Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Continues the Great Run of Marvel's Most Unconventional Team

Rating: 9/10 (13 May 2017)

*Minor Spoilers Ahead* We briefly join Meredith Quill (Laura Haddock) as she's having a joyride with her boyfriend Ego (a CG version of Kurt Russell). They pull in at a Dairy Queen but Ego takes her down the hill behind it to show here an extraterrestrial flower he's planted in the ground. They hug and Meredith remarks how she fell in love with a spaceman.
A lot is expected from this movie. When you serve up an excellent and memorable movie the first time around, you not only have to meet that expectation but surpass it. James Gunn and the crew had an enormous amount of pressure and I think they expanded on the Guardians universe about as well as they could have. This movie is even more impressive visually, the colours explode around the characters. They create an even more vibrant and fun galaxy to exist in. The makeup is just as good if not better. I love the fact that they did the makeup practically on characters like Yondu, Drax, Gamora, Ayesha and Nebula; it just looks better with how much CGI we're getting nowadays. They also travel to new and interesting environments and it's good they weren't content just to recycle the CGI locations. I think this is an even better looking movie than the first one and considering the first one was no slouch in that department, that's high praise.
The first Guardians really launched a few careers besides Gunn as a blockbuster filmmaker. Chris Pratt took a risk doing the first one and it payed off handsomely. He's consistent as Peter Quill and continues doing excellent work. Zoe's a sci-fi vet and she gets a more complete arc to work with here. She never gets her due and she's good here. Dave Bautista as Drax was even funnier and he continues to grow as an actor. Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper lend some more solid voice work. Several supporting characters get bigger chunks of screen time. Michael Rooker shines as Yondu, Karen Gillian gives Nebula some more dimension and I liked that Sean Gunn had a bigger role. Kurt Russell was perfect and he stole the show for me. He sells his emotional beats as Ego and you want to believe in his growing relationship with Peter. Pom Klementieff was decent even if I was kind of so-so on her character and I liked Elizabeth Debicki a lot. She's an underrated actress and she's pretty versatile.
I think the only real weakness in the first movie is that Ronan makes for a forgettable villain. It wasn't Lee Pace's fault, it just seems to be a weakness that most of the Marvel movies share. Guardians Vol. 2 obscures the major threat to our heroes for a lot longer in the movie than it normally takes. I had an inkling on who would step forward but I think the movie did a really great job of creating a well rounded character to put in that spot. They develop a strong and personal relationship with one of the Guardians and you want to believe that they're going to be best friends forever. Even though if you pay attention, you can see the bread crumbs being dropped. So Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 even pulled off a rare feat for Marvel, an excellent villain to match up against the hero.
This movie excels at being funny and it has some very emotional moments. The only real criticism of this movie that I have (other than comparing it to the first one) is that some of the moments feel a little forced. They make a concerted effort to give each of the characters their proper time and normally that's a good thing. But I felt like the movie was a little pushy in getting some of the emotional beats across. I don't want to come across as a nit-picker but they seemed less organic and a little overstuffed because everyone had to have a character arc. Perfect balance is hard to achieve and while this movie didn't fail, it didn't perfect it either.
Guardians of the Galaxy was not only one of the best Marvel entries of the past couple of years but one of the best of Marvel's complete run as a movie production company. It completely blew me away, I love sci-fi adventure and while it fit in the larger Marvel cinematic universe, the movie wasn't afraid to deliver something off-beat and fresh. It gave us new Marvel characters that were different and took us to new places that we wouldn't see in other Marvel films. It was extremely funny but it had the plot and characters to back it up. I'm praising the first entry so thoroughly because one of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 unfortunate short-comings is that it doesn't come across as being as fresh or as inventive. It's not really fair because once you've already been introduced to something, you can't be re-introduced to it. So this movie really needed to do something amazing to replicate that feeling and while it more than justified itself as a sequel, I can't put it on the first one's level. It shored up certain minor short-comings from the first entry (delivering a genuinely memorable villain and adding interesting character development across the board) but it didn't hit that high benchmark. I still really dug it though, it would be more of an 8.5/10 but I don't feel bad rounding it up to a 9.