.
So those were my thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
Who did you think of this?
Let me know all of your thoughts down below in the comments.
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see ya next time.