Unlike most of their superhero movie cousins, The Guardians of the Galaxy don’t have a single mission or quest that drives them, They mainly get into entertaining scrapes through a mixture of mischief, caprice and dangerous overconfidence.
And that overconfidence bleeding out of the Guardians’ spacefaring adventures and into the actual production family behind the films is the sole flaw in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.
After a brilliantly thrown-away opening sequence, in which the battle against a colossal Lovecraftian space-beast is merely the backdrop to some adorable Guardians hi-jinks, we segue into a somewhat baggy middle section in which our hero Star Lord (Chris Pratt) learns more about his mysterious heritage.
Meanwhile, a couple of the gang have been separated from the main crew so that director James Gunn can cut back to their hilarious (and occasionally bloody) antics whenever the main storyline slows down too much.
Gunn can afford to indulge himself a little though. The first film grossed $773,328,629 against its $200 million-ish budget. That’s a better performance than some of their more established stablemates . The team’s tail is up, and it shows. The film is studded with broadly winking 80s references (Star Lord was abducted by aliens in the 80s and lives in a sort of retro time warp) and cameos.
The look of the film is predictably astonishing, with alien vistas and grimy, beaten-up starships rendered with all the skill and care that we’ve grown to expect from Marvel’s film properties. Kurt Russell, playing pivotal character Ego, is de-aged so convincingly in a flashback sequence that the team who brought young Carrie Fisher and a cadaverous Peter Cushing back to the screen in Star Wars Rogue One will be heartbroken.
One of the strengths of the first film was the steely demeanour of Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) - warring adoptive daughters of the mad titan Thanos. They are women as likely to rescue the hero as be rescued. But one of the new characters introduced for this second outing, the empath Mantis, played with a sort of dazed wonder by French-Canadian Pom Klementieff, isn’t given quite enough agency of her own and strays somewhat towards gnomic mock-Orientalism that isn’t exactly terrible but contrasts unfavourably with the other women on the team.
And like many films of its type, Guardians suffers from a villain problem. The adversaries in this film are numerous – a bloodthirsty crew of space-pirates, a genetically-perfect race of clones and one that it’s best I don’t mention. But none of them is quite hissable enough for the job.
But this is deliberate nitpicking. Overall, this is a terrific film that opens with a colossal, hilarious, bang and closes with a bigger, funnier one. The CGI team-within-a-team of talking tree Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and sociopathic space-raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper) has a new dynamic that will win them even more fans and the murderous glee of Drax The Destroyer (a scene-stealing Dave Bautista) raises a smile every time he is on screen.
Even when it’s over, it isn’t over. There are an amazing five after-credits vignettes, each delving successively deeper into Marvel’s rich and nerdy history.
While Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 may not be quite as perfectly-balanced as its forebear, it’s still one of the most delightful blockbusters you’re likely to see in 2017.
