Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 Reviewed

Groot Expectations?

♦Tripwire’s Senior Editor ANDREW COLMAN got an advanced look at James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2, out from Friday 28 April in UK cinemas and out the following week, 5 May in the US. Warning: Minor spoilers ahead…

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2
Director: James Gunn;
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper

The first Guardians Of The Galaxy film is the only Marvel movie I have sat through twice – the first at a press screening, the second with my ten year old daughter. Having watched Goldfinger (which she enjoyed) I figured a moderately entertaining, superficially oddball entry in the spandex and leather canon would serve as a decent enough introduction to the Marvel Universe™ for her. And indeed, the first Guardians chapter seemed like a good choice – an unpretentious corrective to the more portentous offerings served up by the house of ideas’ film division: a lowbrow space opera featuring also-ran characters cherry picked from various Marvel titles, leavened with enough antediluvian pop cultural references to keep the more mature crowd happy. It was a surprise smash hit, lending further credence to the conviction that Marvel simply couldn’t fail when it came to the silver screen. A second instalment therefore was a fait accompli.

So there I was with Tripwire Editor In Chief Joel, at the premiere of the sequel at the Hammersmith Odeon (all right, the Eventim bloody Apollo) – a former cinema that despite the regular corporate name changes over the decades remains a hallowed venue in rock folklore. Bowie played his classic last Ziggy concert there, 44 years ago. I’ve seen Iggy, Reed, Costello et al play tremendous gigs there, along with the odd comedy show. For the first time in living memory the Odeon was showcasing a film, and Disney Studios were sprinkling their patented fairy dust for the occasion – the covering letter issued from them dictating that all guests should be seated by no later than 7pm, and that (uniquely in my experience with press screenings) there was a dress code, and it was “smart casual” – I would say that 99% of the audience leaned towards the casual rather than the smart, for what it’s worth. And from our remote, tiny, and uncomfortable seats up in the gods, we witnessed a half hour display of lasers, accompanied by a medley of reliably dated songs prior to the arrival of the main cast at 7:30 pm. The emcee came on stage and declaimed with no hint of irony that director James Gunn wasn’t a director, he was a “visionary director” – a job description that seems to apply to anybody who helms a blockbuster in Hollywood these days. And then the cast came on board, each of them fanfared individually. When they finally assembled they took a bow, and then walked straight off again.

And then the film began. Ah yes, the film – I almost forgot. It’s been a rather long and jokey intro to the critique, but the movie itself is that too (see what I did there?).

<Spoilers>

The Guardians Of The Galaxy have vanquished Ronan The Accuser. Peter Quill / Starlord (Chris Pratt) and the gang have been billeted with the task of destroying a gigantic space monster called the Abilisk while protecting some batteries for the Sovereign, an archetypal gold-plated race of narcissists led by Ayesha. Ayesha swears vengeance on our heroes who have absconded with the batteries and Nebula (Karen Gillan) the cyborg sister of Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Ayesha hires former Ravager Yondu (Michael Rooker) to track down the Guardians.

Meanwhile the Guardians crash land on a planet that turns out to be Ego, a living entity that manifests itself as Kurt Russell, who also, as it turns out, is Quill’s dad (serendipitous or what??). It’s at this point that we reach the expository hub of the film, in which we learn of Starlord’s backstory – Ego, who has terraformed his abode to resemble a cross between Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and Liberace’s palace, details his quest to find a perfect and equal son (all with some rather kitsch plasticine scale models), without mentioning his deeply sinister agenda. With him is the empath Mantis, his innocent pet and factotum, who bonds with Drax (Dave Bautista) in a somewhat predictably childish manner. Gamora however isn’t fooled, and she quickly susses out that Ego is using Starlord to destroy the universe.

The final mega-conflagration is a hot mess of several divergent plot strands all desperate to reach some kind of closure simultaneously. The Sovereign, tipped off by a particularly dense Ravager called Taserface (Chris Sullivan, or is it Brian Blessed?) attack the Guardians while Quill, Gamora and Groot attempt to obliterate Ego. Yes, it’s a video game (and in the case of the Sovereign fleet, literally) with the obligatory spectacular CGI, art direction and pyrotechnics.

But underpinning everything is a plot, script and ensemble of actors who are going through the motions – there are humorous set-pieces that parody the genre, but too many of the lighter sequences stray into the scatological drudge reminiscent of Deadpool. The concepts, borrowed as they are from some great source material, are absurdly overcooked, with certain sub-plots, such as the relationship between Gamora and Nebula, given a token look-in – they firstly try and annihilate each other, then find a common bond. It’s Marvel Comics 101 of course, but it’s very hurried, with some cookie-cutter dialogue. Even more vapid is Starlord’s reaction to finding his father – at least Captain Kirk would’ve imbued the moment with a look of awe and wonder. Here, Chris Pratt indifferently digests his new predicament – like all the other protagonists, the film doesn’t let us forget that he’s seen and done it all. At the end he even forgives Yondu, despite his grotesque collusion with Ego, which is rather too arbitrary. So not much of an audience conduit, then.

The film wants everything both ways – to be lightweight, knockabout and funny yet have motivated, nuanced characters, and to have a hyper-silly actioner at the expense of a focused tale. How can we have any concern for the protagonists when they are so existentially on autopilot throughout the proceedings? If I had to give ground (as I usually do) it’s that the movie can’t fail to amuse in places – but unlike the first effort, it tries far too hard, throwing everything at the audience including the kitchen sink, with a denouement that is such well-trodden territory, you can only imagine that the filmmakers were under the assumption that none of the target audience would’ve seen it all before. Many times. In the end the film splices Return Of The Jedi with a Pirates Of The Caribbean sequel, which (in the case of the latter) is not a direction you want a franchise to go in. In order for that chestnut about diminishing returns to not be invoked, the next sequel better try to confound expectation, at least a little. And next time, more editing and less filler, please – the film was half an hour too long. With the arrival of Adam Warlock at the end, I’d certainly like to see Jim Starlin’s magnificent saga of the troubled hero done justice. Unlikely of course, but one can dream.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 is out from Friday at UK cinemas and Friday 5 May in the US.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 review www.tripwiremagazine.co.uk