"And if you don't love me now"

Rating: 9/10 (30 April 2017)

"Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2" benefits from an already scintillating cast of characters that are put into a plethora of undeniably vibrant and colorful adventures. Cutting through the childish jokes and somewhat random and unexpected conflicts, the film splits and presents the Guardians into groups that may not click with audiences at first. However, once the film picks up its pace near its third act it becomes nothing but pure glorious and genial fun as good as the first one at best.
Part of what made the original so brilliant was how organic the portrayal of its rag tag characters was. They were all broken, weird and made decisions that showed each character. The best thing you can do for your characters in the film and to have the audience like them is if you put them in a situation that is hard and have them make a decision that will reveal character. Lots of that showed up with Star Lord i.e. him saving Gamora in space and lending her his helmet instead of using it for his own gain. Groot sacrificing himself for the team. Rocket saving the people on the ground. Drax shooting Nebula to defend Gamora as a statement of their friendship and many more. However for this film, right from the start, the whole team gets on an adventure on a very small and preventable mishap. There would be some Empire Strikes Back parallelisms here if you look at how the film is structured, such as how they split each character into groups and let them develop. Some would say this was a very bad decision to make, splitting the main cast when them being together was probably the best part of this franchise. Despite this, the film ties up all loose ends up until the end and this film truly makes the team realize how much they needed each other. For the first half, the film was very slow and had a very weird and inorganic flow. Lots of things kept happening so fast and sometimes become unbelievable, and you would sometimes roll your eyes in the jokes that didn't work at all. Despite all of this, that shouldn't take you away from the joyous and unorthodox world Marvel strikes you back in and added a whole lot more. Every frame in this film is vibrant and are never dull unlike the bleak and standard colors that plague the usual MCU films like Civil War and Ultron. Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista and to an extent Vin Diesel all do their jobs so significantly well and they are all such a joy to watch individually. The humor is definitely out of this world and may seem very childish considering the context of a very different galaxy that differs from our own culture. But even then the saturated humor is cancelled out by the once again amazing soundtrack and vivacious world building. Kurt Russell as Peter's Dad works as this incredibly innocuous character that serves and benefits Peter's own mysterious arc. Michael Rooker as Yondu also serves as an interesting and unexpected addition to an already jam packed cast. Everything at the start feels unhinged, there is an unclear goal, and the stakes haven't risen. With no goal influencing a character and everything feeling static a bit static, the conflict/s at the start sometimes feel lackluster. It is when the huge reveal happens wherein you are given all the dots to connect, you finally get a goal for each character, and you finally feel the stakes being raised. Although, maybe some would say it should've been earlier, the fact that the reveal happens to open up the third act all the more shows the growth each character achieved throughout the course of the first and second act making each of their actions seem more emotionally packed and more worth it. The action scenes in this film are just absolutely amazing as well accompanied with an astounding soundtrack, definitely up there with Doctor Strange. James Gunn has also mastered hitting up the galaxy with balls to the wall weird and hilariously intricate details. All of these that add to the already diverse and magnificent world of the MCU. In the end, GOTG 2 compliments an already established cast of characters from a bunch of nobodies to a legendary pop icon for years to come.
Verdict: 8.5/10