Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

A sequel can rarely, if ever, live up to the original. The fact that the source material for this piece is so little known helps with the overall effect. I didn’t know anything about Peter Quill and crew until seeing the first movie and was pleasantly surprised where the second movie picked up where the first one left off. If you’re unfamiliar with Guardians of the Galaxy, you might be missing out on a diamond in the rough of oversaturation of comic book movies. On the one hand, I do wonder if Marvel and ABC are just bringing anything and everything out because they can make it marketable. On the other hand, the movie is well done and the characters are fully developed, even if we don’t always know as much as we would like of them.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 picks up with the group working for some superior alien race, protecting their batteries from another alien. It isn’t long before wackiness ensues and the team breaks up into smaller groups, only to be reconnected later in the movie. I will do my best to avoid any SPOILERS, but there could have been far more scenes with the core cast than there were, yet still, the breakoff groups were equally effective. It was nice to see more from Drax and a newcomer, Mantis. Together, those two were quickly stealing the scenes that were previously stolen by Rocket and Groot. Seeing a baby Groot made things cute, but also made me wonder about the whole BB-8/Groot dynamic, having a character that can’t really communicate but is cute. Isn’t that a staple of everything Disney?

I really had little to complain about. I would say, as far as the Hina test goes, this barely gets a passing grade. Most of the movie centered around white men. There were other alien races, but for the most part, they were either wearing tons of makeup or looked white/gold. The Alt Right was perfectly represented by the golden aliens from the beginning. Even if Gamora had a prominent role, it still felt like she was firmly in second place to Peter Quill. I couldn’t tell someone not to watch this movie, but by that same token, I couldn’t tell you it was must see either. I enjoyed it and that’s really all I can take away from the experience.