By Mac Spain
2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a film that nobody saw coming and nobody anticipated just how well it would do for itself. The original managed to be one of Marvel’s most appealing films yet with a cast of fun and easy going characters. And while all the gags seemed to come thick and fast, it still managed to be in just the right measure. So, of course, the question on everyone’s lips is, how does Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 compare to its successor? Well, it makes me sad to say this but, it doesn’t even come close.
What with this being a sequel I’m sure that the average movie goer will see this film expecting everything to be turned up to 11, but writer/director James Gunn subverts that notion almost immediately. It’s clear that instead, he wants to make this more of a character driven movie by not just showing them off as a rag-tag team of misfits, but also fleshing out their backstories and motivations. Most of that focus falls to the film’s protagonist Star Lord (Chris Pratt) which is all well and good, but it kind of leaves the rest of the guardians mostly redundant.
Everything in the original just seemed to come so much more naturally, it always knew when to be serious and when to try and lighten the mood. Here we have a film where the tone is all over the place and anything but seamless. A lot of the gags were just so overblown and some even came off as being rather inappropriate in terms of timing. There’s even one scene that exists solely for the purpose of exposition, and it’s where Star Lord’s Dad is explaining what he’s been up to through some kind of conveniently placed exhibition of animatronics, like seriously what’s up with that?
The soundtrack was something that the original was widely praised for, but this time around it just seems to be another aspect that the sequel fails to deliver on. I suppose one of the film’s saving graces for me was making Michael Rooker’s character Yondu more sympathetic, more human, but that’s still not enough to make up for how much this film let me down. There were a few laughs scattered throughout, but I’m honestly in two minds about whether or not I’ll even want to watch the third one as it got to a certain point where I just found myself willing the film to end. So it’s with great sadness that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 gets a score of 6/10.
Watch the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy below.
