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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2: The Groot Strikes Back


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15 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

So.... hence the appeal of saying simply "fun movie!"

Yeah.  I'd also add the Drax-Mantis interplay is (apparently we're using spoiler tags): 

Spoiler

juxtaposed with Gamora trying to get Peter to realize his emotional attachment is stunting his ability to see what's really going on with his father throughout the second act.  Of course, guess you could say the whole movie is about fathers and sons and Cat Stevens.

 

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On 09/05/2017 at 8:44 PM, sifth said:

 

I love how Drax was the only one who thought Yondu was Peter's "real" father. It's really quite touching.

Guy wears his heart on his sleeve and is perhaps the most emotionally adjusted of the lot of them.

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Saw this today; I liked it a lot. GotG continues to be the only Marvel franchise I really like, but I didn't like it as much as the first one. The big issue for me is that the movie didn't have enough set pieces; and I don't mean big action sequences, I mean settings and locations and fun things to see. Half the characters get to Ego's planet pretty early on, and they're there for the rest of the movie, and the rest are on a not super-interesting ship until they get there as well. I'd have liked more jet-setting around fantastical looking planets. The ice world with Yondu and Sly was cool, but that was pretty much all there was besides the opening scene, Yondu's ship, and Ego's planet.

Also, I didn't like the music as much in this one.

But the characters were great, and Ego was one of the few good Marvel movie villains. Its basically just him, Loki, and Red Skull. And Jeff Bridges I guess, but he got real dumb when his heel turn happened

On 5/7/2017 at 11:26 PM, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Is it just me or did GotGv2 have the most entertaining end credits in the history of cinema?

Talking just credits, and not the ending scenes, the reigning champ for me remains Wall-E.

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Just saw it today.  I think I was a bit disappointed.  I think the first movie really struck the right balance between the action and the humor.  In this one, the humor was a little much...it really veered into silliness at some points.  Also...Yondu's arrow seemed crazy overpowered.  Drax - in the first movie, he was still filled with grief about this family, and the humor came from him being a straight man of sorts - taking things far too literally.  This time around he was more intentionally cruel with his humor. I still liked it...just not as much as the first movie.

I'll give Marvel some props - between Michael Douglas in Ant Man, and now Kurt Russell in GotG2...they have the de-aging process absolutely nailed.  I didn't dislike the Princess Leia cameo in Rogue One, but it didn't look quite real.  Young Kurt Russell here - seemed pretty flawless.  Of course, with Leia, they didn't have the actual Carrie Fisher to de-age.  In any case, I was pretty impressed by the effect in this movie.

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12 hours ago, HokieStone said:

Just saw it today.  I think I was a bit disappointed.  I think the first movie really struck the right balance between the action and the humor.  In this one, the humor was a little much...it really veered into silliness at some points.  Also...Yondu's arrow seemed crazy overpowered.  Drax - in the first movie, he was still filled with grief about this family, and the humor came from him being a straight man of sorts - taking things far too literally.  This time around he was more intentionally cruel with his humor. I still liked it...just not as much as the first movie.

I'll give Marvel some props - between Michael Douglas in Ant Man, and now Kurt Russell in GotG2...they have the de-aging process absolutely nailed.  I didn't dislike the Princess Leia cameo in Rogue One, but it didn't look quite real.  Young Kurt Russell here - seemed pretty flawless.  Of course, with Leia, they didn't have the actual Carrie Fisher to de-age.  In any case, I was pretty impressed by the effect in this movie.

Agreed. Best de-aging I've seen so far.

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36 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Agreed. Best de-aging I've seen so far.

It seemed unnecessary though. Also, no matter how good it looks, de-aging always creeps me out.

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It improved on the first one by learning some good lessons from the best movie franchise going- The Fast and the Furious. Heck, it even had a 'we're not friends. We're family' moment.

Definitely more polished and funnier overall, and yeah, far better villain-arc.


Bit weird how while they maintained consistency with the first one in the character and more directly involved bits, they fucked with the Marvel mythos not just in general but in ways that specifically contradict things we glimpsed in the first:

for starters, naming Ego a Celestial is not only inaccurate to the comics and a completely pointless thing to do (heck, if he's the only one of him, why would there be a name for it and why would Peter know what it is off the top of his head), but we already saw Celestials in the first one- as well as the head that Nowhere was in, there's one using the stone during the Collector's brief history lesson.



And for seconders, we already saw that Adam Warlock broke out of his pod in the stinger of the first one. So seeing him in his pod again here was odd, although I guess since they named no names the first time this origin will be the one to stick and he'll be the villain in Guardians 3.

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On 15/05/2017 at 7:39 PM, polishgenius said:

Bit weird how while they maintained consistency with the first one in the character and more directly involved bits, they fucked with the Marvel mythos not just in general but in ways that specifically contradict things we glimpsed in the first:

IIRC, neither the Knowhere head or the Celestial using the Infinity Stone were referred to by name as being 'Celestials'. Even if they were, there's nothing to say that there can't be more than one kind of Celestial, so Ego is still unique. And making Ego a unique type of Celestial is exactly the kind of retcon I wouldn't blink an eye at, if it were to appear in the comics. So, not bothered about that point at all, personally.

6 hours ago, Myrddin said:

The Watchers exist outside of time. So it could still work.

 

 

*Yes, I'm making up a "reason" to explain why it still works.

We used to call that a 'No-Prize'.

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Watched it the day it came out. While funnier and having more character development I have a serious beef with the last act, which I'll try to lay out below (Warning: FULL SPOILERS):

1. Considering that Ego is an actual living planet and Peter is his son I was expecting something way more epic and psychedelic a la Doctor Strange rather than what we got, which was not all too impressive.

2. There was a severe tonal inconsistency IMO. Star-Lord finds out he is literally part-god, meets the father he always wanted, begins bonding with him, finds out said father murdered his mother, and by the end of the movie loses not just said biological father (Ego) but his surrogate father (Yondu) as well. Yet, by that same point Star-Lord literally hasn't changed at all and worse doesn't seem too affected by what happened. Even more so, during the big fight at the end of the movie he's making quips, including one about killing his dad, which makes no sense to me given what he's just found out. Seriously, he was angry for like what, two minutes?

3. What was the point of making Star-Lord part-god if it wasn't going to mean anything considering he loses all his potential power by the end of the same movie said potential was introduced in?

4. I really feel that they could handled Ego's motivations in a much more nuanced and tragic way. I mean did we really need another villain who wants to take over or destroy everything? To be specific I think it would have been better to ground Ego's desires in an existential crisis. Namely, that he is an immortal being of cosmic power...Yet he can't help but seek out other life even when it proves to be disappointing and worse, transient unlike himself, with all his attempts to find something or someone to forge a lasting bond with failing. In my mind that would give Ego killing all his previous children and Star-Lord's mother more weight as well as provide better dramatic tension in the last battle because from his perspective he would be facing not only his last child but also the only being who he could ever allow himself to build a bond with because Star-Lord won't die like everyone else. This, in turn, would make their last conversation much more poignant in my mind: When Ego says "you'll be just like them" and Star-Lord responds "what's wrong with that" you can really see where the former is coming from.

Anyway, I don't want to give the impression that I thought the movie was bad or that I didn't enjoy it but I really do feel it could have been even better if they had laid off the humor a bit and given the story beats more appropriate weight.

Disclaimer: I haven't read any comics so I don't know how unfaithful to the source material my ideas would be. 

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Yeah.    The expansion seemed like a duh.  It had grandness to it, because a god had decided to veto Life, but also it had the offhanded pettiness of a god condescending to our level to brawl with mortal factions.  Boo, when my secret hope had been an intro to higher god- level intrigue we couldn't even hope to understand.  (Great cosmic mystery genre).   And Pete and Pops are out of the equation now for matching up against Thanos.  Boo 2.

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1 hour ago, The Grey Wolf said:

3. What was the point of making Star-Lord part-god if it wasn't going to mean anything considering he loses all his potential power by the end of the same movie said potential was introduced in?

It gave him the ability to fight another god, it explained how he survived using the Infinity Stone in the first installment, and it may well have further ramifications down the track even if he can't reshape planets any more. And I'm not sure he really has lost all his power; if he didn't have power of his own, rather than merely access to Ego's, what use would he have been he to Ego?

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I really, really enjoyed the original. Definitely my favorite Marvel flick, and frankly one of my favorite sci-fi adventures of all time.

That said, I walked out of the theater yesterday relatively disappointed. I grew tired of Baby Groot about halfway through. Thought 80% of the jokes missed. The corny dialogue worked great last movie, but fell flat on my ears whenever Gunn pushed for an emotional conversation - especially with the sisters' scenes. I rolled my eyes multiple times. I didn't really go for Russell's character the way most of you guys enjoyed him. Then again, I loved Lee Pace's Ronan and patiently waited for a Thanos scene which never came.

Anyway, The good parts were terrific, and it got a bit dusty in the theater once or twice. I'll see it multiple more times, but I don't think I'll consider it a favorite they way I did the original.

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1 hour ago, felice said:

It gave him the ability to fight another god, it explained how he survived using the Infinity Stone in the first installment, and it may well have further ramifications down the track even if he can't reshape planets any more. And I'm not sure he really has lost all his power; if he didn't have power of his own, rather than merely access to Ego's, what use would he have been he to Ego?

Said fight was anticlimactic in the extreme so your first argument is not a point in its favor IMO. As for the infinity stone they could have given him a different lineage that didn't involve cosmic power for that. Also, I'm pretty sure he lost all of his powers when his dad died. Otherwise, why would Ego say "you'll be just like them"? To be clear, my beef with Star-Lord's powers is that they don't really affect him personally the way they should and furthermore those powers aren't really used in any meaningful or awesome way before they're lost.

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38 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Star-Lord

I always forget he goes by that and it makes me laugh every time I'm reminded. I hope he got just as much shit from the other Ravagers as Taserface did. 

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