By Taylor Johansen
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a great film! The characters, story, action, and comedy all hit the mark. And despite one or two issues, it has one thing that is very important for any film. It has heart.
The film kicks off with a bang and never really lets up for the entirety of its running time. The jokes and quips go off left and right all over the place. I’ll tell you, the comedy in this movie is fantastic. A couple jokes might hit or miss depending on your sense of humor, but for the most part, this is one of the funniest superhero movies of all time.
The action is top notch as well! Each action scene is well choreographed and very exciting to watch, with various interesting set pieces. Characters fly and flip and jump around and they make great use of the science fiction setting to introduce lots of interesting gadgets to fight with and monsters to fight against.
I’d like to point out that this movie is over two hours long and never lets up. There’s never a dull moment! The pacing is excellent; you jump between multiple plots with many characters but you never feel lost, and you really can’t feel the length of this movie when you watch. It is perfectly long; any shorter, it’d be rushed, and longer and it would drag. It’s in a perfect Goldilocks zone of movie length.
This movie is also incredibly charming! Every scene feels like it has heart, and you get the impression that everyone on screen is having fun and getting along really well. It helps that every character has great chemistry with one another and that one of the movie’s main themes is that of family. Characters bicker, joke, and fight, but you get the feeling they’re all real, emotional people with connections to one another. I won’t spoil anything, but there are actually one or two scenes in this silly superhero action flick that will put a lump in your throat.
Now there are some flaws to Guardians 2. Firstly, this film doesn’t have the same kind of staying power as the first movie. This is probably because it doesn’t bother introducing the characters or setting again, seeing as that they assume you’ve already seen the first one. Secondly, there are at least three separate antagonists in this movie, and of them, only one is really of any merit. The other two feel like afterthoughts, groups meant to just give other characters something to do while the team is split up.
In the end, I definitely recommend Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. If you enjoy superhero movies, science fiction space adventures, or off-the-wall comedy, Guardians 2 will deliver for you; I just recommend watching the first movie beforehand!