Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.2 Falls Short in Comparison To Its 1st Installment
Marvel have a pretty packed schedule in 2017 for releasing their superheroes movies. Earlier this year we fell in love hard with “Logan” for its sheer brutality and honesty. In April 2017, the gang in Guardians of The Galaxy return with its sequel and we’re pretty stoked to watch it since Marvel promise a lot of stuff happening in the movie. First of all, it was revealed on the teaser that Star Lord or Peter Quill will finally meet his biological father, Ego (played by Kurt Russell) and have a chance to uncover his true self. Second one, a lot of renown names in Hollywood were set to appear or make a cameo on the film like Sylvester Stallone, Michelle Yeoh, and Ving Rhames. Third one it is very interesting to see what kind of story will they undergo and how they will finally link to the rest of Marvel Cinematic Universe series. So we headed to the cinema with such high hopes only to find out that, well the first movie was better. James Gunn as the director sets this movie on a far more comedic tone than the predecessor. We could see many jokes, satire, jabs thrown around here and there since the beginning. Some of the jokes were misplaced and became a killjoy when the scene went serious.
On this sequel, Peter Quill character portrayed by Chris Pratt was still the main attraction and became the core plot to unify the gang. However his influence decreased a lot compared to the first one. Yes, he is still in front and center of the gang, but nope, he did not grab all the screen time or dialog or gold punchlines. In return, we got to see a serious character development from Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Yondu (Michael Rooker). Instead of pushing the spotlight on individual character, we feel that their bond as a group was more emphasized on the sequel. The villain on this film was pretty strong, but it actually was not very difficult to defeat. The climax on the final fight on the first series gave a surprising fact that Peter Quill did not die while holding infinity stone. That kind of surprise did not appear on the second, the heroic part was predictable but still managed to touch our hearts. The appearance of Nebula (Karen Gillan) was also intriguing as she finally confronted her enemy which is her own sister Gamora (Zoe Saldana). There was a little twist on their relationship that we did not want to spoil here, so you’d better watch it yourself. Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) is an ultimate heart crusher as whatever he does was extremely adorable.
Moreover, Marvel outdid themselves by giving us five mid-credit and post-credit scenes. However only one of the scene actually hints on the born of Guardians of The Galaxy’s future villain. Other scenes might be important and we missed to see it, but for us, they were no more than comic relief (well, the whole movie is comical though). For Indonesians, some of you might not get the joke offered in this movie. But don’t worry you are not alone as we witnessed an uncomfortable silence in the theater when the casts actually threw great punch lines. On another note, Guardians of The Galaxy has one of the best soudntrack for a movie. Just like Awesome Mixtape Vol.1, Awesome Mixtape Vol.2 comprised of songs popular in the 70’s or 80’s and the tracks from Cat Stevens, Fleetwood Mac, Sam Cooke and Looking Glass make the film more attractive. An avid fan of MCU must watch this movie, and for those expecting the same quality of the first one, save up some money for next Marvel movie. Thor Ragnarok anyone?
