Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Every once in a blue moon, there's a sequel to a decent film that takes everything that was good about the first and elevates it to an art form. From Russia With Love. The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

As you may recall, I had some rather... unkind things to say about the original. Basically I refused to put it on a pedestal. When you consider that Guardians 1 came out around the same time as The Winter Soldier, you're going to have to forgive me for declaring GoldenEye With Superheroes the undisputed victor of that particular bout.

There's one thing I want to mention that I apparently didn't put into either review, and that's that I was confused in the first film as to just how competent Star-Lord was supposed to be. I had assumed from the marketing and the early scenes that he was a fish-out-of-water guy with way too big an estimation of his own competence, but he actually knows what he's doing. In Guardians 2, I never had any doubts as to the film's tone or what the characters are capable of. The opening credits capture the tone of the film perfectly (I will not spoil this if you have not seen it yet).

Now, one of the big problems I had with the first film - its struggle in introducing the setting - is taken care of here because, you know, there was a first film. Yay! Another problem that I had with the first film was that it spent too much time yammering about Thanos and the MacGuffin Mitten. This one does not. Thanos is relegated to being something for Karen Gillan to seethe about. Another complaint I had was that Karen Gillan was wasted in G1. Not so here. It is like somebody got a direct line to my brain and sorted out every single nitpick I had about this first film. Villains whose characterization and motivations made sense! New characters who didn't feel pointlessly shoehorned in! Baby Groot! Sylvester Stallone is in this movie for some reason! (Okay, I did have to read les interwebs to figure out what that was about.)

And let the record show that this film featured what is without a doubt the most quintessentially perfect use of "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans. That is all.