Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 Is out, press PLAY now.

Snicketysnick

Following an unexpected smash hit first outing, the loveable gang of miscreants are back to steal all the box office from Fast & Furious 8. Vin Diesel doesn't care because he's in both.

Here's a trailer which looks pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1BIid8Osg

Will this one live up to the first? Will it redeem the first for all those that hated it? (Unlikely) How much of the film will be place setting for Avengers 3? Will there be a surprise cameo that's been miraculously kept under wraps like in Thor 2?

The one thing we know for certain is that there are not 1, not 2, but 5 credit adjacent scenes, so...yeah.

I'm off to see it this afternoon and hope it's good, I enjoyed the first and hopefully this one isn't too much of a retread.

Snicketysnick

So I enjoyed this quite a bit

The soundtrack was, as expected, excellent.
I figured out Ego was the villain pretty early on, but to be fair they didn't exactly hide the fact. However I thought he was going to use Peter as an avatar so he could leave his planet behind for a longer/permanent basis so I got conned there.

Mantis was fantastic and a great pair with Drax

I was fucking dying at Peter getting a Zune, it's just so perfect and it seemed like I was the only one in my screening that joke landed on.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how effectively zero time was spent setting up Avengers 3 or Thor (other than dancing Jeff Goldblum in the credits)

Grey Ghost

I am very excited for this

Snicketysnick

The D&D thread reminded me of possibly the best part though

Yondu wrote:

I'm Mary Poppins y'all!

Hermano

Yeah this was pretty damn good, more development of the characters and solid laughs throughout

Mary Poppins was great, the Zune was really funny, the toe

Looking forward to watching it again, which isn't something I've felt with most recent Marvel movies

Dark Raven X

One thing I did not appreciate

what did Stallone mean at the end when he said Yondu didn't get it? Was he trying to say he didn't need redemption, that they loved him all along?
Cause it didn't seem like it!

One thing that I did appreciate

was Drax coming to see Mantis as a daughter surrogate. In retrospect, this might be the reason he felt so disgusted at the thought of having sex with her, that he was already feeling a familial bond. That bit at the end, where he watches her watching the fireworks and calls her beautiful, aaach my heart.

PaperLuigi44

Thoughts on this movie

Throw me in the pile of 'Not as good as the first, but still pretty good' opinions. Ego was a much more enjoyable villain than Ronan, and I like that the last film provided a tip-off with Yondu calling Peter's real father an asshole, he wasn't kidding. Great visuals, I loved the scene of Yondu, Rocket and Groot taking back the ship, Yondu's arrow especially. Fireworks scene at the end was beautiful too.

I was real happy to see Howard the Duck and Ben Browder cameos, and I immediately knew Pac-Man was coming when I saw the yellow rocks, that was my favourite joke of the film.

Some jokes didn't land for me (Drax's sctick was a bit much) and I much prefer regular Groot to Baby Groot, luckily based on the end credits he'll likely be back to full strength for Infinity War.

Predictions for Infinity War

Nebula is totally going to die trying to take on Thanos. The big guy is definitely going to rack up casualties, plural, to dispel the meta-loser status he's had up to this point, and Nebula has a clear all-or-nothing, him-or-me mindset going on. She might survive and alert the Guardians to Thanos,
but I could also see the Nova Corps doing the same.

sarukun

This movie was great, I think it was as good as the original but a very different movie.

Peter turning on a dime when he found out Ego was responsible for killing his mom... in retrospect I'm not sure how I feel about that, but generally I loved pretty much everything else.

Need to go back and see it a few more times. The whole movie was perfectly cast.

I almost lost my shit when David Hasselhoff showed up. Like, it was completely the wrong moment to laugh or react, and I'm not sure how many people in my audience actually understood the reference (the room was dead silent), but for me it was just "holy shit no waaaaaaaaaaay".

RMS Oceanic

Possibly the best Stan Lee cameo so far

Lost Salient

I just saw this today!

I liked it quite a bit! I loved all the little comics moments, and also oh my god Hasselhoff.

The song in the credits.

ADAM WARLOCK. Right?! Right??

DJ Eebs

hey, I just watched this: it's fine! Kurt Russell, Batista and Michael Rooker were definitely the MVPs, and I liked Mantis a lot!

it felt like a lot more of the jokes didn't land for me this time. rocket in particular had a lot of jokes die right off the bat, and baby groot was...fine? I don't really know what the point of baby groot was.

Marathon

My son and I saw this tonight, we both really liked it and laughed a lot.

wirehead26

Oh man the best joke was probably

Mary Poppins

Marathon

sarukun wrote: »

This movie was great, I think it was as good as the original but a very different movie.

Peter turning on a dime when he found out Ego was responsible for killing his mom... in retrospect I'm not sure how I feel about that, but generally I loved pretty much everything else.

It made sense to me

Losing his mom to cancer was the worst thing that ever happened. To find out that not only was Ego not there, but that he actually gave her the cancer would absolutely push him over the edge.

Lost Salient

The Geebs That Knows Everything About Animorphs wrote: »

hey, I just watched this: it's fine! Kurt Russell, Batista and Michael Rooker were definitely the MVPs, and I liked Mantis a lot!

it felt like a lot more of the jokes didn't land for me this time. rocket in particular had a lot of jokes die right off the bat, and baby groot was...fine? I don't really know what the point of baby groot was.

I loved Mantis.

Wyborn

This neatly solved most of my problems with the first movie, so big props for that.

You could make a strong argument for this being a better film than the first; it realizes very early on that it needs to be different from its predecessor, and then capitalizes on that need.

Each of the non-Groot cast members getting paired up with an outsider who allowed them to be characterized in ways that the rest of the Guardians couldn't support? THat was a very good call.

A few jokes didn't land quite as well for me but it went in hard on its sense of humor and I respect that hustle.

Couple extra thoughts.

Kurt Russell is the best villain in the MCU, that's good.

I liked that they resolved the film by getting rid of the non-human elements of Peter's character, I'm glad that shit won't come up again and it allowed them to go all in on it for the finale.

Drax didn't call anybody a whore! That is a good change for the better, and also made them get more creative in how mean he is.

Nebula being one of the core cast members was to the benefit of Gamora as a character and the movie as a whole.

Yondu is great.

The best visual in either Guardians movie is Drax holding Mantis over his head as the earth engulfs him.

How much moxy does it take to make an opening credits sequence as spectacle-filled as this movie's and have 90% of it be out of focus? God damn that is confidence boiled down to its essence

Mr. G

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

Wyborn

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

THat felt like a setup to a god damn gaiden story starring an older, meaner equivalent of the Guardians

I would watch the hell out of that movie, or read that comic, or whatever, but it better be a movie and have Stallone in it because Stallone being in this movie was so god damn weird it crossed over into being delightful for me

Cello

I liked this a lot! It felt like a very loose movie for the first 2/3 or so, but the final act was good enough to tie it all up neatly and make me feel good about the individual beats in retrospect. I prefer the first because of that, but it felt very much in line with some of the better Marvel comic arcs

I appreciated that the first movie was about finding family where you least expect it, and the value of those bonds, where they took a different tack in this one and looked at each character individually, with variations on the theme of how family isn't necessarily blood but who you choose to be with

I loved all the character moments where they actually opened up to each other, though a few times at the start the inevitable jokes felt a little excessive and slapdash

I did get a bit of a kick out of how Ego was basically Andross/Venom in that final fight, he just needed big dumb robot hands with flashing lights on the palms, though it was probably not intentional

Also man oh man they don't treat Quill nice here; having to see all three parents die in person? Whoof.

Romanian My Escutcheon

I already made a big post about this in the movie thread, so I'll put the cliffnotes here.

I think it doesn't punch up as much as the first one, but I think it's a better overall movie.

Good: Nebula, Yondu, Rocket, Kurt Russell, "What's so bad about that?"

Bad: Retroactively putting Peter's mom in the fridge, just about everything having to do with Ego, the High Priestess.

Lost Salient

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

I think

it explained layers of ambiguity in the actions of the Reavers, and things Yondu said, in the first movie. It also gave Yondu an emotional/plot arc, and detailed that the Reavers aren't just a group of random child abducting murderers in space. That whole thing with the "kidnapping" and the fact that "Quinn's dad is an asshole" and Yondu having made his decision to keep Peter rather than turn him over (because whoops mass child murder) wouldn't have been as well-fleshed out or impactful, and Yondu's presence as a character in the film wouldn't have made as much sense, without the Starhawk/Reavers subplot.

DJ Eebs

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

here's probably why:

Casting Stallone in that role gives that character instant resonance for people who don't recognize the character he's playing (which is a fucking lot of people). You see Yondu walk up to some other asshole and act meek and deferential, and you're wondering why you're supposed to give a shit. You see him walk up to Sylvester Stallone, you're like, "oh shit, this guy must be a big deal." There's instant respect there. TV shows do this a lot, where they don't have time to spare to explain who a guest character is, so you grab, like, Steve Austin, and half the legwork is already done.

It also helps sell the bit where Yondu redeems himself later in the movie, and the scene where he gathers his old team back together at the end is much more compelling when you've got someone like Stallone in the middle of it.

Mr. G

You cannot have a genuine line of dialogue about how you're not friends, you're family when a character played by Vin Diesel is in the scene

Romanian My Escutcheon

Mr. G wrote: »

You cannot have a genuine line of dialogue about how you're not friends, you're family when a character played by Vin Diesel is in the scene

Hey, now, let's be fair here.

Baby Groot says about as much as Dom Toretto, and he enunciates much better.

Marathon

The Geebs That Knows Everything About Animorphs wrote: »

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

here's probably why:

Casting Stallone in that role gives that character instant resonance for people who don't recognize the character he's playing (which is a fucking lot of people). You see Yondu walk up to some other asshole and act meek and deferential, and you're wondering why you're supposed to give a shit. You see him walk up to Sylvester Stallone, you're like, "oh shit, this guy must be a big deal." There's instant respect there. TV shows do this a lot, where they don't have time to spare to explain who a guest character is, so you grab, like, Steve Austin, and half the legwork is already done.

It also helps sell the bit where Yondu redeems himself later in the movie, and the scene where he gathers his old team back together at the end is much more compelling when you've got someone like Stallone in the middle of it.

watching with my son, I had to stifle a laugh when he recognized Stallone as "the guy from the Spy Kids movie"

Mr. G

I did really appreciate that there's a thousand times more notoriety for this movie, and yet they went way smaller with the soundtrack

The only songs I knew by name were the opening and closing

DJ Eebs

Mr. G wrote: »

I did really appreciate that there's a thousand times more notoriety for this movie, and yet they went way smaller with the soundtrack

The only songs I knew by name were the opening and closing

...which two were those

RT800

I think one of my favorite parts of the whole movie was when

all the golden guys are crowded around the last guy left in the dogfight cheering him on, only to immediately turn on a dime and all tell him how much he sucks when he finally gets blown up.

Mr. G

The Geebs That Knows Everything About Animorphs wrote: »

Mr. G wrote: »

I did really appreciate that there's a thousand times more notoriety for this movie, and yet they went way smaller with the soundtrack

The only songs I knew by name were the opening and closing

...which two were those

Mr. Blue Sky and Surrender

Well, I knew Brandy and The Chain too, but for the most part it was much smaller stuff than the Bowie and Runaways of the original movie

They had Spirit in the Sky and the Pina Colada Song in that dang movie

Dedwrekka

Wyborn wrote: »

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

THat felt like a setup to a god damn gaiden story starring an older, meaner equivalent of the Guardians

I would watch the hell out of that movie, or read that comic, or whatever, but it better be a movie and have Stallone in it because Stallone being in this movie was so god damn weird it crossed over into being delightful for me

He and his crew at the end of the movie are the original Guardians of the Galaxy, from the Guardians of the Galaxy 3000 series (It's complicated).

Stallone is Starhawk
Ving Rhames is Charlie-27
The slightly crazed looking woman was Michelle Yeoh is Starhawk too
Michael Rosenbaum is Martinex (The guy made out of crystal)
The alien with the two thumbs up is Krugarr
The robot head voiced by Miley Cyrus is Mainframe

DJ Eebs

Mr. G wrote: »

The Geebs That Knows Everything About Animorphs wrote: »

Mr. G wrote: »

I did really appreciate that there's a thousand times more notoriety for this movie, and yet they went way smaller with the soundtrack

The only songs I knew by name were the opening and closing

...which two were those

Mr. Blue Sky and Surrender

Well, I knew Brandy and The Chain too, but for the most part it was much smaller stuff than the Bowie and Runaways of the original movie

They had Spirit in the Sky and the Pina Colada Song in that dang movie

about the only one that seems weird that someone wouldn't pick up on (that you didn't list) is:

My Sweet Lord. That's George Harrison!

also, I dunno, I think all four of the songs you listed are arguably more well known than Spirit in the Sky and the Pina Colada song, Moonage Daydream is a deeper Bowie cut, and Fleetwood Mac is definitely a bigger deal than the Runaways

AJR

I saw this last night. I liked it a lot. Some of the humour didn't land and there were a lot of weird tonal shifts. But overall I think I liked it a bit more than the first.

Dedwrekka

James Gunn is 100% the most gleefully comic book director in that genre right now. He leans in so damn hard on this being a comic book movie.

You want comic book! Fine!

Baby tree man!
Interdimensional space monster!
Characters who tell the backstory of their race!
Head Fin!
"Taser Face"!
Celestials!
Gods!
Warp Jumps!
Magic ship repairing tech!
Juggling with explosions!
Extremely durable body proportions!
Cosmo!
Howard the Duck!
Even more characters!
A Guardians of the Galaxy from before the Guardians of the Galaxy!
Watchers!
More credit scenes!

Mr. G

If there's one major thing that I'm still not sure how it sat with me

It was killing Yondu

Peter already lost one dad, we're gonna kill the other one immediately after, too?

I'm not necessarily saying it'd be better if he survived, but...I don't know if I liked that he died too

Dedwrekka

Oh damn, I knew I recognized the admiral for the Sovereign fleet

It's freaking Crichton from Farscape!

UnbreakableVow

So, wow

Coming off the high of seeing it but I think this might be my favorite MCU movie?

I was not expecting it to be so awesome

-Tal

Twas good, as someone who didn't like the first one

-Tal

Wyborn wrote: »

Mr. G wrote: »

I don't know why Stallone was in this movie

THat felt like a setup to a god damn gaiden story starring an older, meaner equivalent of the Guardians

I would watch the hell out of that movie, or read that comic, or whatever, but it better be a movie and have Stallone in it because Stallone being in this movie was so god damn weird it crossed over into being delightful for me

yeah all those characters are the original guardians from the 60s

Apparently Stallone will play a significant role in infinity war

UnbreakableVow

The soundtrack was so good, goddamn

Spoilers

Ego was visually incredible, and coupling it with My Sweet Lord just made that whole sequence feel so surreal

Grey Ghost

I saw this! It ruled

My favorite music sequence was probably Come a Little Bit Closer

Also goddamn how is Kurt Russell so good

UnbreakableVow

I was a little disappointed by the fact that

Tango and Cash did not interact