Guardians of the Solar System

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2017)

When Guardians of the Galaxy came out in the late summer of 2014, the world once again fell in love with an admirably ambitious, yet uncharacteristically shaggy space opera. It was at once a travelogue, an adventure story and an ensemble piece that smartly borrowed from golden-age blockbuster ephemera to give us something truly ballsy for the time. The fact that the potential franchise was yet another loop in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's rapidly expanding armor was but the icing on a very fulfilling and very expensive cake.
Three years later, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is put in a very precarious situation. Due to the MCU being a nay unstoppable force at the cineplex, the exploits of Peter Quill and his band of bickering mercenaries no longer have the element of surprise. Quality special-effects, impeccable casting, expert-level character work are now not just unexpected surprises, their bare minimum pass/fail aspects of these kinds of movies. Show me a villain with world-destroying ambitions; yawn. Find me a roguish, white, male, American lead with daddy issues; next. You have a talking racoon, they have a Hulk.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 picks up with our motley crew cashing in on their savior status while working for a civilization known as The Sovereign. After defeating an inter-dimensional monster to the crunchy tunes of Electric Light Orchestra, the plot is kicked into high gear when Rocket (Cooper) steals a handful of powerful batteries. This puts the Guardians on a collision course with The Sovereign, Yondu (Rooker) and his returning band of space pirates, the revenge seeking Nebula (Gillan) and a new character, that just might hold the key to Peter's (Pratt) lineage.
Part of the reason for the original film's success was its ability to feel fresh and new while never doing anything actually risky. Even so, the finished product managed to artfully ape irreverence and feel organic; a mix that Marvel fans ate up if only for the sake of novelty. Here however everything seems to be stapled into the same world as the rest of them, complete with perfectly mimicked story-beats and predictably playful Easter egg hunts. If one were to pick a spiritual forebear to Guardians 2 it'd be Iron Man 2 (2010) who similarly took the runaway success of its prequel and made everything more self-contained and character oriented. Some may claim that means it's more intimate, I'd claim it feels like the series is running in place until the rest of the larger universe catches up.
At least this movie isn't as sloppy and emotionally empty as Iron Man 2. We can thank that on the fact that the Guardians are a goofball ensemble and not just one goofball pining for a liquid lunch. James Gunn's script, while lacking the gusto of the original, takes a few decent cues from Empire Strikes Back (1980). It finds an opportunity to split our cast early and forces them to examine their own particular hangups to the structure of clever bookmarked editing. This guarantees that if a plot point does become sloppy or uninteresting at least the integrity of the film proper doesn't suffer for it.
Guardians 2 also benefits greatly from a unifying theme, that being an honest examination of family and what being part of a close-knit group of people truly means. Both Peter and Gamora (Saldana) go through struggles of blood and birth, Yondu opens up about his fidelity to Quill, Rocket comes to terms with knowing the very people he's pushing away aren't going to give up on him. If a short straw is to be drawn thematically it goes to Bautista's Drax whose only real task is to assimilate newcomer Mantis (Klementieff) into the fold. Yet even then his mirthful laugh and steely unironic gaze serve some of the only moments of true feeling in a movie alarmingly light on them.
At its best, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a mildly entertaining romp through a visually pleasing space-age universe complete with a likable gallery of oddball characters. At its most craven and cynical however, the film feels like nothing more than a stopgap. One who clumsily mistook the forfeiting of stakes for irreverence and thought a barrage of forced 80's references was a substitute for wit.