Guardians of the Galaxy 2

[sholio]

So the fact that I now have a GotG icon probably tells you all you need to know about how I reacted to the movie. I did not go in expecting to love it. I actually was lukewarm on the first one (which, by the way, I am totally buying so I can rewatch it now, because Netflix does not have it streaming, the jerks).

I DID NOT EXPECT TO LOVE THIS MOVIE. AT ALL.

I LOVED THIS MOVIE A WHOLE LOT.

I also think the trailer for this movie (the first teaser trailer, the Fox on the Run one) might be one of the best trailers I've ever seen, because it a) took me from "meh" to really wanting to see this movie, and b) did not actually spoil ANYTHING! I went into this completely unspoiled -- in fact, far less spoiled than I thought I was after seeing the trailer -- and I'm really glad. If watching things nonspoiled is your thing, I think you will enjoy having that experience.

Which means you will not want to click on the cut tag, because ALL THE SPOILERS are here.

Okay, so first of all, the thing about this movie is that it managed to hit a TON of my favorite trope buttons in completely unexpected ways. Obviously the "found family" thing is a gimme (though I was surprised by how sold I was on it by the end of the movie given that I wasn't completely sold on it in the previous one).

But there was a bunch of other stuff too! First of all, I absolutely adore the trope of choosing the imperfect, painful world over the perfect fantasy built on top of a chasm of horror, and everything with Peter's dad nailed that so hard: being offered not just a perfect fantasy of a happy family, but genuine godhood, and noping out hard once he realizes what accepting that godhood actually means for the galaxy and for him personally. And I love the way the movie develops the theme of "everything you wanted was there all along" -- a bickering family that was nothing like he imagined (but he loves these stupid assholes anyway), and a flawed father figure who loves him enough to die for him.

... Everything with Peter and Yondu. OH MY GODDDDDD. THE FEEEEEEELZ. I have to remind myself that Yondu is VERY FAR from "parent of the year", and he knows it, which makes it worse in a way ... and yet, in the end, he was there when Peter needed him, and they got to have their moment, and ... just FEEEEEELS, ENDLESS FEELS, help.

I also have way more feels than I was expecting about Peter, in general. I was kind of indifferent to Peter in the first movie, which I guess was one of the main things that made it hard for me to get into it. But I keep thinking about a piece of movie meta that someone (I think it was recessional?) posted afterwards about how Peter's entire persona is basically "peacemaker" and "caretaker" -- he's basically the team mom, and watching this movie just impressed on me really hard about how much of Peter is wrapped up in loving people, and wanting them to love him, and just trying to make the people that he loves be safe and happy. And now I have about a billion Peter feels (though I think Yondu edged him out as my favorite, because I am such a total sucker for someone who has done terrible things and doesn't think they are a good person but manages to hero it up anyway).

So there was that! But I also loved how this movie wasn't JUST Peter's daddy issues (though I enjoyed those) or even Peter and the Guardians' found-family thing. Every character had at least one important platonic relationship that got story development and its own little mini-arc: Yondu and Rocket, Gamora and Nebula, Drax and Mantis. I particularly loved that Drax and Mantis were explicitly platonic (in this movie, anyway - I guess it's possible future movies might go a different direction), because it started off hitting some unpleasant buttons -- childlike female character as potential object of sexual interest (there is a really great Youtube video on this trope which I cannot find because I can't remember what it's called -- FANDOM, HELP! - ETA: Born Sexy Yesterday - thank you, xparrot and yalumesse!), but then it didn't go that way at all! And yet, despite the fact that the movie makes it very obvious he is not sexually into her, he still makes friends with her, and is willing to die to save her at the end. Ultimately, in this movie, the one and only romance (Peter/Gamora - well, if you don't count Ego/Meredith) is actually an incredibly minor part of the movie; the fulcrum on which the movie's emotional heart rests is friendship, found family, and adoptive parenthood. The movie's ultimate message is that your birth family may be total irredeemable dicks and there's nothing you can do about it, but you can still build a whole world with people who love you enough to die for you, and I just spent the last half of the movie wallowing in that so hard.

(Extra bit of awesome: that Mantis and the Ravager first-mate guy, whose name apparently is Kraglin -- I had to look it up for the fic I wrote -- and even Yondu, posthumously, ended up becoming part of the Guardians, part of their new ship's crew. I love that it's not just the 5 of them; I love that others can be drawn into their family. Same thing I'm loving in S3 of Flash, actually -- that the "family" metaphor is explicitly drawn wide enough to include the "new" members of the family as well as the founding members.)

And then there's all the '80s nostalgia stuff, which the movie cranked up to pure camp AND IT WAS AWESOME. The music! The cameos! (Best David Hasselhoff cameo EVER.) The whole aesthetic of Ego's planet, and Ego himself, which was total '70s/'80s stoner sci-fi (Rodney Matthews/Boston album covers/every paperback fantasy novel of the era) at its most psychedelic. THEY DIGITALLY RECREATED 1980s KURT RUSSELL FOR THE EGO FLASHBACKS. I CAN'T EVEN.

Not all of the humor worked for me, but I loved that the movie was funny and entertaining and then it made those sudden left turns into massively serious stuff (the charnel house of dead children's bones; "I won't leave him behind - I won't leave you behind"; "He may be your father, but he wasn't your daddy") punch all the harder because it was such a sharp turn away from the humorous tone.

Also, because it was willing to be funny instead of dead serious all the time, it came across feeling more human that a lot of epic sci-fi does -- even stuff like the video game warriors on the planet of the gold people (I don't think I ever caught what they were called), who react to winning and losing in life-and-death space battle just like teenagers playing a game, because that is essentially what they ARE.

And this movie even ended up doing better than Marvel movies typically do with female characters, admittedly with an extremely low bar to clear, but out of 8 main characters (as I count them?) 3 of them were female, none of the three were "just" there as a love interest, and all of them got cool plot stuff to do and at least one important platonic relationship, including one lady-lady relationship that was a running thread throughout the movie. Low bar? Sure. But if you'd told me that GotG2 would actually be one of the best movies in the entire MCU franchise for female characters, I would not have believed you. And yet it was!

Finally, let me leave you with the one original song on the movie's soundtrack, in all its campy glory ...

Watch on YouTube

WHICH IS PERFORMED BY DAVID HASSELHOFF IN CASE YOU MISSED THAT PART.

Comments

[xparrot]

HEEEEE I saw this last week, opening weekend, because I enjoyed the first one quite a bit (it's better the second time) and heard good things about this one, and then I've been meaning to write a post because YES LOVED IT <33333333333333

The found family trope hit so ridiculously hard. Including having a baby on board because OMG baby Groot -- it wasn't just that he was adorable, it was the crew with him, so annoyed and frustrated and also completely protective and tossing him around to safe arms during crashes and just. A crazy badass-loser mercenary family with a little baby, come on, just kill me now.

Gamora & Nebula pushed all my sibling buttons, I could do with so much more of that but loved all we got. And actually in part because of that I was able to enjoy Peter/Gamora quite a bit, because it didn't feel so token, and also for both of them it really felt like the romantic love is just the tip of the iceberg of the family love between them.

Peter is so very lovable in his wanting to love, even if, having been a big Parks & Rec fan, I am still vaguely wigged out by finding Chris Pratt attractive? And the scene that Ego tells him what he did to his mother and Peter just unloads his entire clip ahahahah that was amazing, hilariously terrible and badass and just, beautiful.

And Mantis and Drax were actually quite sweet (the vid you're talking about, was it this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thpEyEwi80 I've been meaning to watch it...)

Also they used my favorite Fleetwood Mac song in the climax, which earned many bonus points for me right there.

...and that was featuring Hasselhoff OF COURSE IT WAS (I kind of loved how both Hasselhoff and Kurt Russell are believable as Chris Pratt's dad...)

...also also, I know I've mentioned it before (did I show you some of it, even?) but...you really owe it to yourself to watch Gintama. Because I was going on about how I loved the movie for how it could go between not passing up any opportunity for a stupid joke and then the next minute invoke genuine hardcore feels, and the siblings just rolled their eyes and said DUH and you also love Gintama. Because nothing does that trope like Gintama does. (and found family and adoptive parenthood is the central Gintama relationship; Gintoki and his two teen kids are the heart and soul of the series.)

[sholio]

I LOVED THIS MOVIE SO MUCH! <333333 Post your thoughts! I want to talk about them! :D

("Born Sexy Yesterday", YES, that is totally the vid, thank you!! *edits it in* I recommend it; it's well done and very creepy, though it may affect your ability to enjoy that trope going forward - but it does provide some excellent thoughts on subverting it. As this movie does beautifully!)

... omg, this movie is TOTALLY the Gintama of Western epic sci-fi movies. :DDDDD I have actually NOT seen any of the show except what you've shown me (which was selected episodes from the first 10 or so) but I do intend to watch it - does Crunchyroll have it, do you know? - and YES, it is such a similar kind of tone! Only of course the movie compresses it into about two and a half hours (I am still impressed at how much they actually got into that two and a half hours, though ...).

it wasn't just that he was adorable, it was the crew with him, so annoyed and frustrated and also completely protective and tossing him around to safe arms during crashes and just. A crazy badass-loser mercenary family with a little baby, come on, just kill me now.

YES. THAT. SO MUCH. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything like that in a similar sci-fi movie context! I guess it's the sort of thing you can really only get in a sequel ... but yes, it is brilliant and the movie developed it so well, especially since they never lost track of him or failed to include him doing something cute/bizarre/dangerous in scenes where he would plausibly be. I am all about the mercenary family and their baby murder tree, thank you Marvel for this gift. <333333

Gamora & Nebula pushed all my sibling buttons, I could do with so much more of that but loved all we got. And actually in part because of that I was able to enjoy Peter/Gamora quite a bit, because it didn't feel so token, and also for both of them it really felt like the romantic love is just the tip of the iceberg of the family love between them.

THIIIIS. I think one reason why this movie worked so much better for me than the first one (though honestly I think I WILL love the first one more on rewatch, now that I am already invested in the characters) is because the first movie was really about the getting-the-team-together aspect, and the Peter/Gamora relationship ended up being the emotional fulcrum of the climax. While the sequel develops compelling, strong platonic relationships for every character, so Peter/Gamora is only one of many relationships (and not even the most important one for either of them in their critical scenes at the end of the movie) and I think that is TOTALLY why I ended up being sold on it so much harder in the sequel than the original. I'm completely down with it now, because I want all the love for both of them! I want Gamora to learn to dance and to smile, and Peter to have someone to cuddle with. <3 But I'm also glad that the biggest emotional scenes for both of them in the climax of this movie were totally about Peter and his adoptive dad, and Gamora and her sister.

And the scene that Ego tells him what he did to his mother and Peter just unloads his entire clip ahahahah that was amazing, hilariously terrible and badass and just, beautiful.

IKR??? I love that he doesn't even hesitate. Ego almost has him, and then he learns the truth about his mom, and it's just a complete, horrible, total FUCK YOU. <3 (One of the apparently infinitely many things I love about this movie is that there is not even a HINT that Peter - or Mantis for that matter - should try to love Ego or reconcile with him or make up with him once the true horror comes out. Obviously it's not a completely easy thing since both of them have various reasons for being bound to him, but the narrative sympathy comes down very strongly on the side of the abused kids, and I liked that. <3)

I really think this is one of my favorite movies in the whole MCU franchise, which I did not see coming at all!

[nonniemous]

One of the apparently infinitely many things I love about this movie is that there is not even a HINT that Peter - or Mantis for that matter - should try to love Ego or reconcile with him or make up with him once the true horror comes out. Obviously it's not a completely easy thing since both of them have various reasons for being bound to him, but the narrative sympathy comes down very strongly on the side of the abused kids, and I liked that.

I kept screaming in my head to Peter and Gamora and Drax that "HOLY FUCK, MANTIS IS YOUR FIRST AND MOST GLARING CLUE THAT EVERYTHING IS NOT ALL RIGHT ON THIS PLANET, PEOPLE!!" I was really afraid that they would airbrush over what was done to her, but while they didn't explicitly explore it, they did acknowledge it--and no, don't make nice with the abusive daddy, just use the power you have over him against him now that you have backup and can do it!

[xparrot]

Gintama is on Crunchyroll, all...um...328 episodes and counting? (and when you reach the end of that you will be so anxious for more!) So yeah, when you have a little space in your fangirl soul it is waiting for you~~~

And GOTG - ahhh I want to rewatch the first movie and then see this one again! I really wasn't expecting it to be a favorite, either, but man they hit the found family trope so perfectly, and with everybody too (though the baby murder tree, come ONNNNNN...and then he's going to be a teenage tree, was that setting up GOTG3 yes please?!)(also love how they're all starting to understand "I am Groot" hee. Would be even better if they all learned to speak it, can you imagine, they all go on a job and all any of them are saying is "I am Groot"...)

One of the apparently infinitely many things I love about this movie is that there is not even a HINT that Peter - or Mantis for that matter - should try to love Ego or reconcile with him or make up with him once the true horror comes out. Obviously it's not a completely easy thing since both of them have various reasons for being bound to him, but the narrative sympathy comes down very strongly on the side of the abused kids, and I liked that. <3

The movie did a pretty effective contrast here, between Ego who is a truly horrible parent because he is entirely selfish and only cares about his children as extensions of himself, and Yondu who was in a lot of ways a terrible and abusive parent but who did genuinely care - even to the point of sacrificing himself for his child. It did a pretty good job of selling me on it, even though I really didn't like Yondu in the first movie (Just saw your long post on Tumblr about this...I like the 'rough parent who fucks up' type but it went a little past the abuse line for me. But then Yondu is an alien space pirate so, different standards? And knowing the backstory and that eating Peter really was just a joke...even if Peter didn't know it, oh man poor Peter...went a long way for me.)

(...also it makes me happy that GotG fandom can balance Peter and Yondu and like both of them and not vilify either even if they hurt each other, that is a pleasant surprise to hear! Definitely not the norm in my main fandom :P)

[sholio]

Ha, yeah, I kind of ... ran at the mouth a little bit on that topic. XD I think it's fascinating that the fandom, for the most part, seems to really love both of them -- because yeah, it's an extreme rarity in just about every fandom I've been in to have two characters who spend most of canon at odds, especially when one of them IS genuinely abusive in various ways, and yet, to have the fandom not really take sides. It's wonderfully refreshing, especially after Flash/Supergirl fandom, which turns into an absolute shitshow of character hate at the drop of a hat. >_>

I admit that I have fallen head over heels for Yondu in the wake of the second movie (and did genuinely like him in the first one) but I'm also trying to be clear-eyed about his flaws and all the various ways he did legitimately fail Peter as a parent. I do kinda feel like part of the problem is that up until age 8, Peter was a loved and sheltered kid in an ordinary Midwest family. If he had been, say, an orphan who had lived on the street before ending up with Yondu's gang, it would've been a really different experience for him. Yondu probably would have been much better at parenting/mentoring a child who was more like him, a tough little street rat or ex-slave, as opposed to a child who had known nothing except love and compassion his entire short life, suddenly finding himself surrounded by people who had never known anything of the sort.

And yet, Yondu obviously managed to scrape together enough affection and genuine mentoring ability that Peter did turn out okay (even if he spends the first movie and most of the second resenting Yondu for obvious reasons). I just really have a huge thing for "stuck with each other, making it work against all odds" relationships, and I think Peter and Yondu do eventually turn out to be that. The fact that they come from such incredibly different backgrounds and really should not have worked out in any way, and yet, by the end of the second movie, Yondu has come around enough that he and Peter are able to find some sort of middle ground where they can acknowledge that they really do love each other just does all kinds of squishy things to me.

Why is it always the fandoms I never see coming that sneak up and smack me in the id, anyway?! XD The first movie really wasn't one of my favorites in the MCU, but now ... oh man. Watching them back to back really made me appreciate SO MANY of the things they're doing in these movies, and also how invested James Gunn (the director/writer) actually is in these characters. I keep noticing neat, subtle little character touches that carry over between the movies, like how Gamora's complete bafflement about dancing slowly transitions to the point, by the end of the first movie, where she'll gently sway to Peter's music, and then in the second one, she'll actually dance a little bit and put her arm around him. At this rate, in another three or four movies, they might actually kiss. XD Or not ... I love that two movies in, you can actually still read them as mainly platonic except for a little bit of attraction on Peter's side, and none of the other characters have a romantic relationship at all. There are something like 7 or 8 main characters now, all of whom have important individual relationships with at least one other character, NONE of which (besides Peter and Gamora kinda-sorta) are romantic in the slightest. It's amazing.

... and now back to plotting my epic-length post-movie casefic/fixit/hurt-comfort extravaganza. XD Because another WiP is totally a thing I need right now.

[yalumesse]

It was a good movie :D

The YouTube vid you want is Born Sexy Yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thpEyEwi80
(I reblogged here http://yalumesse.tumblr.com/post/160147276392/bert-and-ernie-are-gay-tmirai-this-is-such-an)

[sholio]

YES IT WAS. :D

... and thank you so much!! I've edited it into the post above. It is possible that your Tumblr is where I saw it originally. I watched the video and meant to reblog it, but either I never did, or I didn't tag it in a way that made it possible for me to find it again ...

[yalumesse]

Welcome :)

[ratcreature]

The golden video game people are apparently called "Sovereign", not just their queen but in general.

[sholio]

Ah! Thank you! :)

[saphirablue]

Oh yes, the feels in this one. The whole found family thing - be it the Guardians in general or Peter & Yondu or Drax & Mantis or Gamora & Nebula? - I had to work hard to not squee out loud in the cinema. :)

Also, yes, yes, yes to everything else you said. :)

[sholio]

Soooo many feels! Gosh I loved this movie. I think I loved it the most of any of them since the original Winter Soldier one.

[brightknightie]

Not reading the spoilers -- just commenting off the intro! --

Thank you for sharing. With all the harsh professional reviews of the sequel, I'd been vaguely thinking of skipping the sequel, at least in the theaters, as I'd enjoyed the original and didn't want to ruin its pleasant memory.

[sholio]

Awwww, it's a shame the critics didn't like it! Obviously I can't say that you'll like it as much as I did, but I actually liked it the best of all the recent MCU movies from the last two or three years.

[020104isme]

I liked Yondu in the first movie, I was not expecting him to be in my top 5 movie Daddy's by the end of movie #2.

Emily Blunt is now Mary Poppins #3, that is all.

Also, whoever came up with the facial expressions of ickle Groot deserves multiple awards.

[sholio]

I liked Yondu in the first movie, I was not expecting him to be in my top 5 movie Daddy's by the end of movie #2.

SAME!! I really liked the twist in the first movie that he ended up being an ally, but I was not even remotely expecting to love him this much by the end of the second one.

It's really amazing how much emotion they managed to pack into baby Groot considering that he's a computer-animated baby tree. XD

[nonniemous]

Yes, so hard YES to everything you've written here! I was incoherent and flailing when I wrote my reactions--not to mention that I'm out of practice for really writing any kind of meta about anything.

Now I want to go see this again. And I'm hitting the 70s/80s nostalgia hard on this. I guess I'm officially old now?

Also, did you make your icon, or have I just not found the icon communities here on DW? I'm having a hard time finding icons at all now! *whines*

[tamsin]

There's icons and fandom_icons. They even have some GotG Icons.

[sholio]

I found my current icon at famira. They've got a bunch more GotG ones!

I missed the first round of reaction posts since I saw the movie later than a lot of people did. I'll have to go look up yours!

And yeah, I was lukewarm on the first movie (TOTALLY gonna buy it today for a treat and watch it tonight, though! I think I'll like it better as backstory for the second movie than I did on its own) - but this movie just mashed down a huge number of my happy buttons. I got SO MANY things out of it that I really was not expecting at all.

[chomiji]

YES!

I love it for pretty much all the reasons you do, and I loved it that Gamora and Nebula got to whale away full-on with Dangerous Hardware, and no one made a peep about it. When Gamora picks up that effin' ship's cannon that Nebula knocked off her ship when she tried to pursue her sister into the cavern, I squealed with sheer delight. Because male characters do this shit all the time in these movies, and she just *did* it, no big explanations or anything.

And Yondu, yes! The daddy quote, and then Peter with the Cat Stevens tune as he mourns both his father figures. And the found family: like Lilo and Stitch's family — broken (not so much with the little) but good.

I enjoyed the snot out of it, from Baby Groot dancing to ELO at the start to the silly codas. When Gunn does these things, it's like he's making fan-comics of his own works.

[sholio]

Ooh! That's a really good point about Gamora and Nebula and the Dangerous Hardware fight. (Oh man, I loved her picking up the spaceship cannon; it was so completely, hilariously OTT in all the best ways.) I loved that their relationship got so much development and that Gamora had an entire - very emotionally satisfying! - plotline that didn't have anything to do with Peter at all. I still can't believe this movie delivered on female characters better than most of the other movies in the franchise.

And I loved so much that this movie did such a great job of pushing found/adoptive family as the absolute equal of birth family. The Gamora-Nebula storyline echoes that theme too, come to think of it, because they're not related by blood to each other or to Thanos (at least I don't think so?), but they are sisters, full sisters in every way, and that's the emotional crux that their relationship rests on.

"He may be your father, but he wasn't your daddy" breaks my heart all over again every time I think of it (in the best ways).

like Lilo and Stitch's family — broken (not so much with the little) but good.

Yes, exactly!

Augh, I just loved this movie so much. :D I want to go watch it again! Totally buying it when it's out on DVD.

[sherylyn]

Oh my gosh, YES on all of this and the comments,too!! LOL!! I *loved* the 1st one, and I loved it even more after watching it more than once, but this one is just beyond exquisite in allll these ways.

And also, teeny little tidbit, but I am now SO expecting that Nebula going "I'll do it myself" is going to be the lead-in to how GotG will come into "Infinity Wars."

I haven't read much of the "professional" critics' reviews or whatever, but everyone in our theater was laughing and clapping and quietly cheering all the way through. I firmly believe that sometimes, critics aren't looking at what makes films *enjoyable* and if that's the case, then they clearly missed the boat on this one!! <3

[sholio]

Yeah, our audience was really involved, too, and the theatre was almost full a week after the movie opened. The critics are wrong like a bunch of wrong things. :D

The first movie wasn't one of my favorites, but I love it so much more now after watching the second one. They really work together beautifully, like two halves of a complete whole. I'm nervous about Infinity War because everything is so lovely now, and I don't want them to mess anything up!

[winter_elf]

I really liked the first movie. And I really liked this one. I've already seen it twice. It's hard to say which I like more. In the first movie, I was cringing at the thought of CGI characters and was VERY surprised that my favorite characters in #1 were Rocket and Groot. (and I really loved them this time too!)

The tropes are different, slightly, but I did grow to like Yondu more in this one. In the first, there were hints that they really expanded in the 2nd movie.

And on that - I usually really, really, really hate the 'kill the character at the end' thing. So much hate. But I didn't this time - maybe because they spent the movie SHOWING how Yondu thought of Peter and what he thought of his mistakes and what happened to his crew. And Then they spent time with the AFTER, the funeral, the talking, the making sense of it all, the redemption. Usually it's death, whooops, end of movie.

I also really liked that during Ego's supervillian 'tell all the plans', when he lets slip the bit about killing Peters mom... There's NO HESITATION in Peter shooting his ass IMMEDIATELY. No thought, no, wait, asking why. Just pulled his guns and shot. I cheered.

[sholio]

I usually really, really, really hate the 'kill the character at the end' thing. So much hate. But I didn't this time - maybe because they spent the movie SHOWING how Yondu thought of Peter and what he thought of his mistakes and what happened to his crew. And Then they spent time with the AFTER, the funeral, the talking, the making sense of it all, the redemption. Usually it's death, whooops, end of movie.

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about why this one worked for me when usually "redemption by death" is a trope I absolutely hate, and I think that's why. Most of the other character deaths I can think of happened somewhere in the middle of the action, and at most we got a brief funeral scene at the end, but it never really felt like enough. In this case, though, the entire rest of the movie was devoted to Yondu's death and its impact on everyone. I still wish he wasn't dead, but I think they did a great job with not making his death feel tokenistic or shocking, but rather, thematically necessary to the whole movie. It would've been a much different and less emotionally powerful movie if he hadn't died.

ETA: Oh, and I agree totally about Peter unhesitatingly blasting at Ego. That was great!

[alessandriana]

I finally saw this today, and dear god I was straight up bawling during the entire last ten minutes, from the moment when Yondu puts the spacesuit on Peter all the way up through the funeral (when the Ravagers show up ;___;). Dads being dads is one of my big time tropes, so wow, this was a seriously effective storyline.

Also this movie was SO GOOD at being an ensemble movie, and using every single moment to build out the personality of each character. There wasn't a lot of time to spend on everyone but it didn't matter because there was no wasted narrative space. Like that bit in the beginning where Nebula really, really wants that fruit thing but no one will give it to her because it's not ripe yet-- and then she gets it, takes a bite and has to spit it out because yep, it really isn't ripe. It's barely there but it says so much! Or Taserface! Or like thirty other things! I really just need to sit back down and watch it again with my writing hat on so I can take notes or something.

[sholio]

Ahhhhhh yessssss, this was SUCH a good character movie; there was no wasted space, every scene advanced the characters or pertained to the movie's main themes in some way. It's so rare to get that with big, bombastic sci-fi movies.

The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with how everything was put together. Rewatching the first movie also made me notice how many little callbacks happened in the second movie -- for example, in the first movie Gamora sways a little bit to music at the very end, and in the second movie she's moved onward to tentatively dancing. Or Yondu referring to Peter's dad as a jackass in the first movie and then "Hey, Jackass!" when he lands the ship on top of him. (SO SATISFYING. And about a billion times more satisfying after seeing the end of the movie: at least he got to crush the asshole on Peter's behalf before he died.)

And everything in the movie ties back to the central theme of parenthood and family, like everyone taking care of baby Groot (especially Peter with little Groot on his knee at the end), or Gamora going after Nebula to hug her after Peter's "sometimes what you wanted was right in front of you all along" speech. It's just sooo gooooood.

I am totally going to watch it again this weekend. :D

[sgatazmy]

I still haven't gotten to go see it! Ack! I so terribly want to as well. I'm glad to hear it is worth the watch!

[sholio]

I absolutely loved it! I hope you'll like it when you see it. :D

[sgamadison]

I love your whole assessment here--yes! Especially on the found families (one of my MAJOR tropes) and the side arcs, like Yondu's piercing assessment of Rocket. In fact, I grinned throughout reading your whole assessment here because I thought it was dead on.

But, and this is a very big 'but' for me, I had problems with the combination of humor and violence, which is always an uneasy mix for me. In particular, I had issues with the prolonged whistling arrow scene coming after all this previous storyline.

We know Yondu isn't a good guy--that's been established. And yes, I think needed a reminder, especially after the mutiny and the killing of loyal members of his crew. I think we needed to see a crew member getting spaced so we'd know exactly what was happening to Yondu when he chose that act to save Peter. But the scene where he kills the mutinous crew members went on far too long for me, especially in light of the fact that they ejected from the ship and blew it up. He didn't have to kill them individually (and we didn't need to see it)--they just needed to escape. I have no issues with him deciding to kill the mutinous crew by blowing up the ship, mind you. From a storytelling perspective, however, the whistling arrow scene jarred with me because it felt out of place in the movie.

Likewise, during the big battle with Ego, same thing. Seeing the planet with Kurt Russell's face wasn't scary to me, it felt like a throwback to one of KR's old Disney hijinks movies, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Maybe it was meant to be a nod to that, but it kind of took me out of the tension of the scene. Ditto when Ego and Peter are fighting and Peter turns into a giant Pacman. I told myself he'd mentioned it earlier, and it might have been the only thing he had the skill to generate on the fly, but it jarred.

I was conscious of feeling out of sync with the movie while watching it, when it redeemed itself with all the feels in the end. And I truly came away enjoying it a lot. But that earlier feeling of dissatisfaction sits with me, so I suspect I will have to watch it again to see if it was just me at that moment in time or what.

And now I feel as though I'm harshing your squee, which I don't mean to be. I did enjoy this movie a lot, will see it again, will probably buy the soundtrack. I just adored the first one, so it was a tough act to follow for me. And I'm only pointing out the things I had issues with instead of gleefully clapping my hands at everything you and the others have said because I'd have to copy and paste large sections of text just to go "THIS!" or "YES!" after it. :-)

Oh, but icons?? Must go look now...

[sholio]

No worries, I don't feel squee-harshed. :) I can totally understand how the movie's mix of ridiculous and gritty wouldn't work for some -- it did for me, but I have a high tolerance for that kind of thing.

But I'm glad we see eye to eye on the parts we liked! <3 <3