Okay, finally saw it.
So this movie's kinda mixed for me. I feel it does a few things way better than the first one. The biggest one was probably fleshing out the characters. This movie made the relationships between the main characters more believable. Especially with Yondu, who I was incredibly surprised to see stole the show. When I initially saw him making a return in the trailers, I thought they just brought him back for him to do a bunch of random cool shit with his magic arrow or whatever. Granted, he did do a lot of that, but there was so much more to him.
I also liked how the story cleared up a lot of questions that I had in the first movie, namely, why the fuck did Yondu kidnap Quill. A lot of the backstory between Quill and Yondu was also elaborated, and when you found out the real reason Yondu didn't take him back to Ego, you no longer felt that bad for Quill being kidnapped.
Ego (not "EGON", goddamn it) was a great villain, much better than Ronan imo. One of the reasons was that, he was a legit cosmic level threat. Ronan was a scrub by comparison, and it was one of biggest things that aggravated me about the first movie. You're the Guardians of the Galaxy, so you have to fight people that can be a threat to a whole
galaxy. It's not that hard!
One consistently good thing that I will say about both movies is that they have incredible art design. Nearly everything looks so damn beautiful, particularly Ego's planet (which, I guess would be Ego himself?). Everything is just so bright, colorful, and otherwordly. The shots in space have this wonderful ethereal feel to them. It's just so gorgeous.
Finally, the antenna chick was the funniest character in the movie, imo.
Okay, now the bad stuff...
The goddamned jokes. Not so much the jokes themselves, but there's two major issues with how they're used in the movie. The first is that Gunn and his writers just do not know when to fucking quit. They may have a idea for a joke or a gag, which seems perfectly good on paper, but then they just beat it to death. The most glaring example of this is the Taserface scene. This was legit funny...for 3 minutes, but somehow gets extended to 15 (okay, maybe it was closer to 10, but it FELT like 15). Yes, we get it, it's a stupid name, stop trying to repeatedly explain to the audience why it's stupid. That just makes you stupid. Stupid.
The second problem with the jokes is that they're done at completely inappropriate times. A good example of that is when Ego transforms into David Hasselhoff to provide Quill a familiar face that he could relate to. Which would have been fine...if it wasn't done 30 seconds after you just told him that you murdered his goddamned mother! Then there's that scene where Quill and Ego are fighting and they turn into Skeletor and Pacman, respectively. Again, would have been a fine gag if it wasn't for the fact that it's done an incredibly climactic moment and that you wouldn't think Quill would be feeling in a very comedic or creative mood by that point.
Then there's the Gold douchebags. When the movie started, if you were like me, you might have gotten the impression that these guys were just some one off joke characters that had no purpose other than to provide an excuse to have a major space battle scene in the beginning. But no, turns out, these assholes keep on fucking showing up all throughout the film. Now, even that might have not been a big deal... if it wasn't for the post credits scene. Now these dickheads, which started off as comedic fodder, are now actually have a significant role in the events for the next movie? Come the fuck on!
Then we have the music. I might get criticized for this, but I don't care. I don't really have anything substantive to say, but I just didn't like most of the songs. Not a fan of 70s funk, so take that how you will.
And how can I forget Baby Groot? Probably my most hated character in the film. Yeah, I said it. And you know what else? I also think Hitler was right!
Finally, last two points. 1) Ego is not a celestial, he's a goddamned planet. There's a huge difference!
2) Why the hell was Stallone in this film? He added absolutely nothing to it.
So overall, I think I marginally like Guardians 2 more than the first one, but truth be told, I'm not a fan of either movie and think they're (especially the first one) immensely overrated, so that that how you will.
