Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

So maybe too much of a good thing isn’t always the best thing.

Taking place a few months after our heroes saved the galaxy the first time around, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sees Peter Quill aka Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) doing what they do best: defeat cosmic bad guys while rocking out to the best soundtrack this side of the Milky Way galaxy. After a successful mission that ends with Rocket stealing priceless batteries from the Sovereign race, the Guardians have a run in with a man named Ego (Kurt Russel), who claims to be Quill’s long lost father. What follows is a story of loss and love, action and spectacle, and before we know it, the Guardians are yet again charged with saving the galaxy, only this time with more allies on their side and a villain that may change the course of the universe forever.

I’ll come right out and say it: Vol. 2 isn’t as good as the first, but it’s definitely better than the majority of MCU movies out there. Much like how I felt about Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 seems to have all the ingredients of a near flawless film on the surface, but after watching it in full, the sum of its parts fall just slightly short of greatness. For example, with all the emotion packed into this film you’d expect it all to hit hard at the right times, the action and humor firing on all cylinders when the emotion takes a back seat, but for me, the overall integration and pacing of it all seemed a little…off.

It’s not that I didn’t like the emotion, humor or action; I just felt that for as much as we know and love these characters, it was all just too much. The humor is great…until they bash the same joke into the ground over and over again or pick the low hanging fruit off the joke tree. But then again, there were more than enough brilliant scenes (especially wherever Drax is part of the humor) that had me in stitches. The action is spectacular…until it becomes a bunch of CGI fueled mayhem that doesn’t separate itself enough from every other action movie out nowadays like how the original did. But then again, there were a bunch of scenes that really wowed me (the breakout scene with Yondu, Rocket and Baby Groot in particular) that had me in awe of what I was seeing onscreen. The emotion is hard-hitting…until all of the slog worthy back-story and mushy parts thrown in dragged on like a bad soap opera. But then again, the final gut punch at the end of the film was wonderfully executed, as were a couple other scenes. Again, most people would see these issues as nothing more than nitpicks, but for me, there seemed to be a lot that could have been cut from the film without losing the core experience of what the filmmakers were trying to give us.

On the acting front, everyone slips back into his or her roles like a glove. Some characters don’t have as much to do this time around such as Baby Groot, who, outside of one or two scenes, literally just acts cute the entire film, while others are bolstered with much more to do in the overall scheme of things like Michael Rooker’s vastly more interesting Yondu. Kurt Russel fairs well as Ego, even if his reveal is a little late and sloppy, but my main casting gripe is that I still can’t get around Sylvester Stallone being in a Marvel movie. You’re telling me that out of the hundreds of actors out there in Hollywood, the powers that be at Marvel couldn’t find literally any other actor to fill his role? It’s not that I don’t think he’s a good choice, it’s just that his casting pulled me out of the film the second I saw him, regardless of whether they’re setting him up for more to do in future installments. Either way, the core cast is still the biggest draw of the film, and while they’re mostly separate for most of the runtime, they still held their own as separate units.

Lastly, I’d be crazy not to commend director James Gunn for the pure insanity he throws at the screen. Even though I don’t think this was the best sequel in the MCU (Winter Soldier and Civil War take that honor), I don’t think I’d be comfortable with any other person in the director’s chair. This film – and by extension these characters – are Gunn and if they were to be handled by anyone else, scripting or directing-wise, I think this franchise would fall apart.

While I don’t think this sequel is as good as the original, there’s really nothing overtly wrong with this film outside of some pacing issues and the problem of the filmmakers relying way too much on what worked in the first film without giving this one it’s own sense of purpose. The characters are still fun to watch, the direction is as wild and crazy as ever and the overall spectacle of it all is definitely entertaining, but with a bunch of hit or miss emotional beats and a runtime that’s way too long, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is what you’d come to expect from a Marvel movie nowadays: a perfectly competent yet slightly flawed film that does more good than bad. So yeah, bring on Vol. 3.