Movie Review - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

You can’t really write a review about a Marvel movie being good anymore. At this point that’s pretty much expected. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the fifteenth theatrically released movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they’ve all had at least some amount of critical success to say nothing of commercial success for the franchise as a whole. So it doesn’t really mean anything at this point to say that Guardians was good, that much is expected at this point. The natural thing to do would be to compare this movie to the first Guardians of the Galaxy from 2014, but that doesn’t seem very fair either. The first movie was a crazy, off the wall idea of a movie. Something that (at the time) looked like it was going to be Marvel’s riskiest move to date, and most of the audience went into it with little to no expectations. This time around, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is probably the most anticipated movie of the year (except perhaps for Star Wars VIII) so it’s not going to give us the most accurate barometer to measure the quality of the movie.

So what I want to look at here, is how Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 works as a sequel to the original. If there is one stumbling block in the juggernaut that is the Marvel Studios movies, it’s that their sequels almost always seem to be a step back from the original. Iron Man 2 wasn’t as good as the first one. Age of Ultron wasn’t as well received as the original Avengers. In fact, with the exception of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel sequels are pretty much considered to be inferior in some way or another to their originals. And I think I know why. See as much as I love the fact that all of these movies tie into one another, it comes with the side effect of certain storylines sometimes having to jog in place while the rest of the storylines catch up. Iron Man 2 for example is good, without a doubt, but it can’t do too much to build on the original, because we’re saving most of that for the eventual Avengers team-up. Each movie has to be aware of the other movies that are surrounding it in the timeline. And while the resulting Cinematic Universe makes my continuity-loving heart happy, I won’t pretend that those aren’t frustrating circumstances to have to make a movie under. It’s a process that’s caused more than one talented filmmaker to decide that they’d rather enjoy the Marvel movies as a fan than as a contributor.

Which brings us back to Guardian’s of the Galaxy Vol. 2. While it’s still technically in the same universe as the other Marvel movies, it takes place far away from earth, on the other side of the galaxy, and doesn’t have to pay as much attention to what the rest of the Marvel lineup is doing. For example, The Marvel movies take place, more or less in real time, which means that since Iron Man came out in 2008, in the Marvel universe, Tony Stark has been flying around for almost ten years now. But despite Vol. 2 coming out three years after the first Guardians of the Galaxy it takes place only a few months after the events of the first movie, chronologically putting it before Avengers: Age of Ultron on the timeline. Now, none of this information has any real impact on the story as a whole, but because of its unique position, Guardians of the Galaxy is the only Marvel franchise that can get away with things like that. So what does Vol. 2 do with this freedom from the constraints that the rest of the Marvel universe is under? It gets to stretch, and grow. There is a massive amount of character development in the story, and not all of it from where you might expect.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 works because of how it operates as a sequel to the first one, especially when it comes to the characters. There are backstories and relationships that are just briefly touched on in the first movie that have more time to get fleshed out in this one. For example, we don’t necessarily learn more about Rocket’s backstory, but we do get to see how his history has formed him into the character that we have now. The relationship between Gamora and Nebula (the daughters of Thanos) is only briefly mentioned in the first movie, but in this one, we get a better look at what it was like for them to grow up next to each other, and how that directly impacts their relationship now. We also get a look at what it must have been like for Peter Quill (Star Lord) to spend his formative years on a Ravager ship,  and again, how that builds him into the person he is today.

I guarantee you that there are reviews of this movie out there that are calling this movie “the Empire Strikes Back” of the franchise, which is basically meaningless at this point when it comes to film criticism. You ask five different people what it means to be the “Empire Strikes Back” of a series and you’ll get five different answers, most of them suggesting that among other things, it means that it’s darker and grittier than its predecessor. Guardians Vol. 2 is nither darker or grittier than the first one. If anything it’s more colorful, visually at least, but it does take some time between the big action beats, to really get to delve more into who these characters are and what makes them work so well together as a family. I won’t say it’s better than the first one, but it’s about the best possible sequel that Guardians of the Galaxy could have hoped for.