Every week, a group of friends and I are rewatching a Marvel movie in preparation for the Avengers: Endgame. Might as well talk about them on the way, right?
I… remember enjoying this movie a lot more in the theater.
For the first time in this recap series, I am legitimately stunned.
Guardians 2 sucked. Bad. Which explains why, two weeks ago when I was talking to my roommate about it, they looked at me like I was insane when I said “it might’ve been light on plot but at least it was hilarious!”
It was not hilarious. It was barely chuckle-worthy. I lied when I said Thor: The Dark World was the last bad Marvel movie. It’s this one and it’s bad. Did everyone else know this? Did I miss something? Nothing happened in the whole movie! I’ve never seen such lazy, runtime-padding dialogue in a major blockbuster. That’s probably not true, but it feels true.
Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron were multi-million dollar projects that kept Marvel jogging in place until Thanos could show up and be important for Infinity War, and I’m honestly not sure that Guardians 2 even qualifies as that. This movie was formulaic and motionless. Here’s the formula:
- Character appears on screen
- Character introduces self, explains entire backstory
- Audience is expected to feel bad about it
- Repeat for two goddamn hours
…aaaand that’s it.
There are a lot of complex relationships and themes going on here, all revolving around abuse and what makes a family, but none of that matters since the movie is so dull. I love a good character exploration- key word being good. This isn’t that, which is a real shame because a lot of the ideas had potential. All of the characters have their weird quirks right? They’re charming in Guardians 1, and shitty and annoying in Guardians 2. That’s a brilliant concept, but it doesn’t go anywhere until the very final moments of the movie, where all of these complicated emotions are tied up in a simple bow with a bizarre space funeral and… Sylvester Stallone… for some reason… and I stopped actively watching the movie 30 minutes ago anyway so… why was Pac-Man in the final battle again?
I think it’s a reference to a joke Peter made earlier in the movie but I refuse to dedicate the time needed to look it up
So, I wrote a tall tale just a few days ago about James Gunn getting re-hired to do Guardians 3. When I first saw the news, I was excited! And then I saw this again. When I went over the first Guardians, I remember thinking, “Huh. This is more weirdly gendered/sexist than I remember from the other 65 times I’ve seen this movie” and that somehow gets worse in the sequel. From James Gunn! Who is famous for his progressive tendencies! I feel like some of it was intended to be deconstruction of toxic masculinity, but deconstruction by its very nature is lazy (fight me), and when it’s done as poorly as it was here it just makes me think “Maybe he should have stayed fired.”
Anyway. Mantis is a great character. I wish she’d been used to her potential. I’m a little bit sad that Yondu is dead… but he, like all of the other talent in the movie, was wasted, so I don’t care that much. That Mary Poppins joke was pretty great, though. Can we watch Spider-Man now?