Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Earlier this week Screenjunkies claimed that while the Watchers can be used by Marvel, Uatu's rights are still at Fox, not unlike how both studios can use the Skrulls but Fox gets most of the named or important ones like Super Skrull since they have stronger ties to the FF.

I can't believe Sean Gunn is a Guardian of the Galaxy.

Two of them, even.

Fantastic movie. Good humor. Good drama, surprisingly. Incredibly human characters, ironically.

James Gunn is also doing a bad job of not making me want to see more Howard the Duck.

The most important character now has his own character poster◊.

Small thought I had while watching the movie. I did like how the quantum-asteroid field actually resembled aspects of real quantum mechanics rather then just using the term "quantum" as a genertic SCIENCE! descriptor.

Specifically, quntum mechanics tells us that particle-antiparticle pairs are constantly popping into existence everywhere and immediately annilating each other. The quanum-asteroid field just scaled this effect up to macroscopic astroids as opposed to individual particles.

There are about a dozen reasons why such an asteroid field couldn't possibly exist in real life, but I'm still going to give them credit for using the correct term for their made-up physics.

edited 6th May '17 9:18:52 AM by Falrinn

too much of this movie felt forced. character development: sit around and listen to a sob story monologue. follow up with joke. repeat.

it was still fun but it just didn't flow, and they took too many shortcuts for me to consider it a really good movie.

Interesting to note Michael Rooker did some candids apparently wearing an Infinity War crew hat.

Do we think that was a misdirect or he's somehow coming back? I feel it'd kinda cheapen one of the best parts of this movie if they brought him back.

Flashbacks, Infinity Stone magic, take your pick.

I loved the movie. I must be one of the few to prefer it over the first. The first one was fun, but I really wanted to get into the characters and the movie didn't go far enough into fleshing them out. This one had a lot more character drama and exploration and I didn't feel that any of it was forced, but that might just be me.

I wasn't a fan of the abundance of sex and genital jokes in the first act, however.

I cried watching this. Every fucking time Father and Son by Cat Stevens plays, I fucking cry.

Ego is now the second best villain in the MCU. He'd usurped Zemo in my person rankings. As soon as he mentioned putting the cancer into Peter's mom, everyone in the theater gasped.

The movie is weaker than the first one, don't get me wrong, but it's still fucking great. Probably in my top ten personal favorite MCU films.

I really liked it. I think I just might prefer it to the original and it's competing with Winter Soldier for my favorite MCU film.

Jokes were good, soundtrack was incredible, and the action scenes were gorgeous (though that last one's a given for the MCU).

Baby Groot and Yondu were the highlights of the film. Mantis felt really underwhelming. Hopefully she gets more to do in Volume 3.

Also, for once the MCU managed to do an interesting non-Loki villain with Ego. Dude had depth: incredibly unpleasant depth, but still, depth. Kurt Russel's performance was both warm and very sinister.

I'm kicking myself for not realizing that the Sovereign Admiral was played by Farscape's Ben Browder.

edited 6th May '17 8:13:08 PM by lrrose

Saw it yesterday with some friends. I might actually like it more than the first one - which is/was my subjective favorite MCU movie. There was a lot of good character work in Volume 2, and yeah Ego's a step up for Marvel Villains, outside of the final battle dragging on a bit too long and the fight being reduced to the Marvel standard of "Villain with same powerset as hero," only I guess it's a bit of a role reversal here. Pacing was the most off thing for the whole movie; an amazing opening and ending but the middle bits on Ego's planet kind of slowed things down.

Additionally, seeing the original Guardians team was awesome (and makes Yondu's passing even worse) - and I was on the edge of my seat about to freak the hell out during the entirety of the Adam Warlock stinger. He's probably my favorite cosmic Marvel character and I can sleep easily knowing that he may show up in Infinity War after all (even if it's in Part 2 after a proper intro as The Heavy in Guardians 3).

I didn't think it was as good as the first. Its character writing was its strongest point but a lot of its humor fell flat for me when it dove a little too much into toilet humor for my taste. Other than that, I found it to be a very strong movie and its use of music was superb.

I freaking lost it at Pac-Man.

I love both films, for different reasons. The character focus in 2 is no negative like I seem to keep running into.

Gunn said he didn't want to end it with Yondu's death but he felt they had to lose a Guardian to actually lend impact and add stakes.

I agree with the choice. I actually hope the Russos keep this in mind for Infinity War.

There should be at least some kind of body count in Infinity War.

It's funny...usually the Marvel movies are praised by the critics and then the more critical voices tickle in later. This time around everyone started because extremely critical of the movie, but a lot of the audience or later reviewers said that they like it just as much if not better than the first one.

One of the things that I noticed about the movie was how much time it devotes to examining the mechanics of abusive relationships. Ego really could be any narcissistic parent or partner who wants to mold their child or s/o into a perfect and totally subservient reflection of their own idealized self-image, while Mantis is a great example of a frightened or reluctant golden child or friend of a narcissist who knows what is going on but has nowhere to go. I was genuinely surprised by how well they explored the topic.

Me to Dairy Queen worker: "I am Groot."

Dairy Queen worker: "So that's one Awesome Mix blizzard?"

Didn't miss a beat. My props.

So is Peter back to normal levels?

Also, "You shouldn't have killed my mom and smushed my Walkman" is am AMAZING scene.

Peter's no longer immortal, but I'm not sure if he's still retaining some Celestial abititlies. Like, can he still hold an Infinity Stone and not die?

Yeah, I hated Ego so freaking much. What a freaking amazing villain.

edited 7th May '17 7:47:53 PM by Nightwire

Ego was the best villain in the entire MCU. What a fucking piece of shit.

For all of his bluster, he was just a grandstanding narcissist who had far too much time on his hands. He's undeniably lonely, yet all he wants to do is be the only living being in the known universe aside from poor Mantis because he's too self-absorbed to share it with anything else.

What did you expect from a guy called Ego the Living Planet

Yeah, him being named "Ego" was a giant hint that he was a narcissist.