Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the next post in my series covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This time, we are talking about the first of three movies that came out in 2017 from Marvel Studios: “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2”. Written and directed by James Gunn, this movie stars Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Vin Diesel as Baby Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, and Kurt Russell as Ego. This movie has a lot to do with fatherhood as Peter discovers that his father was Ego. Before I reveal too much here, let’s get into detail from the beginning.
After the Marvel Studios logo, we see a flashback to the year of 1980 in Missouri. We see a young Ego driving with Meredith Quill (Laura Haddock) while listening to “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass. They stop at a Dairy Queen and walk through the forest behind it where he shows her a piece of his expansion that could cover the whole universe. As they kiss, we go into the plant for some interesting visuals and flash forward to present day. It’s a little bit after the events of the first movie. The Guardians of the Galaxy are put on a mission to stop an Abilisk from eating batteries. Rocket is trying to set up some music, but that gets interrupted when the monster shows up. Baby Groot gets the music to play while the others fight the monster. We then see a fantastic and funny dance sequence with Baby Groot jamming to “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. Along the way, Baby Groot interacts with the other characters and chases a small creature around for a bit. The music abruptly stops when Drax destroys the speaker system, causing Baby Groot to get angry at him. Drax goes into the beast and cuts into his innards. Star-Lord tells Rocket to get the monster to look up so Gamora can stab its neck with her sword. She does that, killing the monster and saving the Anulax batteries. Rocket secretly steals some of them and puts him in his bag for later. The Guardians then talk with the Queen of the Sovereign (Elizabeth Debicki). The Sovereign give her Nebula in exchange for the Guardians saving the batteries. Before they leave, the Queen asks Peter about his parents. Peter tells her that his mom is from Earth and his father is at least not from Missouri. Rocket almost gets into trouble by blinking with the wrong eye. They leave for Xandar to deliver Nebula there while “Lake Shore Drive” by Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah plays. While on the Milano, Drax talks with Peter about people who dance and those who don’t. He tells him that his wife didn’t dance at all. We then see Gamora tell Nebula that she will spend the rest of her days in Xandar. The Guardians then get attacked by a whole bunch of Sovereign ships, which are remotely piloted in the style of an arcade game, classic sounds and all. The Sovereign are doing this because they discovered that some batteries were taken by Rocket. The Guardians destroy some of the ships before they enter an asteroid field. Rocket and Quill keep taking control of the Milano because of them putting their ego over everything else. An asteroid hits the Milano, messing up the weapons. Drax then gets out of the ship while putting on a space suit and a cord. Drax shoots the last ship and the Milano escapes the asteroid field. They then find out that other ships went around the field. Luckily, a big laser destroys those ships and saves the Guardians. They then enter a planet called Berhert while the Milano crashes down to the ground. Drax is still hanging out of it and gets hit by some debris and some trees. The ship breaks down into two pieces (and then some) and Gamora tells Peter and Rocket that either one of them could have gotten through the field had they not let their egos get the best of them. During the banter between the Guardians, Peter calls Rocket a Trash Panda after Quill was called Star-Munch. A ship that looks like a big bean lands near them. Ego tells Peter that he is his dad. Meanwhile, on Contraxia, we see Yondu (Michael Rooker) exit a room where he had some robotic dancers with him. He then sees the leader of the Ravagers, played by Sylvester Stallone, who exiles Yondu from the greater Ravager community for his involvement with Quill. Ayesha then arrives and talks to Yondu about a proposition. Back on Berhert, Ego tells Peter that he has been looking for him ever since Yondu kept him for stealing purposes. He invites him and his friends to the home planet. Before that, Mantis (Pom Klementieff) introduces herself to Drax and Rocket, with Rocket almost biting her. Peter and Gamora talk in the forest. A story about David Hasselhoff is mentioned during this talk. In the morning, Peter, Gamora, and Drax leave for the planet Ego while Rocket and Baby Groot stay behind to fix the ship. On the big bean ship, we see a scene where Mantis displays her emotional abilities to the three of them. She touches Peter first and reveals that he has sexual love for Gamora, causing Drax to laugh uncontrollably. Mantis touches Drax and laugh with him at Peter. She gets to Gamora and is threatened about a broken jaw. After that, Mantos touches Drax and gets him to sleep.
Meanwhile on Berhert, we see a few Ravagers sneak up to Rocket and Baby Groot. “Southern Nights” by Glen Campbell plays while Rocket messes with them. He knocks some of them out before he hears a whistle. That whistle means that Yondu’s arrow is getting near. The arrow stops just before it kills him and Yondu talks to him about the plan to capture the Guardians and bring them to The Sovereign. But then, Yondu has some hesitation about this due to Quill. Kraglin (Sean Gunn) exposes him and the Ravagers, led by Taserface (still a funny name), along with Nebula, capture Rocket, Groot, and Yondu. Meanwhile, Peter, Gamora, and Drax arrive on Ego’s planet while “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison plays. They are amazed by the sights of the planet as they make it to the main building. Ego tells them that he is a celestial and how he created a human version of himself to mate with a whole bunch of ladies across many different planets. Drax has a funny line about his father being a love machine. Quill asks Ego when he met his mother. Ego tells him that it was with his mother that he first discovered love. Quill later confronts him about why he left Meredith. On the Ravager ship, we see some of Yondu’s buddies get sucked into space while he can do nothing about it. Yondu then gets punched by Taserface (Chris Sullivan) before Rocket interrupts him by laughing at the name. Rocket then taunts him for a bit and almost gets killed before Nebula (Karen Gillan) stops the killing from happening. Nebula then leaves the ship with a new hand and goes on a mission to kill her sister and Thanos. She has a monologue about how Thanos replaced her human parts with robotic parts every time Gamora won and how she’ll kill Thanos. We then cut to a scene with Peter and Ego, in which Peter is mad at him about his mother dying. After that argument, Ego tells Peter to concentrate and use his celestial-like powers. Peter succeeds and makes a ball that he uses to play catch with his father. Elsewhere, Drax and Mantis talk with each other about Ego and how being ugly is not a bad thing. Mantis touches Drax and fells sadness through Drax still mourning his wife and daughter, who were killed by Thanos and his people. Before Mantis gets to warm Drax about Ego, Gamora interrupts them. Mantis then directs them to their sleeping quarters. We cut to the Ravager ship where Yondu and Rocket are put into a jail cell while Baby Groot gets dressed and is messed around by the other Ravagers. After Yondu says some stuff about being exiled, Rocket asks Yondu why he didn’t bring Peter to his dad. Yondu tells him that he was able to help the Ravagers steal stuff. After Baby Groot gets out of the mess, Yondu tells him that there is a prototype fin for his arrow. What follows is a funny montage where Baby Groot gets everything but the fin. From underwear to a little creature to someone’s eye to a severed human toe, he fails spectacularly. Finally, Yondu tells him that the drawer has a symbol on it. Baby Groot wears it as a hat before heading for the drawer. He opens it with his growing branch arms and gets another wrong item before Kraglin arrives and gets the fin to Yondu. After Yondu gets the fin on with the help of Rocket, the two of them, plus Baby Groot, go on a killing spree. They make sure that there are no witnesses left as they make their way to the smaller ship that they go on. This whole killing montage goes on while “Come a Little Bit Closer” by Jay & The Americans plays. A fiery arrow destroys the whole ship as they escape with the smaller ship. Before Taserface goes in a fiery blaze, a Sovereign lady laughs at the name. Rocket then directs the ship to Ego, which requires 700 jumps. The jump sequence is straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon as the characters have weird screaming faces.
Meanwhile, Peter and Gamora dance on Ego before Peter mentions a romance on the show “Cheers”, which confuses the heck out of her. After an argument between the two of them, Peter tells her that he finally found his family while Gamora tells him that he thought he found one already. Gamora then leaves and goes by herself in the open field. She is then forced to run after she sees a ship controlled by Nebula, who is trying to kill her. Gamora escapes into a cave, but Nebula follows her there anyway. The ship crashes and catches fire, trapping Nebula in the process. Gamora shoots at her, causing more damage to the ship. Nebula is rescued by Gamora as the ship explodes. Despite being saved by Gamora, Nebula fights her and almost kills her before throwing the sword away. Nebula then tells her that she just wanted a sister even though Gamora wanted to win every fight. We then see Peter and his dad talk about the song Brandy and the connections that the song had to them. Peter is then told about the entire scope of the expansion while Mantis wakes up Drax to tell him about it. Gamora and Nebula then enter another part of the cave and discover the bones of all of Ego’s children who failed to have the same powers as him. After the two see those skeletons, Gamora asks Mantis about them. Mantis then reveals the same thing to them as she did with Drax. Elsewhere, the jump sequence continues with a Stan Lee cameo before the ship arrives at Ego. Yondu then talks to Rocket about the similarities to their situations. Yondu mentions the batteries, Rocket’s past, and how his parents sold him into slavery as a baby. After Ego’s monologue about the expansion is over, Peter asks him about his mom again. Ego then reveals that he put a cancerous tumor into her head. Peter gets out of his trance and shoots Ego a whole bunch of times before Ego begins his expansion by using Peter as a battery. Ego turns into David Hasselhoff for a moment before this. The expansion begins, which involves engulfing the planets in a blue blob. Yondu drives the ship to Ego and runs him over. The rest of the Guardians, plus Mantis, also come to rescue Peter. They all go below the surface, which is the only way to kill Ego and stop the expansion. They make their way to the center while Kraglin chills outside of the planet and sees a whole bunch of Sovereign pods go to Ego to attack the Guardians again. Kraglin tries to warn Yondu about it, but the reception is iffy at first. The Guardians and Yondu arrive at the core and Rocket programs the lasers to shoot at the core. Their plan gets interrupted when the Sovereign pods arrive to attack the Guardians. The lasers get messed up while Mantis, Gamora, and Drax fall down to somewhere. Peter and Rocket fly to the core while Mantis gets Ego to sleep for the moment. The bomb has to be put on the core. However, Baby Groot is the only one small enough to get it to the core. While Peter shoots at the Sovereign pods, Rocket tells Baby Groot what to do with the bomb. There are two switches that activate the bomb and two buttons: one that sets up a 5 minute timer for the bomb and the other to set off the bomb immediately. Baby Groot repeatedly points to the self-destruct button, causing Rocket to get mad and eventually ask Peter is anyone has tape. Nobody has tape and Peter and Rocket argue while Baby Groot leaves for the core with the bomb. Yondu and Nebula figure out a way to use the lasers to kill the Sovereign pods. It succeeds, but the ship explodes after some debris catches fire. Nebula drops down first, followed by Peter and Yondu. Yondu yells out “I’m Mary Poppins, y’all” as they drop down. Everything is good until Mantis gets hit by a meteor, causing Ego to wake back up. Yondu tells Kraglin to make his way down to them. Drax brings Mantis up while Gamora and Nebula struggle for a bit (but eventually get up to the ship). Elsewhere, Peter, Rocket, and Yondu fight with Ego’s Rocky tentacles for a bit. Peter gets used for the expansion again (and everyone gets trapped) before Yondu tells him to use his heart instead of his head. Peter tells Ego this: “You shouldn’t have killed my mom and squished my Walkman.” They then fight in the air as Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” plays in the background. The rest get out of the traps and the expansion stops again as the two of them fight.
Baby Groot gets the bomb set up and pushes the left button to activate the 5 minute timer before running away from it and getting to Rocket. Rocket gives him a space suit and an arrow rig and Groot welcomes him to the Guardians of the Galaxy before both of them fly to the ship. As Peter and Ego fight more, Peter uses his heart to attack Ego with PAC-Man. Rocket and the rest fly away while Drax asks him where Quill is. The bomb finally goes off and kills Ego, making Peter lose his celestial powers. The whole planet collapses around Peter before he gets rescued by Yondu. Before Yondu sacrifices himself to save Quill, he says this: “He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy”, which is still an emotional moment to this day. Peter then gives a eulogy for Yondu on the ship that is powerful. He mentions having a cool dad and already having a family before reuniting with Ego. Nebula then leaves for her own mission, but not before Gamora hugs her and says that she will always be her sister. Yondu’s body is then cremated into space in a flash of colors while Kraglin gives Peter a Zune with 300 songs. Peter gives Kraglin the arrow and then plays “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens. That song remains played throughout the rest of the final scene. The Ravagers give Yondu a proper funeral with fireworks while the Guardians watch it all unfold. The scene ends with the ashes going into the shape of Yondu’s arrow and tears going down Rocket’s face. After the reminder that “The Guardians of the Galaxy will return”, we see a whole bunch of bonus scenes. The first one is Kraglin practicing the arrow and hitting Drax in the process. The second one involves a group of Ravagers, led by Sylvester Stallone’s character (Stakar Ogord), getting ready to steal some stuff. The third one is with Ayesha as she is in the process of creating something that will attack the Guardians later. She calls it Adam (Adam Warlock is a character in the comics). The fourth one is Peter complaining about Groot (now a teenager) playing a game and how much of a mess his room is. The final scene after “The Guardians Inferno” (a song that has David Hasselhoff in it) is Stan Lee ending his talk with the Watchers, who leave him behind.
This movie is a whole lot of fun to watch. There are plenty of funny moments throughout this movie, including the scene in which Mantis reveals that Quill has romantic sexual love for Gamora and making Drax laugh his butt off. Speaking of Drax, he was really funny in this movie. Dave Bautista played him well once again. Another funny moment was when Baby Groot was making Rocket mad by pointing to the wrong button on the bomb near the end. Baby Groot (played fantastically by Vin Diesel) was awesome and cute in this movie. He had some great moments throughout the movie, including dancing to “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra and helping Yondu and Rocket kill off the Ravagers on the big ship. That particular sequence was one of my favorites from this movie. Bradley Cooper once again killed it as the voice of Rocket, who continues to deny that he is a raccoon (until later anyway). Chris Pratt as Star-Lord shows some real emotion during the scenes in which he was angry at Ego. He also showed some real sadness after Yondu sacrificed himself. The dynamic between Gamora and Nebula (Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan, respectively) was great in this movie. We get more details on how Nebula got her robotic parts thanks to her explaining how Thanos punished her every time Gamora won against her. The sisters did hate each other at first, but they reconciled with each other when they hugged each other at the end. Michael Rooker played Yondu well until he sacrificed himself. The line that he said to Peter before doing so is still emotional to me. Kurt Russell’s Ego was a much better villain than Ronan was by a longshot. He seemed good at first, but he was very threatening at the end. The music was fantastic again in this movie. The songs were used effectively, including “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac and “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens. Also, the score by Tyler Bates was great throughout the movie, especially during the emotional moments at the end. James Gunn did another great job with writing the script and directing this blast of a movie that has a lot of heart in it. Once again, he made a great film about a found family that has disagreements at times but are always together no matter what. That togetherness will be tested the next time we see these characters.
Overall, I loved “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2”. It has some great laughs, great music, great moments of action, and a lot of emotional moments that put tears in your eyes. Kudos to everyone involved with the making of this movie, from James Gunn to the actors to all involved with the visual effects. It was a great way to kick off 2017, which was a busy year for the MCU. Next up in this blog series is “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” That post will be out soon. Have a great day, everyone.
(Here is the video from How It Should Have Ended on this movie. All credit goes to them.)
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