Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2

[shallowness]

I enjoyed it, although not in a way that goes very deep, but I might yet see it again. And now, spoilers.

I was expecting to have Farscape feelings by proxy from this film as per the last one, so I was delightfully surprised by Ben Browder turning up (as Elizabeth Debicki’s sidekick) essaying his Peacekeeper accent, which…Anyway, marvellous job whoever thought of that. I was probably more excited than I am when the Russo brothers get someone from Community to cameo in their films.

The best thing about the film = BABY GROOT! Almost everything about Baby Groot, basically. I am not sure if Baby Groot is more adorable than Gizmo, but it’s close. The film had me from the first scene with all the Guardians, thanks to him – he just wanted to boogie, never mind that the others were fighting a giant, thieving alien monster. The scene also showed off the film’s sarky sense of humour and conveyed that this lot have worked together a fair bit. I loved that they all seemed to have got into Peter’s music.

I was a bit worried that this was going to be all about father-son issues with Kurt Russell playing Peter’s biological dad, and there was quite a bit of ‘who’s your daddy?’ business ("He may be your father, but I'm your daddy!", but it was almost balanced by the general found family thrust of the film – the Guardians have each other, and Gamora and Nebula started working through their issues. Although it’s hard to forget what Nebula and Yandu have done right before our eyes in this film, let alone the first, and I think the film did forget or not make enough of the fact that Gamora saw her birth family being killed before her very eyes and how that might impact her views on Peter’s relationship with Ego.

I don’t get how the Avengers can deal with Thanos without Gamora and Nebula having some play (and I wondered if Ego had tried to take over Asgard – I didn’t spot that he had), but I’m not entirely au fait with Marvel’s grand plans.

It’s occasionally self-indulgent, but it’s so entertaining, it's easy to forgiv, and the glorious visuals offset by the music is fun too. It did a better job than most sequels of bringing most characters back and givig them about the right amount of action to do (oh, Rocket!) – and there’s a boyishness about Pratt that totally kept young Peter i nmind that worked here and there’s this whole bit that made me think of The Lego Movie’s master builders – while bringing in new and interesting characters (hi, Mantis!) It features two unsurprising cameos and one that I think is going to be very 2017 given the Baywatch movie.

It’s worth staying for all the credits because they have nice touches ‘no raccoons or tree life were harmed in the making of this movie’. The scenes are mainly gags and setting up volume 3 (no more Baby Groot, although Teen Groot might be a laugh). I presume Sylvester Stallone and his old gang were a comics reference.

Trailers: a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: this is the last one, honest which featured intriguing beasties and not enough Barbossa, but I think I’m bound to see it anyway. There was also a trailer for Spider-Man vs. Iron Man that left me underwhelmed, but conversely, I think I want to see Baby Driver (Edgar Wright mashes up The Fast and the Furious and Drive?) now.