Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 arrived in 2017 as the 15th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a sequel to the 2014 original and a bigger, stranger swing from writer-director James Gunn. It runs 137 minutes. It is a science fiction adventure with action in its bones. Its tagline — “Anyone can save the galaxy once.” — tells you the question it actually wants to ask: what happens after?
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
Peter Quill and the Father He Never Had
The plot picks up shortly after the first film. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) are working as the Guardians. High Priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) of the Sovereign race hires them to protect valuable Anulax batteries from an inter-dimensional monster called an Abilisk, in exchange for Nebula (Karen Gillan), Gamora’s estranged sister, who was caught trying to steal the batteries.
Rocket steals the batteries anyway. The Sovereign attacks with a fleet of drones. A mysterious figure destroys the drones, and the Guardians crash-land on the planet Berhert. That figure is Ego (Kurt Russell), Quill’s father. He introduces Mantis (Pom Klementieff), his naïve empath servant.
Ego invites Quill, Gamora and Drax to his home planet. Rocket and Groot stay behind to repair the ship and watch Nebula.
“Anyone can save the galaxy once.”
Yondu, Taserface and the Mutiny
Ayesha hires Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker) and his crew to recapture the Guardians. The Ravager leader Stakar Ogord (Sylvester Stallone) has exiled them from the greater Ravager community for child trafficking. They capture Rocket. But Yondu hesitates to hand over Quill, whom he raised. His lieutenant Kraglin Obfonteri questions his objectivity. Another lieutenant, Taserface (Chris Sullivan), leads a mutiny, aided by Nebula, who shoots Yondu.
Taserface executes Yondu’s loyalists and imprisons him and Rocket aboard Yondu’s ship. Nebula leaves to find and kill Gamora, whom she blames for the torture Thanos inflicted on her.
Kraglin helps Groot free Rocket and Yondu. While escaping, the group sets the ship to self-destruct using Yondu’s arrow. Taserface informs the Sovereign before the explosion kills him.
Ego, a god-like Celestial, manipulated the matter around his consciousness to form his “home” planet. He projected a humanoid guise to travel the cosmos and meet other species.
A Schedule of the Film’s Major Beats
| Story beat | Location | Who drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Anulax battery job | Sovereign space | Ayesha, Rocket |
| Drone attack and crash | Berhert | Ego |
| Ego’s invitation | Berhert | Ego, Mantis |
| Mutiny aboard Yondu’s ship | Yondu’s ship | Taserface, Nebula |
| Escape and self-destruct | Yondu’s ship | Kraglin, Groot |
What the Cast Brings
Pratt returns under a multi-film contract with Marvel. He said Quill is now famous throughout “the galaxy for having saved so many people… He feels like he’s part of this group, a leader of this group. He’s a little more responsible and trying to stay out of trouble, but not necessarily doing the best job.” Pratt also said working on the film forced him to come to terms with the death of his own father. Wyatt Oleff once again plays a young Quill.
Saldaña describes Gamora as “the voice of reason” on a team of “dudes who are so stupid half the time.” She calls Gamora the “Mom” of the group, “a meticulous, detailed, professional individual.” On Gamora and Nebula, she calls the relationship “volatile,” adding, “we’re starting somewhere very crazy but appropriate given where we had ended things off in the first installment.”
Bautista waited for the final script so early drafts would not take “away from the magic.” He said of his part, “I wasn’t crazy about my part [in Vol. 2, initially]. It went a different direction than what I thought they were going to go with Drax.”
The Verdict on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The first Guardians film had the advantage of surprise. Nobody expected a talking raccoon and a tree to carry a Marvel movie, and the novelty did a lot of the work. Vol. 2 cannot lean on that. What it does instead is slow down and look closely at the family these characters built by accident.
That is the right instinct. The Quill-and-Ego thread gives the film its spine, and Russell plays Ego with a warmth that curdles exactly when it should. The Yondu mutiny is the better half, though. Rooker’s arc from exiled Ravager to something like a father pays off the first film’s best relationship, and it earns its ending.
The problems are real. The film is 137 minutes and feels it. The Sovereign subplot with Ayesha and the Anulax batteries exists mostly to put the Guardians in motion, and it never develops the weight the Ego story carries. Mantis arrives as a plot device before she arrives as a character. The humor, which landed cleanly in 2014, gets pushed harder here, and some of it lands flat against the darker material.
Still, the emotional core holds. Gunn chose to set the sequel shortly after the first film to explore the characters’ new roles as the Guardians and to follow the storyline of Quill’s father established throughout the previous film. That choice pays off. The film knows that saving the galaxy is the easy part. Staying a family is the work.
A 7.6/10 (TMDB audience score, 23409 votes) is the right score. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a sequel that trades surprise for sentiment and mostly earns the trade. It is messier and longer than the original, and its villain problem is only half-solved. But when it focuses on Yondu, Quill and the question of what a father owes a son, it is better than the film it follows. The parts that drag are the parts that forget that.
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