By Brett Blake The first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY was a classic example of capturing lightning in a bottle. When it was announced, nobody took it seriously or expected all that much from it, but as it turns out, not only did it make a lot of money, it was actually a great movie. It was the best kind of surprise, because nobody knew what to expect. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 now faces a different challenge. Not skepticism or disinterest, but expectation. Most people liked the first movie - a lot - so now the standard has been set, and VOL. 2 has a lot to live up to. So how does it fare? Thankfully, quite well. It’s worth saying right up front that it is not as good as the first film, and it lacks the straightforward narrative of the first, but it’s big, bright, exuberant fun. This is a blockbuster with both humor and heart, and writer/director James Gunn gives us more of the characters we enjoyed the first time around, but also sends them on some interesting (and very human) journeys in this sequel. The marketing for the film has given away very few plot points, so I’ll mostly stick with those: we find the Guardians of the Galaxy - Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) - on a mission for a group of golden-colored people called The Sovereign, led by their regal ruler Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki). When Rocket’s hijinks cause The Sovereign to violently turn on them, the Guardians are split into groups and sent off on several adventures, reuniting with familiar characters like Yondu (Michael Rooker) and Gamora’s psychotic sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), while also meeting a handful of new faces, including Mantis (Pom Klementieff), an empathetic alien, and Ego (Kurt Russell), an incredibly powerful, nearly godlike force... and Peter’s long-lost father. Where this movie excels (as in the first film) is in the character department. James Gunn clearly had storytelling and thematic goals for all of the major players here, and the payoff is a roster of extremely likable and fun people... who also happen to be damaged in some way (generally emotionally or psychologically, but sometimes physically). On top of all the wonderful humor and wild action setpieces, we have a truly emotional and surprising human story about accepting yourself and others, flaws and all, and about what family and belonging really mean. All the Guardians have arcs (some bigger than others, admittedly) that hammer home these themes in different ways, and they’re all effective. More than anything, this movie has an incredibly big, emotional heart, and as silly and cosmically weird as it gets (and boy does it get weird!), there’s a fundamentally grounded, human quality at play all the way through. The returning Guardians cast all do very good work here (and Baby Groot may be the cutest creation to ever appear in a motion picture), but I’d like to focus in on one of the returning supporting players and two of the newcomers to this series: Michael Rooker, Pom Klementieff, and Kurt Russell. Rooker, quite simply, steals the entire film with a gruff, funny, and wounded turn as Yondu, a character played almost entirely for laughs in the first film but who reveals himself to have some legitimately emotional layers to him this time out (he also is the focus of the movie’s single best scene, which is a certified showstopper also involving Rocket and Baby Groot). Klementieff proves to be a delightful addition to the roster, playing her empath character with an intense and eager earnestness that is, frankly, adorable and charming, and her energy compliments her costars quite well (particularly Bautista). And then we have the man himself, Kurt Russell. The advertising has treated Russell’s character, Ego, very carefully, so I’ll honor that by not getting into specifics, but I can say this: Russell is absolutely fantastic in this, playing up an almost goofy, cliched version of his 1980s persona before finally revealing a level of pathos and intensity that is striking. I wish I could speak freely about his work here, because I really think it’s great and worth examining and praising in detail. I guess that will have to wait! The weakest element of the movie is the actual narrative itself. It has thematic concerns (which are well serviced), but not great plot concerns. That’s not to say there is no narrative, because there certainly is, but there’s an extremely laid-back quality to it; we’re not propelled forward through the story so much as we’re mostly hanging out with the characters in situations. Literally a good chunk of the middle of the movie has several of the Guardians just hanging out with Ego, and not doing much more than having character interactions. These interactions are universally good, don’t misunderstand, but there’s not really a major driving force in this story until some important revelations are made at the beginning of the third act. The movie is structured in a radically different way from the first, as the bulk of this film has the Guardians team split-up into separate plotlines (which do eventually converge); some will find this compounds the easy-going narrative, but a case could be made it gives the movie a greater variety of sequences to play with. A huge component of these movies is the music, and the songs are again wonderfully implemented here, delivering even more of an emotional impact at key moments than ever before. The score by Tyler Bates is also strong, as are all of the technical categories, particularly sound design and visual effects; Baby Groot and Rocket have such incredible expressiveness that you totally buy them as real characters. In the final analysis, I had a great time with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, and I suspect most fans of the first will find a ton to enjoy. Nothing can recapture the shockingly good surprise of the previous movie, but VOL. 2 expands on the characters, lets them grow a bit, and let’s us as an audience spend some time with these terrifically fun people. I call that a big win.
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