Guardians of the galaxy volume 2- MCU at its best

Guardians​ of the galaxy volume 2, directed by James Gunn is the fifteenth film in one of the most successful movie franchises ever, the Marvel cinematic universe. Once again Marvel proves who's the boss when it comes to feature films and this is one of those rare occasions where Marvel has managed to produce an outstanding sequel.

Iron man was great, part two wasn't nearly as good, Captain America the first Avenger was decent but part two was a masterpiece, Avengers was brilliant but age of Ultron was terrible. My point is, this is the first time that Marvel has managed to produce two outstanding movies back to back with the same series.

Once again we have Chris Pratt returning to play Star Lord (Peter Quill), Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Bradley Cooper playing Rocket and Vin Diesel as Gaby Groot. We also have Yondu and Nebula returning along with Mantis and finally Ego (Kut Russel), Star Lord's dad.

The opening credits is so unique kicking off with Groot plugging in the awesome mixtape 2 and showing off his cute baby dance moves. The movie starts off straight away with the guardians kicking some serious ass. We find out that the guardians were hired by some golden people who's real name I don't know and I'm not going to bother searching for who they are because they aren't worth it. The guardians discover Nebula's location and are on a mission to take her to Xandar prison.

We have a surprise cameo of Sylvester Stallone starring as the lead ravager. He's infuriated because Yondu broke the ravager code by failing to deliver Star Lord to his dad for which he was paid generously. We find out at the end of part one that Yondu didn't deliver and he finally faces the consequences of not doing his job in this movie. Yondu justifies by stating that he only used Quill because he would come in handy for going into small places because he was a kid. The real reason for Yondu not delivering is later revealed towards the end.

Talking about Ego and Star Lord, the way they met doesn't make you feel like it's his father no matter how convincing his side of the story is. The reveal wasn't that great for me maybe because the trailer already showed us Ego, but things get more interesting once they go to Ego's planet. Quill vents out about how angry he is at Ego for having taken so long to find him, all the troubles he faced with Yondu and how he always wanted to have had a dad just like everyone else. There is a scene where they literally play catch with each other because Peter wanted to and I really don't know how I felt about it. The bonding between the long lost father and son is nice until Ego goes on to reveal his secrets, I would like to stop here before spoiling anything. Chris Pratt's acting when it comes to these scenes are simply amazing. The tears in his eyes were real because he lost his dad before filming this movie and he publicly told us that he managed to make peace with his dad's death after reading the script. I could see what he meant and his acting, coupled with real life experiences take his character to a whole new level of awesome.

This movie is mostly about two characters getting to know each other a little more, Gamora and Nebula, Drax and Mantis, Quill and Ego and my favourite of all Rocket and Yondu. Nebula tells Gamora the reason why she's so angry at her and Thanos, all the childhood torture she went through because of the fact that Gamora was better than her and how Thanos has made her into what she is today. It's heartbreaking to know what she went through and after realising it, Gamora begins to feel bad for what she had done to her sister. Drax and Mantis mostly keep accusing each other about how ugly they really look.

Coming to my favourite pair, Yondu and Rocket.The events leading to their teaming up is amazing, Yondu kind of has his own crew turning against him because of his humanity and Rocket plays a major role in breaking them out of that misery. It's amazing how similar they are when it comes to their motivation and their character, at one point they make us feel like they're both brothers. The love they have for each other is phenomenal and getting them to open up to each other goes very deep. In the middle of all that we see little baby Groot jumping in each of their shoulders everytime a bad guy pops up. This movie even though not as good as the first one in terms of plot and story digs very deep when it comes to trampling with our emotions and their emotions. Full marks to James Gunn for that.

Talking about the antagonists, marvel definitely takes the crown for the worst villains ever. First we have the golden people who are angry at the guardians for stealing something from them and they try to attack them with virtual missiles. Once again, Marvel suffers from its weak villain problem, something they've been having right from the start. Their motivation is stupid and what's even more stupid is their virtual missiles. Throughout the movie they seem too pop up in weird places and it's like literally playing a video game to destroy the ship of the guardians. That coupled with what sound they used for the missiles is completely ridiculous. We literally hear the sound of that guy playing Galaga in the Avengers in his computer. Now that I come to think of it, they are actually playing a game of Galaga trying to being down the guardians. Later in the movie we are introduced to the real issue the guardians face. But even that event is very predictable and becomes even more evident with Gamora's constant warnings. Once again, our second villain is very cliched, nothing very unique about him except the fact that he wants to deal with his problem​ with a very large scale destruction by destroying the entire universe. Another typical villain and he tries to use one of our guardians to achieve his feat. One more thing I'd like to nitpick about is the post credits scene, there are five of them and all five don't give us a clue for infinity war or volume three, leaving the theatre I was a little disappointed because Marvel usually does a good job with that.

Talking about the ending, this is where I feel like this is the best Marvel movie ever. It's something we've all been complaining about and Marvel has done it. I felt like Marvel slapped me right on my face. The movie is worth watching for the ending alone. It does something that no other film in the franchise has done before and it does it so well. Hats of the Marvel cinematic universe for that scene, I was wrong about them and it gives me tremendous confidence about infinity war coming up next.

It had an awesome soundtrack throughout, mixtape 2 is amazing and some great sound editing except the Galaga part. Baby Groot is like the cutest thing ever, he's the comic relief in the middle of all these emotions they're hitting you with. I feel like I can keep talking about Groot in a whole new different blog because they've put so much thinking when it comes to Groot. The CGI is top class and talking about comic relief, the movie is filled with some fantastic jokes. The best ones come from Drax with his English teacher character making your stomach kill you because of all the laughter, there wasn't a moment where I felt like the writing was poor. We continue to see Rocket building awesome stuff taking down tons of people with his genius intellect and planning and getting to have fun in the process like randomly playing with someone's deformity.

Overall this is one amazing emotional humorous family entertainer and has enough content in it to keep both the general audience and hardcore comic book fans (myself excluded when it comes to marvel) engaged with enough Easter eggs in it. For me, this definitely replaces the Avengers in taking the spot of the best movie in the Marvel cinematic universe. 2017 has been great so far, Logan was mind-blowing and now guardians did a great job, fingers crossed for Wonder Woman to do the same.

Verdict:
Fan in me: 9.2/10
Critic in me: 8.5/10

P.S. I would love to see rocket ask Captain America for Bucky's metal arm in the process of building a machine to destroy Thanos in infinity war.