Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

**********SPOILERS (you have been pre-warned)**********

This was Mother’s Day weekend and what better way to spend quality family time than watching movies??  It is what we do…  This weekend we have a twofer.  One at the theater and one at home.  First up: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

My take:

The new Marvel Studios intro to logo – despise it.  Just, honestly hate it.  It would be great fun if we could have maybe a play on the old comic books for the particular movie you are watching.  Why are we watching a promo for all other movies in the MCU?  Poor marketing, I believe.

For the first hour and a half of the movie, I felt as if maybe Mel Brooks was the director.  The gags were over-the-top and oftentimes more than was necessary.  The gags were funny, do not get me wrong.  It just seemed the volume of them was a bit much.  The last forty five minutes I felt were more true to the original film that I love and adore.

In the opening scenes, huge product placement for Mustang and Dairy Queen. I thought I had read somewhere that they planned on doing a little CGI for the Kurt Russel flashbacks, to make him younger.  However, in reading Vanity Fair’s article, Russel mentions his makeup artist, Dennis Liddiard (they have worked together on 28 films) was able to “age him down” for the film.  In the same article, it is noted that Russel did a number of his stunts, impressive for an older man working opposite of Chris Pratt.

I love that Howard the Duck is all over the MCU. There was chatter of a Howard the Duck movie for 2017 but a quick check of IMDB does not reference one upcoming.  I would go see it if they did.  The original movie with Lea Thompson and Ed Gale has a divide among people who believe it is a great cult classic or just a crappy movie.  I believe it is horribly awesome.

Also, I kept thinking “Guardians of the Gilmores” every time Sean Gunn stepped into frame.  Two things that fascinated the hell out of me that I have read: 1 – James Gunn, the writer and director of GotG is the brother of Sean Gunn.  2 – Sean Gunn is the on-set stand in for rocket.  In a recent interview, James Gunn noted: “Sean Gunn is not a stand-in. He is a motion reference actor. That means we film everything Sean does on set as Rocket. We film it. I don’t stop doing takes of him until we get the performance right and then we use that performance as a basis for much of Rocket’s acting. And he does a fantastic job in that role. He knows it. He understands it. And also very important, Sean is able to physically do something most actors aren’t able to do, which is waddle around on all fours. He’s always been an incredibly limber guy that can to do a lot of strange physical things. And the fact that he’s able to waddle around on his legs all day long at the exact height of Rocket is quite a feat and quite quite difficult.”

A real smack of Mel Brooksish movie making came when the Ayesha, played by Elizabeth Debicki, is walking on the blue carpet and the woman rolling it out starts to have issues and it is an “egg of the face” scene for the character.  I seriously thought about Joan Rivers playing Dot Matrix in Spaceballs. It bothered me a little.

Sylvester Stallone did not bother me as much as I thought he would.  However, my Son whispering “I am da law” made me chuckle.

There were two moments I felt that Star Wars was playing in front of me – the “Star Lord I am your Father” moment and just after when his Ego is teaching Star Lord about the ball of electricity he can conjure up between his hands (kinda like the Force).  I was not bothered by those though.

The one scene I rank right up there at the top is the killing of the rubberneckers with the blue The Blob mess rolling across earth.  Rubberneckers aggravate me in “real life” so it is fun seeing them taken out on the screen.

Overall: I did like the movie.  I loved the music.  I loved Groot.  I will buy it for my DVD library.  I rate it a solid B.

Did you see it and like it?  Let me know in the comments below!

Other stuff:

IMDB Synopsis: Set to the backdrop of ‘Awesome Mixtape #2,’ Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team’s adventures as they traverse the outer reaches of the cosmos. The Guardians must fight to keep their newfound family together as they unravel the mysteries of Peter Quill’s true parentage. Old foes become new allies and fan-favorite characters from the classic comics will come to our heroes’ aid as the Marvel cinematic universe continues to expand. Written by Marvel Studios

Starring:

• Chris Pratt
• Zoe Saldana
• Dave Bautista
• Vin Diesel
• Bradley Cooper

Trailer:

It received a Rotten Tomatoes review of 82% Fresh.  It received a Rotten Tomato audience rating of 90% liking it.  Average Rating: 4.3/5 with a number of User Ratings: 74,044. (I am sure this will change over time as more people review it.)

Tagline: This summer, the galaxy won’t save itself.

Movie Reviews:

• Roger Ebert
• NY Times

Specs:

It had an estimated budget of $200M.  It has a 136 minute run time. Release date: 5 May 2017 .

Playlist for GotG2

IMDB Trivia:

• Drax makeup took only ninety minutes to apply, down from four hours for the first film. However, he would have to sit in a sauna at the end of the day to get the makeup off.
• According to the VFX artists, Ego’s planet VFX comprises a trillion polygons, and is considered to be the biggest visual effect ever made.
• In the Guardians of the Galaxy comics, Taserface is a warrior from the cybernetically enhanced race known as The Stark. The Stark are a race that found Iron Man technology that accidentally crashed on their homeworld and as a result, worship Tony Stark (a.k.a Iron Man) as their god.
• In the comics, Mantis is human, and acquired her skills by living with the Kree. James Gunn chose to make her an alien in the film because he wanted Peter Quill to be the only one of the main characters to come from Earth.
• Baby Groot says, “I am Groot,” thirteen times in this film.
• The teaser poster is a parody of the cover for The Ramones‘ album Rocket to Russia.
• The sensor that Peter Quill looks at when detecting the extra-dimensional creature is actually a 1977 Mattel handheld electronic football game.
• Laura Haddock who plays the character Meredith Quill, Peter Quill’s mother, also appeared in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) as a fan of Captain America.
• This film was shipped to cinemas under the pseudonym “Level Up.”
• The hero Simon Williams (Wonder Man) was going to have a minor role in this film as an actor in films about Marvel heroes Arkon (a space barbarian) and Tony Stark (Iron Man). However, this was cut out for running time purposes.
• In September 2015, James Gunn said in a Facebook post that he wanted to use the Sneepers, an alien race that first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1964, as background characters in the film, but he was advised against it by Marvel’s legal department because the name was too similar to “snípur”, the Icelandic word for “clitoris”. The Marvel legal department later cleared the use of Sneepers in the film, in part because of the entire media coverage Gunn’s initial post received.
• In the Comics, Mantis was the daughter of German Mercenary turned super villain Libra and a Vietnamese Mother. Her ‘antennae’ were just a hairdo. She learned her martial arts from Asian monks who served sentient plants exiled from the Kree home world. They were raising her to be the Cosmic Madonna, mother of the Cosmic Messiah. Somehow she left there and became the lover of the criminal turned Avenger, The Swordsman who was Hawkeye’s mentor. He was down on his luck and drunk. They met while she was a sex worker in Saigon, making her the only Avenger to have been a sex worker. (that is known of so far).
• This film takes place 6 months after the first, placing the events in 2014-2015. Stan Lee’s cameo referrers to him being a post man, a potential reference to his cameo in Captain America: Civil War. The events in that film, however, take place in 2016. Alternative this may be a reference to his cameo in the first Fantastic Four (that was commercially released) why he played a mail man.
• Jim Gunn Sr. and Leota Gunn, parents of director James Gunn and Sean Gunn (Kraglin), make cameo appearances in the film.
• One of the end credit scenes shows the Sovereign creating a cocoon of sorts for a new being named “Adam.” It is assumed that this refers to the character Adam Warlock.
• The maroon and white ribbon over Yondu’s eye at the end of the movie is the United States Army Good Conduct Medal.
• The opening battle sequence resembles the first issue of the 2008 comic book, which featured the newly-formed Guardians battling a giant monster from another dimension. In that story, the Guardians were defending a cult called the Universal Church of Truth, which had ties to Adam Warlock. In the film, the Guardians are working for the Sovereign race, who are later revealed to be in possession of Adam Warlock’s cocoon. Both the Sovereign and the Church become adversaries of the Guardians.
• There was some fan speculation as to whether or not Baby Groot was a reborn version of the original and retained all of his original memories, as is the case in the comic books. James Gunn stated that Baby Groot does not have the original’s memories and is a different creature, meaning the original Groot did actually die in the first film.
• In one of the mid-credits scenes, Quill has an argument with Teenage Groot, and appears to understand when Groot calls him boring. This is the first time that any of the Guardians other than Rocket has been able to understand Groot’s speech, and lends credence to the theory that Groot can be understood if one spends enough time in his company.
• I am Groot” appears 8 times during the credits before changing to an actual credit, symbolizing the 8 main heroes of the film: Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, Groot, Nebula, Yondu, and Mantis. As the final credit rolls, David Hasselhoff says, “We are ALL Groot!”