Comic-book movie sequels should be easier. No, seriously. When you’re launching a new character or group of characters — as 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy did — you’re required to tell an origin story, with all of the accompanying throat-clearing and table-setting. Follow-ups in this cinematic genre, one that’s based on a serialized storytelling form where there are literally hundreds of additional stories just sitting out there, should offer more freedom to deepen the characters. Instead, most of them fall into an identical trap: the same as before, except bigger and more.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 finds writer/director James Gunn taking an approach that’s a strange but ultimately satisfying mix of those two approaches. Yes, in some ways it is a “bigger and more” variation on the first film, but it’s also a richer variation. Where Guardians of the Galaxy had to spend time bringing the team together, this time around, Gunn brings the team together.
He does so with a set-up that was telegraphed in the first film, based on the previously mysterious paternity of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). After the team — Quill, Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) — makes enemies of a haughty alien race called The Sovereign, they are saved by a powerful entity called Ego (Kurt Russell), who claims to be Quill’s long-absent dad. Complications naturally arise amidst this happy family reunion; The Sovereign seek-out Quill’s old captor/captain Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his crew to track down the Guardians for their insolence, while Gamora’s sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) continues her homicidal brand of sibling rivalry.
Throw in another new character in the empathic alien Mantis (Pom Klementieff), and you have the makings for another one of those sequels where upping the character count somehow becomes synonymous with topping what came before. Even the climactic threat feels like Gunn and the Marvel brain trust sat down and wondered, “What if we somehow threatened the existence of every planet, everywhere?”
The reason it all works, though, is that Gunn has every one of those characters pulling more or less in the same story direction. Where the original version collected a bunch of misfits into a single team for one necessary mission, Vol. 2 asks the necessary, obvious question — “what keeps them together after that?” The answer is their individual brokenness and isolation. Every one of them—except perhaps for the blissfully ignorant Baby Groot — has a traumatic past experience with family members, or a sense of being left alone in the world. A dysfunctional family dynamic might be a familiar direction for superhero-team internal conflict, but Gunn sells it with a surprisingly genuine sense of emotional consequence.
He’s also just one goofy dude when it comes to crafting a franchise epic, which goes a long way towards leavening that sense of blockbuster bloat. Gunn isn’t the most gifted filmmaker when it comes to choreographing an action sequence, but he dodges that weakness by turning some of his set pieces into elaborate shaggy-dog jokes. The opening sequence finds Baby Groot dancing obliviously to E.L.O.’s “Mr. Blue Sky” while the rest of the team takes on a fire-breathing tentacle menace in the background; another huge showdown is interrupted by the search for a piece of tape. As much as the Marvel Universe imposes a certain set of expectations on filmmakers, Gunn manages to incorporate a welcome eccentricity — with Bautista’s Drax generally stealing the show — between the classic-rock chestnuts of the soundtrack.
One of the more talked-out elements of Vol. 2 ahead of its release was the reported inclusion of no fewer than five mid- and post-credits scenes. The reports are true, including the obligatory tease for the next installment. Yet those scenes somehow don’t add to that sense of overkill, especially when one of them continues that theme of family relationships in a particularly amusing riff. Those relationships, too, can be sprawling and messy; Gunn generally pulls them together in a way that shows how saving the galaxy requires a sense of who you’re saving the galaxy for.
