Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Rocket in the forest serves a different purpose - it's funny.

It *was* funny, even if I got the impression he killed most of them. (Why would he just incapacitate them so that they could get back up seconds later? I even wondered, man, how many space pirates could there possibly be?) Doesn't matter, it's still sadistic, even if it's totally in character. And yeah, the violent nature of characters is one thing - these movies are all innately violent - but it all felt a little mean spirited or whatever on the part of Gunn, violence for chuckles. Which was done well ironically, such as the intro out-of-focus background battle, or the two or three hundreds of virtual video game space ship battles - but felt a little weirder when it was more personal, like Rocket or Yondu or even the space pirate mutiny. None of it affected my enjoyment - this is all an ancillary discussion - but it did make me ponder the nuances of violence in these comic books movies. Something like Avengers is all serious but mostly bloodless violence. Something like Deadpool is all gory, sadistic, cartoon violence with a self-conscious wink, effectively and humorously so. Something like Logan was non-stop brutal, vicious violence. But the first was done in service of genre/mood (war movie vibe), the second entertainment, and the third in service of toll-of-violence theme, even if they both hinge on the same one-guy-takes-out-hordes motif.

Cos he knew they weren't there to kill him and why would anybody want a Ravager bounty on their head

So he was just messing with them for fun, even if they were firing machine guns back at him and, one presumes, trying to kill him?

(Totally within character, I admit!)

Rocket in the forest serves a different purpose - it's funny.

Agreed, but that scene still went on for too long. Watching them get tossed to the air for the sixth time wasn't that funny anymore. Same with the Looney Tunes facial stretching when Rocket and Yondu went through the 200 different warp points. It was funny the first time they showed it, the the movie cut to somewhere else, then they cut back to the warping ship, and they still had to show the stretching for quite a bit more. Feels like Gunn just didn't know when to stop a scene...

The same applies to the final battle inside Ego, it just went on for too long. There wasn't any need to get the drone ships involved in that battle at all, it felt like filler. Just Ego vs. the Guardians would've been enough. One of my favourite things about the first movie was how it side-stepped the expectations of how a action movie final battle should work. You had a decent-length battle inside Ronan's ship, and then they crash to Xandar, and Ronan faces them, and you're like, ok, this is the True Ultimate Boss Fight, I guess there's still 5 minutes more of action... And then they resolve it with the good guys dancing! And holding hands! I wish Gunn had show similar inventiveness with this movie's climax.

I feel like you're stretching to nitpick things in a movie you enjoyed

one thing we haven't mentioned about yondu's revenge is that it's one of the most visually striking scenes in the film - that bright red streak painting slick crimson curves all over the ship looks cool as hell, particularly the part in the pitch-black corridor where dying pirates are lit up by arrow streaks

if there's not an atari 2600-style yondu's revenge minigame on the website for this movie btw the marketing guys should be exposed to the hard vacuum of space asap

yo tuomas you're a 'cosmic marvel' guy - what did you think about those elements in this one?

I feel like you're stretching to nitpick things in a movie you enjoyed

Maybe yeah, it's just that GotG Vol. 1 was one of my favourite movies of recent years (and definitely the best of the Marvel Movies), so I had really high expectations for this one. And pretty much all of the individual aspects of a movie were fine in Vol. 2 too: good plot, good actors, good new characters and story elements, great visuals... It's just that they took certain things that worked the first movie and overdid them in the way that makes it less than the sum of it's parts. So it's kinda frustrating how this one has all the potential for greatness, but it fails in ways that could've been avoided.

yo tuomas you're a 'cosmic marvel' guy - what did you think about those elements in this one?

I liked Ego's backstory, it was suitably transcendental, and the Sovereign culture was interesting, though they could be developed a bit more. (Though presumably we'll see more of that in Vol. 3.) I was a bit disappointed that they completely ditched Knowhere and all the story potential it could've offered with the various funky aliens etc, since that was one of my favourite elements in Abnett & Lanning's GotG run. I get it that exploring the team's base of operations works better in serial media than done-in-one movies, but still... At the very least I would've expected them to do something with Cosmo after his cameo in the last movie, but he was nowhere to be seen. :( How could they resist adding a super-smart telepathic Soviet dog to the team?!

Also, I loved that it was so colourful! Since in the recent years the "muted tones mean serious business" disease has infected even sci-fi movies (like Star Wars), this was a welcome relief from that (as was the previous one). Space operas and superhero comic movies should have some bright colours, for chrissakes!

Btw, Marvel has finally finished reprinting the entire cosmic saga that began in Keith Giffen's Annihilation, continued with Annihilation Conquest, and with Abnett & Lanning's Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy ongoing series (as well as various crossovers), and culminated in The Thanos Imperative. They've all been reprinted in omnibus editions, so if you missed the whole saga the first time around, grab them now! This is pretty much the best Marvel cosmic comic since the 1970s.

Lotta orange and teal in this one.

Loved it. Tonally different than the first, but still really enjoyable.

Lost it completely with "Father & Son" - that song has made me weep uncontrollably since I was a teenager. I legit fell apart for a few minutes there

Lotta orange and teal in this one.

You're kidding, right? (Compared to a lot of other films right now, this was far more all over the place color-wise.)

Was gonna say

can't say I thought it was particularly egregious but I did read this in an interview with James Gunn

"I wanted to make the second movie have a very distinct visual look that was much different than the first movie.

"One of the first things I did was ban the use of the colour purple.

"There's purple in the movie, but there's very little purple in the movie. Because purple was by far the dominant colour in the first movie.

"This movie is more about yellow and blue and teal and orange."

Weird.

I think a lot of what Tuomas diagnoses as overdoing it is stuff that I read as exhalation, having some more fun, "it's all but guaranteed we're going to make a shitload of money so let's play around" silliness with the occasional overextension. The opening credits fight sequence is brilliant; the "got any tape" bit is about the best use of surround sound in a theater that I can readily remember. I feel like you don't get those things without also having to accept the risk of some googly-eyed space jump gags or a mildly overwrought mutineer execution sequence.

i loved the casting of Kurt Russell
mainly bc latter-day Kurt looks like an old mythological god like Zeus etc 😃

Where did he go for a while? Like, all seemed quiet on the Kurt Russell front, and then, bam, Death Proof, Bone Tomahawk, Hateful Eight, this ... And now Goldie is back in action, too.

Kurt Russell is sort of the antecedent to Bruce Willis, no? Same sort of modest origins, crossover action appeal, leading man, able to do indie stuff in addition to pay the bills crud.

A former kid star - from Wikipedia: 'In 1966, Walt Disney wrote "Kurt Russell" on a piece of paper as his final words.'

apparently they were really close!

Final words is an exaggeration. Also he wrote "Kirt Russell"

https://www.mouseplanet.com/9734/Walts_Last_Words_NOT_Kurt_Russell

"Where did he go for a while? Like, all seemed quiet on the Kurt Russell front, and then, bam, Death Proof, Bone Tomahawk, Hateful Eight, this ... And now Goldie is back in action, too."

Death Proof came out almost a decade ago... but yeah it looks like after that he kinda stopped working for a while (going from at least a movie every year to one every couple years until 2015).

The idea that in 2017 one of the summer's top-grossing movies would co-star Kurt Russell and have a small but important role for Sylvester Stallone is kinda mind-boggling.

Not sure why. Resurrecting old stars for big budget spectaculars is kind of a thing, right? Also is Kurt Russell really co-starring in this?

Pretty much yeah - he gets as much screen time as anyone who isn't Chris Pratt.

Given his charisma at some points it felt like everyone else was supporting him.

That is, he felt like the center of the whole thing - the epicenter of the planet system, as it were - with the rest of the dozen or so cast members orbiting his stationary character like satellites.

I'm not sure I follow your metaphor.

Anyway Kurt & Goldie became empty nesters not that long ago, probably decided to actually take some time to themselves. He's been working for like 60 years.

An accompaniment to the io9 Easter egg dump that Ned posted above:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/guardians-galaxy-2-end-credit-scenes-who-were-ravagers-1000653

We'll need an Adam Warlock casting thread soon imo

Must be more genetically perfect than Elizabeth Debicki

Kurt was a fantastic choice for this role. So good.

Must be more genetically perfect than Elizabeth Debicki

$146 M weekend

congrats all, here's a lollipop

This movie essentially is a lollipop.

no!!!!!

the Emily Dickinson biofilm is *almost* to $500 G btw

Must be more genetically perfect than Elizabeth Debicki

Haha I know

of fucking course a Reddit person suggested Owen Wilson, possibly without irony: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/5p7bik/dream_casting_for_adam_warlock/

And some site I've never heard of has this list which, like other neural networks, has fits of brilliance in between the complete misapprehensions of what anything means:

Alexander Skarsgård
Ewan McGregor
Charlie Hunnam
Travis Fimmel
Matthew McConaughey
Karl Urban
Matt Bomer
Rodrigo Santoro
Ryan McPartlin
Billy Crudup
Sharlto Copley
Ryan Kwanten
Stuart Townsend
Michael Shanks
Barry Pepper
Hugh Dancy
Joseph Mawle
Adrien Brody
Laurence Fox
Christian Camargo

All of this is utter garbage of course. Adam Warlock belongs to Wanda Sykes.

I think Michael Fassbender could be a good contender? He has the required Aryan good looks, and he's capable of doing the smugness and intellectual superiority that's Warlock's trademark. Though I guess they can't use him cos he's in that other Marvel franchise...

I think "required aryan good looks" is exactly the wrong way to go about casting adam warlock

this is their opportunity to make amends for casting a white englishwoman as the Ancient One

if it has to be a dude, then I vote Richard Ayoade

ansel elgort IS adam warlock