Continuing the jovial musical theme from the last movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 begins with a bit of similar music and the appearance of Kurt Russell as Peter Quill’s dad. Although the vibe is lighthearted it makes an interesting early plot development and of course it’s very cool to see Kurt Russell involved this time round, working alongside Chris Pratt – or against him, as the movie unfolds. Both are outstanding actors. Two of my favourite action hero movie stars, coming from different generations.
The second scene is overwhelmed by jovial musical and dancing too, as this movie is beginning to look very childish and uninteresting, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for a while since it’s still gradually rolling through the opening credits.
Before the end of the first half hour we see Kurt Russell as Ego Quill introduce himself to his son, and we see Silvester Stallone make an appearance as the head of the 100 clans of Ravagers, of which Yondu leads the only one that Sly’s character is displeased with and has exiled. Stallone has an extremely minor role in this movie, but it’s good to see him nevertheless. Russll has a major role in this movie, and it’s a shame to see him turn out to be the main antagonist, but it was kind of entertaining.
Chris Pratt has gained a little weight since the first Guardians movie – but it’s not a big deal – he still has plenty of character for doing a good job in his range of roles ranging from action to drama to humour to weirdness. His weight is actually the butt of a joke in his next outing – Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – so when Guardians 2 was released in 2017 and they were writing the script to Avengers 2018 they probably clocked on to the same thing I clocked on to, but by then Chris had actually lost a little weight so the joke didn’t work so well.
Although this movie goes on for over a couple of hours, it still seems a bit one-dimensional, as if it would benefit from another 30-45 minutes to add another layer of rich plot to the movie.
Overall, I rate it just about OK – no more, no less.
The first 10 minutes are quite action packed, although more on the theatrical drama side than fast action for the most part. These early scenes do a decent job of establishing Thanos as a potentially awesome antagonist – significantly stronger than the Hulk and wielding better control of the energetic world than the magician that is Loki – Thor’s adoptive brother and the main antagonist from the second Avengers movie.
This sets the tone nicely for what’s to come in the rest of the movie, which generally has a higher quality and better consistency of action and much better plot than previous Avengers movies.
This movie has some great humour in places. The action is a bit muddled like the previous Avengers movies, but is better coordinated such that this is clearly the best of them thus far. It’s not quite on a par with the first Thor movie. It even falls slightly short of lesser but still Decent movies in the MCU like Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Black Panther. But it’s got the most clear direction, focus and script coordination of all the groupie Avengers movies thus far. As such I rate it Above Average, which is still an accomplishment.
To say this movie ends on a cliffhanger is probably an understatement. The whole movie can be likened to hanging on the edge of a cliff, then it ends with a big splatter where half of everyone in the universe instantly dies (at the click of Thanos’ fingers). Quite a strange negative note to end on – probably setting us up for the next Avengers movie, called Endgame, released in 2019 – a year when something else, no less depressing, begins to be unveilled in the real world, spawning rumours of similar levels of deaths due any time now. Coincidence much?
As usual, in this Avengers movie there’s a large number of superhero characters working together. The team battling Thanos – the main antagonist, played by Josh Brolin with the help of ample CGI and makeup – includes: Tony Stark aka Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr; Captain America played by Chris Evans; Bruce Banner aka The Hulk played by Mark Ruffalo; Thor played by Chris Hemsworth whose scenes are probably the best of all scenes in this movie; Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson); Spider-Man played by Tom Holland; The Scarlet Witch played by Elizabeth Olsen – her powers are pretty cool too, but seem underplayed by this movie; Vision played by Paul Bettany whose powers also seem underplayed; Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch; Chris Pratt as Star-Lord along with the rest of his team from the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie series; and Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther along with several of his colleagues from the Wakanda. And that’s not nearly all the significant actors in this movie but we’ll be here all day if we try to name them all so that’ll do for now – its easy to look up the rest of them, or just view the poster or watch the trailer and see who they’re feel play the most significant roles here.
This move gets off to a bad start, with a boring-come-irritating drama scene that attempts to conjure up a traumatic experience while building a backstory for the main character. Fortunately this only lasts a few minutes, and then the better stuff gets underway.
Chris Pratt (with vibes of Seann William Scott) stars as Peter Quill – the main man in this movie. He’s a fun character with convincing acting, and carries the occasional moment of humour very well too.
Dave Bautista adds substantial value as a strong powerful ally called Drax The Destroyer, although he gets beaten easily by the main antagonist called Ronan – himself played quite well by Lee Pace with a massive dose of CGI and masking up so much that we can’t really see who he is.
Zoë Saldaña (star of Colombiana, 2011) is the main female in this movie. She’s a green woman called Gamora, and a trained killer. She joins the team of misfits, to save the galaxy, and has the odd moment of romance with Chris Pratt’s character. Her performance is adequate but nothing outstanding. She wears heavy makeup including some bits to make her look less human.
Michael Rooker plays Yondu, the head of the Ravagers, quite well.
Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Rocket, the bounty hunting raccoon; and Vin Diesel provides the voice of Groot, the talking, walking warrior tree.
Considering the ratio of tedious drama to exciting action, the ratio of easy viewing to irritating viewing, the general quality of acting, the half-smooth half-muddled script, and the general strength of cinematography, I have to rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with Captain America 1 and 2.
But if Chris Pratt had some kind of super power or incredible talent that made him special, and the main crew were not a bunch of weird alien misfits, this movie could have more of a classical superhero vibe, but as it stands it’s far more casual than exciting (when it’s not a noisy mess of drama). Although it has the odd bit of good action and the odd bit of good humour, it’s hard to get behind the main characters, some of whom are not even human, and most are weird looking beastly aliens with bright red, blue or green skin. I wouldn’t even call it childish, I’d call it too goofy or wacky-minded to relate to, and too nonchalant to really get behind. Thus, although some parts belong in a much more highly rated movie, the overall production is so full of pros & cons, it ultimately boils down to a Bang Average action hero movie by Marvel Studios. Having said that, after a long tedious patch, the ending is pretty strong and shows the specialness in Pratt’s character Peter Quill for the first time, as well as another level of ability in his main comrades (Saldaña’s Gamora, Bautista’s Drax and Cooper’s raccoon) as they’re officially dubbed the Guardians Of The Galaxy by the main antagonist, Ronan. Question is, why so late? Why suffer two hours of weak drama for one strong ending? There should have been more bits like that, to prevent this movie getting lost between genres and never surpassing mediocrity in either genre. With a few more scenes like that, this movie could have easily gone up several rating levels.
Credit also goes to Josh Brolin who barely recognisably plays Thanos (with the help of ample makeup & CGI) – the most powerful being in the universe, and Ronan’s boss (until Ronan acquired the infinity stone). Prior to Guardians, Thanos also appeared in Avengers (2012) where he was played by Damion Poitier instead; then Josh Brolin took over the role of Thanos for every subsequent movie until Avengers: Endgame (2019) where he dies.
Sequels
Next up, if you’re following all Marvel movies in order, is Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron (2015) featuring a multitude of superheroes just like the first Avengers movie from 2012, including Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and more, but no Peter Quill or anyone from the Guardians movie series yet, although Avengers 3: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers 4: Endgame (2019) both feature the entire Guardians team. Or if you just want to skip to the next true dedicated Guardians movie where Chris Pratt and his team of misfits get all the screen time, that would be Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (2017). There’s also a Guardians 3 (2023) in case you’re going down that route.
Over half a century after the original movies of the same name, this Magnificent Seven remake in 2016 stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt (who both perform outstandingly) among other strong supporting actors like Lee Byung-Hun (who also does an excellent job), Martin Sensmeier (who does pretty good), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (who does pretty good), Ethan Hawke (who does alright) and Vincent D’Onofrio (who also does alright) – together they make up The Magnificent Seven – a group of seven expert gunslingers (well, one throws knives & darts, and another shoots arrows) who agree to save a small western village from being occupied & slaughtered by a small army of wealthy mafia-type bandits with a financial interest in local mining operations.
Although there are two megastars supported by several other strong performances here, I would have liked to see much stronger characters in the opposition.
Martial arts wise, there’s a lot of gun slinging, not much fist fighting, but there’s some creative battlefield tactics at work, so it’s definitely got martial arts value.
Plot wise, it’s a pretty simple concept, and although the acting is great by Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, the action can get a bit slow or monotonous at times, with over drawn out shooting scenes, a bit of gritty drama and a bit too much horror genre creeping in with innocent people being slaughtered by a gatling gun while babies are crying etc. Some people might call it a masterpiece but it’s mixing up the genres too much for me – I’m here for the action heroes and on that basis I rate this movie just OK. You won’t get terribly bored if you’ve not seen it before, but you won’t be in a hurry to rewatch it either.
