Watched
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, sequel to a film I had found overhyped but fun. Was looking forward to it, had heard Gunn tried too hard to repeat the old magic and was concerned at amount of characters this one was going to have. Afterwards, my sister and I agreed on the strengths, on the flaws but both came away with different enjoyment levels: for me it was nice but had been sucked out of the first half of the film too many times, my sister really enjoyed it.
It mostly has what one would expect, plenty of humour, adorable Groot (I did feel they avoided overusing him), ye olde music though this time very much less effectively used then in first film, a very good cast, the guardians still getting into trouble and well integrated dynamics as a group, the visual style is still lovely. I did feel like Gunn believed Rocket's success was based on his insults and he becomes a bit of a trope, there are some good lines but it gets tiring seeing him mouth off at every opportunity.
There's a lot to like, it was funny, it had some fun action scenes, I loved a big ending moment
. I liked Quill, Gorama worked but more due to dynamics and Zoe Saldana rather then the role she got, Drax had a bad start due to overusing one aspect
but they use him more cleverly as film goes on, they had fun with Groot, Mantis (Pom Klementieff) was someone I warmed to. They went with two villains, both of which were very enjoyable, so much so I wished the secondary baddie was kept back to be a lead baddie
So what went wrong? I did feel Gorama was underwritten, Rocket and Yondu were both annoying, still don't care for Nebula. It split its story into strands with characters paired off, some of them worked really well due to strong dynamics, two strands had their moments but also fell flat as I didn't care for the characters
It also left the main story not quite being as good as it should have been, twists didn't get enough build up so it lacked oomph as it rushed through
, they rely very much on the cast to cover that which they do quite successfully. The big battle does go on too long but is interspersed with enough "now for something different" that it never quite gets boring.
Me: 6.5, Sis: 7.5
“You, are a rebellious son who abandoned his father. You are a cruel brigand who murdered his lord. How can Heaven and Earth put up with you for long? And unless you die soon, how can you face the sight of men?”