Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

While visiting my friend two weekends ago, we also ended up watching the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. Apparently she's taken it upon herself to be the person who makes me watch those films, although I'd have gotten around to it eventually. I don't know when, precisely, but it was on my to-do list, after several other movies on Netflix I've been meaning to watch.

The movie's approach seems to be "more". Audiences loved dancing Groot? Let's have the entire opening sequence be a gag about dancing Groot. Let's have more of Drax being blunt and obliviously mean, with Mantis slotted into his role as the one who doesn't understand what's being said about and around her. I guess that's typical for sequels. Just do the same thing you did last time, but more of it. Wasn't that a line in that 22 Jump Street movie, that was itself an extended joke about the repetitive nature of sequels*?

Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy parts of it. The part where Rocket wages a guerilla campaign against the Ravagers. Quill getting excited about all the stupid things he could potentially create with this Celestial power. Or the part where Quill is able to fight Ego successfully because he actually embraces his emotions instead of playing Cool Guy who is just out to flirt with hot women or whatever. He's been trying to resist that development, stay in adolescence, so that was a step forward at least.

There are a lot of character threads, some work better than others. They all suffer a little from there being so many of them competing for time. There are two with Yondu, the ideas are good, but the movie is a bit heavy-handed with them, especially the parallel between him and Rocket. And I do like the scene at the end, where Star-Lord realizes Rocket sees similarities between himself and Yondu, and fears his odd family will abandon him. I don't think the movie ever wants us to think that's a real possibility, but I thought maybe it would do more to play up Rocket's growing fear about it. Things he was misinterpreting but we could understand why he was doing that.

Nebula's story did not go at all where I expected, but it was interesting. Nebula's directing anger at Gamora that should probably be going at Thanos (along with all the anger she's already directing at him), but you can at least see why she's doing that. And it plays into the film's larger deal with people dealing with old relationships, and how that goes. Gamora and Nebula's plays out one way, Yondu's with the other Ravager factions plays out another, and Ego trying to build something with Quill goes a third way. I suppose that last one isn't dealing with an old relationship so much as trying to create a new one, but Ego's his father, he was supposed to be there to form a relationship.

The idea of Yondu's group as outcasts among their own was fine, but the Stallone cameo, *shrug*. I think I was supposed to be more excited than I was, and I had actually forgotten that he was in there prior to watching the movie. The Sovereign were just ineffectual enough that I think the movie avoids the Too Many Villains Problem. It keeps brushing up against it as problems crop up, but then a threat is either revealed to be a joke, or they switch sides, or they all get killed. So there's usually not more than two immediate problems at a time.

There are so many different pieces in this movie, and my problem was that several of them either didn't interest me at all, or only interested me occasionally. I think I was only really invested in the parts that involved either Rocket or Nebula, and the rest was, not what I was there for. Also, I don't think Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana have any romantic chemistry whatsoever, so the will-they/won't-they stuff about Quill and Gamora doesn't really work. I'm sure they're trying, but it doesn't work. Gamora has to spend too much time being Team Mom, or the Responsible One. Rocket's smart, but just does whatever he wants, and the other three act like varying degrees of morons. So, Drax was right.

* This is a definite concern I have as the release date for Deadpool 2 approaches. Too much of certain elements from the first film in the sequel could make it unbearable. Great, now I'm talking myself out of being excited for the one movie coming out this year I was excited about.