I didn’t have any real desire to see the sequel, even though the first one was great and Chris Pratt and the whole gang are a better family than Vin Diesel’s new family. The reason for this was the reviews which all said that the film was all over the place, an over-dependence on humour and a lack of any character development, nevertheless, despite all of these things I had a good time.
It’s not as good as the first one which was a movie, this felt more like an extended episode of a TV show. Storywise, it’s about batteries, bounties and father’s. The first half of the film was all about batteries, kidnapping, escaping and finding out about family history and the second half of the film was about the real intentions of Starlord’s dad and in connection to that saving the Galaxy.
Zoe Saldana and Nebula have sibling rivalry which culminates with both trying to kill each other and then both realising that it is their father Thanos who made them hate each other. Hashtag character arc.
There is no real inner turmoil it’s all plot machinations. Drax is funny and has an emotional moment when speaking about his daughter and Rocket is all fun and games until Yondu digs a bit deeper into the mutual feeling of pain both have suffered through, but despite these moments that pull at the heart strings these characters do not have any change in their lives. Except for maybe Yondu, who dies. And Starlord who finds out that his dad’s a galactic player, having slept with hundreds, perhaps thousands of women around the galaxy with the sole intention of destruction – the planning needed to undertake a mission of that magnitude is impressive if anything.
Kurt Russel’s ‘Ego’ provided the biggest gasp in the audience when he told Pratt about having done something to his mother that is unforgivable, equally sinister is the holographic scenery he conjures up, similar to the scene in Man Of Steel where Russell Crowe narrates the history of Krypton, only Kurt Russell’s visual narration is unsettling, nightmarish and horrific.
In the end the film didn’t know what exactly the plot was, until the revelation in the last third. It just didn’t follow the standard script, we had no villain until the very end, and leading up to the finale, we were left watching action scenes and story threads of different characters who were getting into hijinks with no real effect on the story or plot.
Groot was cute, humour was ever present but I think instead of focussing all the attention on Quill, it should have been spread out, this is after all The Guardians of the Frickin Galaxy. How they managed to make a two hour film about a revelation that happens in the last third of the film with the first two thirds about hanging in a forest and holed up in a jail cell is pretty spectacular.
At the end of the film, Cat Stevens serenades the characters and us the audience, which serves to make the film more worthwhile than it was and then begins a never ending series of end credits. Some good, most pointless and ultimately lessens the impact of the actual ending.
Pac man is in this film.
3/5