With the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie having turned in great performance at the box office and being one of the more popular entries in the MCU, much was riding on the sequel. In the intervening years, nothing further had really happened in the ‘cosmic’ side of the MCU, and so James Gunn returned to a playing field unmuddied by anything save his own work. But, as Greg D.Smith discusses, the question was, could he make lightning strike twice? When a mysterious stranger arrives claiming to be Peter’s long-lost father, the Guardians face their biggest challenge yet. Beset by internal conflict, can this family of oddballs come together once again to save the galaxy as we know it?

Gunn’s first Guardians movie was a phenomenal success, though not, as I have argued previously, an unexpected one. Having a first entry that good meant that the pressure was really on for this sequel, and with that sort of weight of expectation, was it really possible that he could make a sequel that was the equal or better of its predecessor? The short answer would be no. The long answer is substantially more complicated.

Having got the band together in the first film, Gunn now had to address what happened next. To his credit, he avoided the sort of ‘and then they lived happily and peacefully ever after’ sort of ending that final pre-credits scene may have implied. The whole point of the Guardians of the Galaxy was that they were a bunch of misfits, thrown together by circumstance, each carrying severe emotional trauma that hadn’t just been wiped away by the fact of their victory over Ronan. This manifests in a second movie in which the whole crew not only bicker, but actually argue vociferously to the point of endangering themselves and each other.

The opening scene sets the stall out early – here are the team, ready to take on their latest mission of defending some batteries for the Sovereign against the predations of some intergalactic space beastie. As the gang prepare, there is bickering over whether having music playing in the background is really that important, who is using what sort of weaponry and a joke at Drax’s expense over – of all things – the sensitivity of his nipples. There’s also a baby Groot wandering about the place looking cute and displaying poor impulse control and a serious anger management problem. These are basically the defining characteristics of Baby Groot, as well as an inability to understand simple instructions, but we’ll get to that.

What this scene does is give us the tone and the basic characteristics of each protagonist: Peter still hasn’t grown up; Gamora is a mothering presence within a group of petulant, adolescent males; Rocket is an even bigger asshole than we remember (and apparently now also a little bit stupider); Drax is a macho, slightly moronic muscle head with an odd sideline in schoolboy body humour; and Groot is cute. There’s a sense here that the subtle characters that Gunn created in the first movie have had elements of their personalities dialled up to be louder than before, and that fits with the rest of the movie.

You see, another standout element of the first movie was its visuals. Neon-soaked, acid bright colours popped off the screen in every shot, a palette of exquisite brightness and variety held together by a lived-in, used look to scenery, weapons and spacecraft. Everything was bright and colourful, but somehow worn at the edges. The sequel takes that idea and runs with it – everything is bigger, brighter, more colourful. Every scene is positively dripping with colour, and this element really starts to amp up in the second act where Quill, Gamora and Drax visit Ego’s planet. In a franchise often held to be colourful, the Guardians movies stand at the very top of the brightly lit, spangly tree.

And of course, let’s not forget the soundtrack. Awesome Mix Vol 1 was an eclectic mish-mash of seventies and eighties ‘mom-rock’ which proved to be a smash hit with audiences who flocked to buy it in droves. Vol 2 brings much the same sensibility, but more. More songs, more eclecticism (almost to the point of obtuseness) and even a specially-crafted-for-the-movie number featuring David Hasselhoff. What it does do is still brilliantly tie in with the themes on screen as tunes play – the ebullient joy of Mr Blue Sky the perfect backdrop for Baby Groot’s gleeful dancing amidst the chaos of the rest of the gang fighting every bit as much as Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain underscores the temporary split of the two elements of the family in act two and the triumphant final battle of Quill against Ego in the final act. It’s a shame that the actual score lets it down slightly, being a pale shadow (in many cases literally) of Tyler Bates’ work on the first film. I won’t exactly say that Bates phones it in for the sequel, but he doesn’t bring much that’s new to the table either.

But thematically, the film carries a theme that’s basically stamped through it like a stick of rock – family, and the ways in which those who are abused by their blood family find solace in the arms of the family they choose as they grow older. Every character (with the possible exception of Baby Groot) has specific and painful experience of this process, and all of them get a turn to be explored as the movie progresses. Peter, ironically, is the most well-off of the lot in this regard, and that fact alone may be a comment in the context – that those worst off are often the quietest about their pain. Yes, he’s lost his mother and grown up knowing nothing of his father; yes he was kidnapped by the Ravagers and threatened with being eaten (albeit one has to wonder how seriously he took that threat after the first few years) but he’s had a decent life, basically bumming around the galaxy stealing shit, making money and having a string of inconsequential encounters with various ladies. Much as he complains about his pain, it’s nothing compared to that of those around him, and the movie seems to know this, threading in absurdities like his story of David Hasselhoff being his Dad to bullies at school. Peter needs to recognise how lucky he is compared to those around him, and his journey in the film does that, the final ‘revelation’ not being so much that Yondu thought of him as a son, but that in actual fact Peter had the father figure he always moaned about the absence of right there all along, but was too self-absorbed to realise it.

Rocket and Yondu are united as the ‘odd couple’ of the movie, and it’s a bold move that unfortunately relies a little too heavily on some additional backstory to Yondu that doesn’t quite feel organic. The revelation that he was sold into slavery by his parents and then rescued by the Ravagers certainly provides a parallel to Peter’s own experience, and explains why he felt the need to refuse to deliver Peter to Ego and instead raised him as best he could as his own. It just doesn’t feel like something which flows from the Yondu that we see in the first movie. Nevertheless, the unification of him and Rocket, on the basis that both are scared, lonely people who mask this by being snarky and mean to those around them, is a decent plot arc that expands both characters and gives us a little bit more insight into why each is the way they are. It’s just a shame that in Yondu’s case it doesn’t quite manage to feel like something that was the plan all along.

Drax of course has his own demons in reverse to the others – rather than having either lived with or fled an abusive family, he lost a wife and child that he loved very much. Much is made of the over-the-top character Drax seems to have been assigned in the second movie, all rambunctious laughter and crude jokes, but the best scene in the movie for him, and one that puts all the other behaviour in context, is when he and Mantis are sat watching the landscape and he speaks briefly of his lost family. Mantis touches him and weeps for the level of pain and grief that she feels as an empath, while Drax sits motionless, a wry smile on his face. This is the very essence of the character in one perfect expression. Drax is always in pain, always in mourning for what he lost. He’s driven on every step of his journey to find and revenge himself upon those responsible, but he masks all of this with loud laughter.

And then there’s Gamora, whose character is examined here through the lens of her relationship with her sister. Unlike the Yondu arc, Nebula’s revelation of the reason behind her hatred of Gamora – that all she wanted was a sister but instead she got beaten again and again, each time leading to more torture from their abusive ‘father’ Thanos – feels entirely in keeping with what we saw in the opening movie. For Gamora, her journey becomes about accepting Nebula as more than just a mortal enemy, and accepting her own part in the alienation and torture of her sister. When the two finally unite against a common foe, it’s not lightly. There’s still tension there, still the sort of sparky, almost-conflict that you would expect between fractious siblings who’ve recently ‘made up’, and there’s also the undercurrent of genuine affection.

And of course, new character Mantis, who has essentially been under the influence of Peter’s real abusive father for years. From her first appearance she looks nervous and ill at ease. Her interactions with Drax bear out that she has no clue about how to deal with other people. She’s been starved of anything approaching affection all her life, happily accepting Drax’s judgements of her as ugly, repulsive and stupid because they’re delivered by him so neutrally and she’s just happy for the attention.

In terms of a villain, the movie offers one that starts promisingly and ends a little disappointingly. Since the first movie we had wondered what the ‘alien’ part of Peter’s DNA pointed to. There was a precedent in the comics which Gunn had made clear he had no intention of following. Instead, Kurt Russel’s Eho is a Celestial, essentially a god-like being from a time ages past, and that means that Peter has some of his powers. The promising bit is early on, with Peter suddenly excited that he has a dad and has found a family at last (Gamora’s line ‘I thought you already had’ is as devastatingly on point as it is slightly on the nose) but all along alarm bells are ringing for us in the audience as we instinctively know that something is off. It persists too as the grand plan is revealed to Peter, Ego subtly tempting him to forego and abandon his friends and Gamora in order to fulfil his destiny, and reaches a devastating peak as he reveals that it was him who gave Mereditch, Peter’s mother, the cancer which killed her. Everything up to and including this point is a masterclass in a megalomaniacal, devious villain, with all of the impact and compulsion that suggests.

Then, well, then it loses some of its edge as Ego is rejected by Peter and becomes a bit more of a standard comic book bad guy, all shouty monologues and cackling desire to take over all of the universe. It’s not really a failing of the movie per se, not even really a failing at all, it’s just that when the tipping point is reached, we lose the subtle, Machiavellian villain we had and it’s replaced with a two-dimensional, far less interesting one.

The Sovereign, in their capacity as ‘secondary’ villain need not detain us too much here. The post credits scene (one of five) involving them is an obvious nod to Adam Warlock making a future appearance (whether in the next Guardians film or elsewhere in the MCU) but it’s hard to shake the notion that the whole Sovereign people are basically in the movie as a convenient plot device. They provide the initial catalyst for the chase that leads to Ego finding the gang, they then hire Yondu to bring him into the plot, provide comic relief with Taserface and finally the Adam Warlock hint at the end. They actually do nothing of any consequence in the film itself, and their appearance at the end seems purely calculated to give the gang more than just one planet/God bad guy to fight against, to vary things a little.

There’s also a sense here of the reins having been loosened slightly on Gunn since his first go-around. The film has a few scenes that go just a little too long, and jokes that don’t land as well as the movie wants them too. Occasionally, the laughter of characters on screen feels forced, like it’s almost doing the job of the canned laughter of old sitcoms, prodding the viewer to laugh along with it. It’s not that the jokes aren’t funny – mostly they are – but the movie feels a little more desperate for you to laugh along with it than the last one. At 137 minutes, it’s not vastly longer than the original’s lean 119, but it does lend to the feeling that a few less trips to the editing booth were made.

If this sounds like I disliked the movie, I very much did not. On a personal level, my attachment to the characters is such that I’m always going to be happy to see them, and I honestly loved every frame of the movie. At the same time, this series is about objective critique, and from that standpoint, Vol 2 is the inferior film, in terms of editing, length, narrative flab and some plot decisions that don’t quite sit as organically in there as they might have done.

Still, it’s a movie about family, about the fathers we have versus the ones that we want, and why the former may well be the latter once we have grown up. It’s also about a cute, if slightly murderously angry, talking tree. As a continuation of the series, it’s brilliant, and still one of the stronger entries in the MCU. But it just doesn’t quite do enough to better (or in fairness equal) its predecessor. Like Quill, it may have its father’s rugged good looks, but it doesn’t quite pack the same punch he did.