Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Written & Directed by James Gunn

I normally try to keep these around a thousand words, but that is not going to be possible for this review. Feel free to bail now, because you’re looking down the barrel of a rather elaborate, spoiler-filled deep dive into my complicated thoughts on this movie. This year was the first year that Marvel released three movies in a single calendar year (a trend that they are on track to continue until the heat death of the universe, it seems). It’s also maybe the greatest year of Marvel movies ever, also sporting the releases of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. I feel that this year was when Marvel really started letting directors have a more distinct effect on their work. Doubtless inspired by the runaway success of letting Gunn get a little weird with the previous Guardians film, Disney realized that they didn’t have to guard their IP or their successful formula quite so stridently, and that there was still money to be made by letting directors work a little more outside the traditional Disney/Marvel box. Just this year we get a John Hughes-esque high school drama, a postcolonial-themed space farce, and this: a meditation on parenthood, loss, abandonment, growing up, and family. All clothed in the raiment of a silly space fantasy about fighting a big planet man and some gold-colored snobs. The plot begins some time after the previous film, with the Guardians (Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket, Drax, & Baby Groot) as a well-known galactic peacekeeping force, but still working for cash or trade. They’ve been hired by a society of genetically modified humanoids known as the Sovereign (the aforementioned gold-colored snobs) to defend some magical science batteries from an interdimensional monster. Their reward is Gamora’s fugitive sister Nebula, on the run since her escape in the last film. The job goes well, but Rocket steals some of the batteries on his way out, leading the Sovereign (or their hired guns) to hunt down the Guardians for most of the film’s runtime. This pursuit is further complicated by the arrival of Star-Lord’s dad, Ego (Kurt Russell), who reveals himself to be a Celestial being along with his servant Mantis (Pom Klementieff). Yondu, the blue-skinned Ravager leader from the previous movie, also gets roped into the chase, and from there the plot hurtles through chases, character revelations, and plot turns to its inevitable, explosive conclusion.

At the highest level of this probably far-too-deep dive into this summer popcorn blockbuster, I want to talk about the movie’s general tone, which is irreverent to the point of satire of the Marvel formula. The beginning credits play out over the traditional first big fight of every other Marvel movie ever. You know, the one that shows us everyone’s abilities and establishes the exciting action tone of the movie. The one that always sucks and is unbearably boring because you know nothing actually important to the plot is going to happen in it. Well, this movie still has that fight, but the entire scene is just focused on Baby Groot dancing and messing around. The fight breaks in on the dance montage a few times to hilarious effect, but it’s mostly reduced to the background noise it actually is in all those other Marvel movies. It’s a brilliant example of using camera work and blocking to create comedy. Groot is adorable, you still get to see everyone in action at least once (in case you actually did forget what their ‘things’ were), and you’re not bored out of your mind. You want mooks? We have people literally flying video game drones in this one, acknowledging the meaninglessness of bad guy cannon fodder in all of the other movies like this. What’s that? You say the big, dumb CGI slugfests that always end these things are ridiculous and over the top? Pac-Man would like to have a word with you. Did one of these movies famously do a full-team 360 degree glamour shot at its climax? We can take that down a peg, no problem. And all of it is the good kind of satire too, not that horrible lampshading thing where a writer thinks they can get away with doing something trope-y and dumb so long as they break the fourth wall acknowledging that they’re aware they’re doing something trope-y and dumb. No, this is the good stuff. Self-aware, but not formulaic, poking at the edges of the Marvel machine, but still providing the character work that makes the best of these movies shine. If there’s something that bothers you about the Marvel movies, it’s probably addressed in some way in this film, either comically or dramatically.

Then there’s the soundtrack. It’s better than the first in every way. If you ask ten people on the street, nine of them will prefer Guardians 1‘s music, because it’s more recognizable, more popular music from its time. But the soundtrack on this film is one of the best selections of music made for a movie in the 21st Century. In the first Guardians, songs were used primarily for setting tone in scenes, which is the general way that a soundtrack is used in a movie like this. Is there a really cool, punky scene? We’ll play “Cherry Bomb.” Need to set an irreverent and fun tone for your opening scene? “Come and Get Your Love” will do very nicely for that, I think. Everyone got together in the end and likes each other now? Sounds like an “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” moment. And all of that is fine! It’s a great soundtrack, it generates the feelings that it is clearly supposed to, and it’s incredible fun to boot. But the soundtrack on Guardians 2 is on a whole other level. Every single song is perfectly selected for the scene that it pairs with, adding additional layers of thematic content throughout the entire movie. The tracks might not be as recognizable, but they are carefully selected to help carry the movie’s themes from scene to scene. The use of “Brandy” as a kind of theme song and thematic centerpiece to the movie is absolutely brilliant. “Father and Son” at the end needs no further introduction or explanation. Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” is great, and for my money even better than “Fooled Around And Fell In Love” in the comparable scene in the previous movie. I could do a song by song analysis, but then this review would be even more absurdly long. Suffice to say, I consider this movie to have maybe the most finely tuned soundtrack of any film of this still-young century (the only others I would even consider are Almost Famous and Scott Pilgrim). It adds nuanced layers of depth to the narrative, and is also one of the most fun sets of tunes ever put together.

And we’re still just at the surface stuff. We haven’t even dug down into what really makes Guardians 2 both special and, in fact, superior to its predecessor. The characters and the themes of family that each of them give rise to. This movie is far smarter than any silly action blockbuster has any right to be. Every character has something to do, an arc to complete. These arcs grow organically out of the characters that were established in the previous film and take them to the next logical step in their personal evolution. At its heart, the movie belongs primarily to Rocket Raccoon, Nebula, and Star-Lord, but everyone gets an interesting hook. And all of this character work operates in service of the movie’s themes about family, with all of its messiness and insanity, in a way rarely seen in movies at all, let alone movies with this broad an appeal. Even the best of families, this movie tells us, is a wreck. They’re full of dysfunction, rivalry, deep-seated anger, and resentment. And yet, they are often the single most important thing in determining an individual’s personality and identity. In many ways, we are what our families make us, and to ever be anything else we must find a new family to help us redefine ourselves. It’s a tricky, often painful process, but one that almost everyone goes through in one way or another at some point. Every single character and their story in this film contributes to this theme, while still remaining a consistent character, doing things that it makes sense for them to do. It’s a masterpiece of screenwriting and execution that manages to pull off basically everything it attempts. In order to see that more clearly, though, we’re going to have to break it down a little further.

Peter Quill is, and has been, a child in a permanent state of arrested development. His behavior, throughout both of these movies, has been primarily motivated by need and petty dissatisfaction. And even though he ended the last movie making some friends and accepting his mom’s death, his character didn’t fundamentally change. He has abandonment issues that stem from growing up in a broken home and then in a dysfunctional one (the Ravagers) for his entire childhood. This movie preys directly on those fears and insecurities (and also on his, pun intended, ego) to set a perfect trap for him: a father who was absent not because he wanted to be but because he had to be. A semblance of what he perceived as normal and always felt that he didn’t have. A figure made in the perfect image (later more literally) of what he thought he was missing. As if to drive home the point, the first major thing that he and Ego do together is play a game of catch, the most stereotypical father-son activity in the zeitgeist. Ego is one of the best villains in any superhero movie ever because his story is so close to that of the real life villains that we meet every day, hero of their own stories and firmly enshrouded in their own sense of self-righteousness. He deceives women as to his purpose the same way that frat boys trick girls into upstairs rooms at parties. He just kills his afterwards. He plays the loving father just long enough to trick his son into coming over for a weekend, before revealing that he’s the same old monster he ever was, just with a temporarily made-up face. He’s pathetic, but powerful. Despite his name, he’s really the swarming id of mankind made manifest, and he will use anything and anyone to get what he wants. Quill has to realize that you have to choose your true family, and that that often has nothing to do with biology.

Rocket Raccoon and Yondu form a counterpoint to this. As Yondu himself says before the finale of the film, they are the same. Injured individuals who drive away anyone who might get close to them because of fear, secure in the knowledge that if they choose to love no one, it was at least their choice. Where Quill is desperate for connection, both of them are terrified of it. Both of them suffered abusive childhoods, and are constantly passing on that abuse to everyone around them. They are cruel, and petty, and often do things for which they don’t even understand their own motives. Throughout the course of the movie, each has to acknowledge the connections that they have been denying for some time now, and learn to let people in. For Rocket, it means acknowledging his fear of intimacy, and finally learning to actually trust that the people he loves will be there for him, even if he doesn’t feel he deserves it. For Yondu, it means finally admitting that what he feels for Quill is more than just utility or pragmatism. His bluster and violence cover a vulnerability that is raw and aching, and that he can only come to terms with through his own self-sacrifice. It’s why his death is so meaningful in this film, perhaps the most meaningful death thus far of the entire MCU. It’s through his death that Rocket finally realizes what Yondu learned too late: that you are allowed to choose your own family, and that you are allowed to love and trust them no matter who you are.

And the only actual family members in the story, Nebula and Gamora, bring this to light in yet another way. They were sisters growing up in every meaningful sense of the term, but their upbringing was endless manipulation and abuse by their shared father figure, Thanos. Like so many in similar situations, they have both (to one degree or another) blamed each other on some level for the abuses they suffered. For them, healing means being honest about their shared trauma, which they can only do after a final, brutal fight. Nebula starts the movie as a bundle of rage and angst, incapable of understanding that her sister was in any way a victim of the same privations she suffered as a child. Her suffering was so brutal that she is incapable of thinking other beings capable of decency or kindness. It is only through the repeated sacrifice of those around her that she finally comes to understand that there even are loving relationships that aren’t based around manipulation. It’s obviously a slow process, but she is perhaps the character that changes the most in the movie. Quill at least had his loving and kind mother, and Rocket has always clearly cared for Groot, but Nebula has never had anything. She finally finds what may be the first real home and real family she has ever known in the end.

And all of this sounds simplistic and maudlin, but it absolutely isn’t. Every single beat of the above lands, and lands hard. I spend most of the last quarter of this movie near (or, honestly, at) tears every time I watch it, and I’ve seen it multiple times. It’s just so well-written, and the characters so involving, that it captures my heart anew every time I sit down for it. Even the characters with less to do have something meaningful to contribute. Drax, the only character of the group to ever actually attain a real family, has to learn to move on with this new one. The scene where he’s looking out over the fields and Mantis touches his shoulder and begins sobbing is just so powerful without the need for a single word of dialogue. And Mantis herself is a prototypical foundling or orphan, brought up entirely in isolation, and only ever appreciated for her practical use. She is innocent and childlike and, yes, beautiful (on the inside at least, as Drax points out). I’ve heard some say that this movie deflates its drama with jokes too often, but I just don’t see it. The only moments that are deflated are the big, cheesy, Action Movie moments. Each emotional beat for each major character is allowed to land. This movie can mock the bombast and self-importance of the Marvel Blockbuster all it wants, so long as it leaves me enough time to shed a tear for every noble sacrifice and beautiful act of love that fills the finale of this movie. Every character contributes to the sense of forming a family defined not by biology or utility, but by love and respect. The kind of group that you will sacrifice yourself and give anything for. A family, in every sense of the word.

And now I am approaching the end of my long-winded discussion about this movie that I have likely spent too much time praising. There is so much more to talk about, but there are only so many hours in the day. It has amazing visuals, tilting into the surreal during Rocket & Yondu’s takeover of the Ravager ship. It has a plot that builds naturally out of character beats and progresses in an inevitable but reasonable way toward its conclusion. It somehow has great character moments and a fulfilling story for every single character in its rather large cast. It has an ending that is beautiful and moving and heartbreaking. It is everything that a big, loud, summer blockbuster about fighting a big planet man and some golden snobs could possibly be. I don’t think the Marvel machine has ever topped this one, and I’m not sure that it ever will. This movie gives you all of the fun that a big, over-the-top comic book movie can offer, while also having the leanness and purpose of vision that a smaller ensemble cast offers. Even if it’s themes are simple and childlike, that should in no way be held against their brilliant execution here. In fact, it should perhaps be an additional accolade, because getting the modern cynical moviegoer to accept the importance of love and familial connections in their life is as difficult as, well, getting Rocket Raccoon to admit why he stole those batteries. This movie is an absolute triumph, and is the high water mark for Marvel movies for now (and maybe forever).

Overall:

Stray Thoughts:

• I had forgotten about the fourth wall-breaking camera bump in the intro scene. It made me grin.
• Bonus points for Quill being from Missouri.
• The arcade noises in the Sovereign fleet are adorable.
• The Stallone cameo is excellent. Just the kind of character he’s great at playing. Big, bluff, but deep down kind.
• I find it fascinating that Rocket & Nebula are the two that will be featured in our next Avengers movie, since they are absolutely the two characters around whom this movie’s theme most closely revolves.
• Sad, beer-soaked Groot is adorably pathetic, and the fin retrieval scene is absolutely classic visual comedy.
• Ego’s speech about great men being called to a higher cause is excellent: it’s so wonderfully self-important and douchey.
• Hasselhoff also gives a lovely one-shot cameo.
• “The crabby puppy is so cute he makes me want to DIE!”
• This movie has so many amazing jokes. Within, like, two minutes in the final fight we get the screaming “Who’s got tape?” conversation and Michael Rooker yelling, “I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!” It’s a treasure trove of not-boring mook fighting.
• After Credits scenes: This one has, like, five of them, and they’re all great. I’ve already wasted too much of your time, but the tease of Adam, the jokes about the Watchers and Groot, it’s all amazing.
• Stan Lee Cameos: The only movie with two, so it obviously wins!