Guardians of the Galaxy was Marvel's amazing out-of-left-field success - one of their most popular movies that took a totally obscure series that few had ever heard of, and made it into one of the biggest hits of the last decade.
The movie distinguished itself in a couple ways, even if the Marvel formula and the movie's ties to the greater cinematic universe were familiar (in fact, this seems to be the only movie where there are characters who have actually heard of Thanos.) For one thing, it is a space adventure. Now, the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok absolutely looks like it will be blending Thor's realm-hopping with space travel (and this is probably how they'll get the Guardians in with the Avengers for the giant Infinity War crossover,) but the change in setting has allowed Guardians to stand on its own. The fact that James Gunn has a lot more creative control than most Marvel directors also gives the movies a stronger identity (I mourn the Edgar Wright Ant-Man that might have been.)
Guardians is also willing to be goofier than the other Marvel movies. Now, to be clear, Marvel has wisely avoided making grimdark movies where everyone is a bummer (looking at you, DC,) and there's always a sense of humor (one of the reasons the Incredible Hulk is kind of forgotten is that it wasn't all that fun - also with Edward Norton replaced by Mark Ruffalo, it's easier to imagine that it's just not part of the canon in the same way, though they did get William Hurt to come back.) But aside from just having a sense of humor, the world of the Guardians is just more heightened. You can have a huge colony inside the skull of a space-god. You can have a planet of totally-human-looking aliens. You can have proper names like Yondu, Xandar, Drax, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon.
One of the things that made the Avengers so good is that the characters' personalities were all drawn so strongly, and the interactions between these leads of their own movies had a kind of chemical reaction that improved the whole thing. Guardians has a pretty large cast - the first film is split between five protagonists - but the characters are, again, drawn well enough on their own that seeing their interactions is a blast.
Volume Two is, I'd argue, more character-based than the first movie. There is a terrible threat for the heroes to overcome, but that threat carries with it serious emotional baggage. If that hasn't been a big enough spoiler for you, let's go past the cut.
The previews for Vol. 2 did a decent job at misdirection, suggesting that the creepy eugenicist people known as the Sovereign (at one point, there's a reference to Sovereign citizens, which had to be intentional) are going to be the main villains of the movie, but they're more of an inciting incident.
Marvel's most consistent criticism is that its villains who aren't Loki tend to be interchangeable. Ronan the Accuser, from Vol. 1, for example, compared to what's his name from Thor: The Dark World (he's the leader of the Dark Elves. Fun fact: I just learned that in Norse mythology, Dark Elf is just another name for dwarves! That really confuses a lot of fantasy stories,) seems like the same character.
This movie makes much more of its main villain, partially because it doesn't play him as a villain at first, and partially because he's Peter's dad.
Raised by his mother until he was eight or so, Peter always wanted to know who his father was, especially because his mom said that his dad was some kind of powerful alien. People assumed she was crazy, but when Peter got kidnapped by Yondu and his Ravagers, the notion became far less unlikely.
So when his dad, Ego, shows up out of the blue, literally riding on the top of a spaceship and blowing up a bunch of fighters sent to kill our heroes, and then when he shows up looking like Kurt Russell, of course Peter's going to be enthralled.
The casting here is perfect - Russell is somewhat of a predecessor for Chris Pratt, a believable action star with a goofball personality. Seriously, watch Big Trouble in Little China if you haven't (which, at least to this white guy, is a great parody of eurocentrism.) Ego feels like he could live in a Douglas Adams story, and that's before he tells people - with thankfully not very much hesitation - that the Kurt Russell guy is actually just a small projection of himself, and that he's actually a god-like Celestial in the form of a giant brain, with the power to build an entire planet around himself.
(Incidentally, this also clears up a plot hole from the first movie, which says that Peter was able to hold the Power Stone without immediately exploding because he's literally a demigod.)
But as affable as Ego is, the purpose of the little thing he planted on Earth in the flashback that starts the movie is finally revealed. Ego wishes to transform all the planets he has visited into, essentially, clones of himself. The name is a little on the nose, but he lives up to it.
Ego's perspective actually brings in some of the themes of Lovecraftian horror. He likes the smaller forms of life just fine, but he does not think that they matter. And he attempts to convince Peter to help him in his project by playing on his desire to feel like he has a greater destiny. The problem, of course, other than how genocidal this plan is, is that even Peter is just a tool for him to achieve his goal, and when we discover the fates of Peter's man half-siblings, we know that all of this supposed kindness was just a form of manipulation.
Really, this is the classic story of an adult man meeting his father, only to discover that his deadbeat dad has only sought out the man to get something for himself. But rather than money or a kidney transplant, Ego wants his son's divine power to fuel his destructive project.
Now, on top of this, each character gets an arc - some larger than others.
Probably the biggest one aside from Peter's is Gamora's - and Nebula's. Gamora and Nebula were raised by Thanos to be killing machines, and they hate him for it. But Nebula suffered the most - her cybernetic enhancements, we discover, were all applied when she was bested by Gamora in a fight - and she lost every fight with Gamora. Nebula's hatred for Gamora is really misplaced - it was their adoptive "father" who pitted them against each other. While Thanos looms large over the two characters and the film is definitely male-dominated, the conflict between these two troubled sisters does actually give the movie some legitimate Bechdel-test compliance, which is good.
Though it now occurs to me that this is yet another plot about fathers screwing up their children.
Groot is still tiny (this movie is actually set in 2014,) and he's mostly there for adorable comic relief (one of my favorite little moments with him is in the opening titles, where Gamora, in the middle of a huge space battle, is barking orders to Groot, who just waves. She then responds with a friendly "hi" to him with the exact tone you'd use to respond to a waving toddler you see in a grocery store. Everyone loves Groot!) While baby Groot is delightful, I'm also glad to see in a post-credit scene that he's at least up to his dirtbag teenage self by the end of the movie. One movie is fine, but I want my giant tree-man weirdo back.
Interestingly, it's actually Yondu (who keeps getting autocorrected to Fondu by the website) who gets one of the biggest arcs in the movie. He's always been this really rough space pirate guy, and as someone who kidnapped a child and then conscripted him into that same dangerous life, it's not like we were set up to like him that much. But over the course of the movie, as Ego reveals that his paternal affection is more paternal manipulation, Yondu reveals himself to the real father in Peter's life. His protection of Peter earns him a mutiny, forcing him to team up with Rocket and Groot to come to the others' rescue, and he's the one who makes the real sacrifice at the end of the movie.
We're also introduced to Mantis, whose necessity to the plot is not... totally clear, but she's a likable addition to the team if she's intended to become a Guardian, and her rapport with Drax (who ironically finds her physically repulsive but empathizes with her unfamiliarity with the others' social norms) is pretty endearing.
At one point in the movie, Peter calls out Gamora for their "unspoken thing," referring to sitcom will-they-won't-they relationships, and the way that the shows would always suffer in the ratings if the characters ever did get together. It's a pretty meta way of talking about the way that these movies start to feel a bit like episodes in TV shows. Consider, for example, that Robert Downey Jr. has been playing Tony Stark since 2008, and has been in six movies (not counting post-credits scenes) and will be in at least two upcoming ones. And while it's generally pretty subtle, Marvel has allowed its characters to evolve over the course of the franchise (consider how much Steve Rogers trusts the government in his first movie as compared to his third.) It's true that with so many movies coming out, not all of them feel as important (while the first one was obviously a big deal, kicking off the whole MCU, I never really think too much about the events of Iron Man 2 or 3.) And as Peter Quill himself points out, sometimes that real character development will be resisted in order to preserve a highly profitable status quo.
But I think that the MCU has managed to avoid the common problems of sequelitis by really committing to its characters - avoiding jarring character shifts but also allowing characters to naturally change over time. In that way, I think that it's taking one of the real strengths of television and applying it to the big screen.
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