Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2!

A little bit of background on Nebula, I never read the comic books so this comes as a dark and very twisted surprise.



Nebula cuts a starkly tragic figure in the otherwise poppy landscape of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A quick (and, fair warning, morbid) refresher: Her entire family was murdered by intergalactic ultra-baddie Thanos, who then raised Nebula as his own along with the orphaned Gamora. The girls grew up constantly pitted against each other in fights and tests of strength, thanks to their warmongering stepdad’s twisted emphasis on brute power above all.

Each time Gamora beat Nebula in a fight—which was every time, without fail—Thanos would do the unthinkable: He would torture his stepdaughter, dismembering her and replacing parts of her body with cybernetic enhancements. The aim, as he told her, was to shape her into her sister Gamora’s equal. As Nebula remains only too hyper-aware, he never quite reached that goal.

Driven by rage and a Loki-level inferiority complex (nothing makes the god of mischief’s princely angst look more laughable than Nebula’s life story), the antiheroine does attain some measure of redemption in Guardians 2. Along the way, she bares surprising depth and vulnerability—and renews her focus on a new life goal: killing her torturer, Thanos. It’s one of the most impactful emotional arcs of the film.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Star Karen Gillan on Her Directorial Debut and Nebula’s Return to the Light

 

The soundtrack is just eh, not as good as the first one though.

 

Sly's in this? Neato. I think.

 

There are 5 post-credits scenes in this 2 hour 16 minute film.

 

Yeah, not as good, which is unfortunate since it features so prominently compared to the first film. Effective use of "The Chain", though.

--Geoff

 

Very fun movie. Go in expecting a good popcorn flick and you should have a good time. And personally I loved the music.

 

And each one is delightful. Only one serves as a preview for a future movie, and it's not for Thor: Ragnarok.

 

I liked the film very much but did not love it. It's got a lot of good stuff in it, but a few scenes kind of bogged down and I felt like they were almost trying to tell too much story, since it bops all over the place and deals with about 20 speaking parts. A pal of mine who worked on the film just told me tonight that Rocket Raccoon has more on-screen time than any other character, so you might say he's a bigger focus of the movie than Chris Pratt. Some of the outer space escapades are just a blur of explosions and zaps and spaceships, and it gets a little exhausting after awhile. But there's also some quiet dialogue scenes that work surprisingly well; once again, Rocket Raccoon comes away as the most anguished, "human" character of the whole bunch when some secrets are revealed.

There's a few bad moments in the film for me: some of the daytime composites where Pratt & Kurt Russell are flying in the skies above the artificial planet are really dodgy, and there are also some instances where so much is going on, you kinda go, "wha? Where am I? Who's fighting who?" There's also some unexpected dark moments, like when you see about 1000 dead bodies (actually skeletons), but I won't reveal who they are so as not to give away a big plot surprise. The side plots cluttered up the movie for me, and I felt like they could easily lose 20 minutes if they had made more effort.

There's some strikingly good technical work in the film. I thought the opening 1980 scene with "young" Kurt Russell looked amazing -- there was a ton of digital work done there -- and there's also some very intricate digital makeup going on for the characters with green or blue or gold skin. The character VFX, particularly Rocket and Baby Groot, look really, really great: I was never once conscious that I was looking at a digital character. You just accept they're real and move on. That's good work.

I think they slammed us over the head a bit hard with the "absent father" message (with both "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" repeated twice and recited, as well as Cat Stevens' classic "Father and Son." But I really, really enjoyed the music soundtrack, which is very much 1970s classic rock; director James Gunn has very good taste. You could tell every song chosen was done for a very specific reason -- "The Chain" is a good example. And there's some big laugh-out-loud surprises and jokes that had me on the floor, including some musical jokes (like a reprise of the Guardians 1 Baby Groot dancing scene).

There's a great surprise at the very end about Baby Groot that I won't reveal, along with an imaginative idea as to the possibility that the Stan Lee cameos in all the Marvel films are all about the same character. Very funny bit. Make sure you stay to the bitter end of the credits.

All in all, I enjoyed the film quite a bit but not as much as I did the first Guardians. I've been told by insiders that this one cost somewhere north of $300 million, but it's predicted to gross a billion worldwide, so Disney/Marvel ain't gonna lose any money. Guardians 3 is already being written and Gunn has already been hired to helm it, so expect this saga to continue in another 2-3 years.

BTW, the soundtrack played one 1971 song I had never heard in my life, and Gunn chose well: it's an excellent song that should've been a national hit, "Lake Shore Drive":



Don't look for "Immigrant Song" to be in the released soundtrack, though it's in the movie. There may have been more, but that's a notable omission due to rights clearance problems. Surprisingly, they had no problem with "My Sweet Lord," which is a very unusual choice (but appropriate once you understand the nature of the character involved).

 

"BTW, the soundtrack played one 1971 song I had never heard in my life, and Gunn chose well: it's an excellent song that should've been a national hit, "Lake Shore Drive"

Loved that tune from the day it came out. It got a lot of airplay on Milwaukee pop/rock stations. I still have the vinyl album. Lake Shore Drive is not only in Chicago but Milwaukee. AHJ were a Chicago based group, saw them a few times back in the early to mid 1970's. That was their only song to make it big on the radio. Some folks like the LSD inference, but I'm not so sure that they were thinking that, perhaps though as they also had a drug inference song called Snow Queen.

 

There always seem to be clearance problems for LZ songs in films, hence the extras in both 'School of Rock' and 'Almost Famous'

 

Alright..
could those of you who have seen it, give us the 'spacing' on the end-credit scenes?
Are they in-between the 'big-credits'(stars, director, producer, etc.) and the massive end-credits, or, are they at the total end?

 

Oh, I love that and have never heard it before either. "Trippin' on by on LSD", ha! The whole time I lived in Chicago and used that road I never once thought about its initials.

 

They're just interspersed throughout the credits. Most of them are short.

Apparently not that much: Guardians 2 De-Aged Kurt Russell Is Mostly a Practical Effect

 

One is before the credits start to roll and the others are spread evenly throughout, some are for laughs while others hint at what might be coming.

 

Saw it earlier today in IMAX 3D, I really liked it overall, if you enjoyed or loved the first one I can't see II being a disappointment. 4/5 from me.

 

I'll give it a 3 out of 5. The high speed shaky effects thing is annoying. Story was fun but I didn't get any hint of the darkness earlier.

The 11.1 Atmos translated beautifully to the newly installed Auro system at my local Cinemark XD. It's a lot a projection and sound quality for under $9 at ticket. I also discovered a workaround to avoid Cinemark's $1.50 per ticket online fees. Use a Cinemark gift card. You can buy an electronic gift card online, and send it to yourself.

 

Bit disappointed with Vol 2.

Vol 1 10/10
Vol 2 7/10

 

The article is mistaken and they don't know the VFX business, but I will say no more. You can take my word for it or believe the article.

What I can tell you is I've worked on 15 films in the last 3 years, and I've done mild bits of de-aging and beauty makeup on every single one of them. Lots of eye work in particular. In a recent one, I greatly improved the lead actor's thinning hair and visible scalp. It's just a question of helping the actors look their best. In the case of Guardians 2, I would bet this was $500K of work on the low side. It was $3 million of digital doubles on the teenage Robert Downey scene in last year's Captain America, but that had a lot of close-ups and ran a couple of minutes. Same people involved.

I think there was some hair work involved on Chris Pine in Star Trek as well, but that's another story.

 

Oh I'm sure CGI did the bulk of the work. What was done on site was probably thought to look pretty fantastic on the day, and then the actual work it took to finish the product was downplayed by the random studio mook (probably an intern) who's just telling the star how easy it was to make them look young.

uh oh. The Kirk Curse!

 

Just saw this film, what happened to Sweets fox on the run, or did I dose off?

 

You DIDN'T dose off.

 

Just saw it tonight with my family. 3D IMAX. Very good. I equate it to The Empire Strikes Back. Lots of character building and stories that were not delivered in the 1st movie. My wife gave it a 10.....and she hates Marvel movies. She likes Thor movies (gee, wonder why) and this story.

 

Thor: Ragnarok trailer blew away Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 imo.