This discussion of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will feature spoilers, so I don’t want to hear any whining from any of you nerds. Read on, or don’t; I get paid either way. Anyway, if you do complain, you’re being silly because (a) this movie isn’t a mystery, and (b) there aren’t really any big “reveals” that will “change everything you’ve believed” about the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
First of all, the new GotG is only the second one, and let us recall that the original GotG was a joyous and lovable surprise back in 2014 not because of its plot (which I can barely remember) but because of the memorable characters it created and the tone of devil-may-care insouciance that succeeded in keeping a multiplanet space opera as fleet as Donald O’Connor pratfall-dancing throughout “Make ‘Em Laugh.”
The sad thing about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is that it’s just not that much fun—which is a problem, because movies like this should be fun, especially when the first one practically defined the word “fun.” The galactic fixer Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is back, along with the warrior Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the strongman Drax (Dave Bautista), the hyperintelligent raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and the sentient tree called Groot, now regressed into an adorable sapling.*
In the first movie, we watched them begin as antagonists, become allies, and end as beloved friends—and it was surprisingly touching and involving. This time, though, writer-director James Gunn has them fighting throughout. They seem to have forgotten that they even remotely like each other. They squabble and annoy and irritate one another; the whole thing is uncomfortably like eavesdropping on a squabbling family at the next table at the Cheesecake Factory. You just want them to shut up and eat the nachos, already.
Indeed, Gunn has apparently decided that since they are not really friends but “family”—a word deployed peculiarly here, as in the Fast and Furious movies, to describe people with no familial connection whatever—they should display as much dysfunctionality as possible. And that’s where his bizarre plot kicks in. For the beating heart of the action of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is nothing less than patricide.
The father who has to be killed off is Peter Quill’s. The first movie began with Quill as a 12-year-old boy being stolen away from Earth just after his mother has died from brain cancer, hallucinating about his absent father being a creature of pure light. Well, it turns out that his father is a living planet who looks like Kurt Russell (just go along with it) who wants to destroy the universe entirely. He’s called Ego, by the way, in case you like subtlety.
For some reason, Ego needs more power to do the job, and so he locates Peter and brings him to his planet, even though he is the planet. (I told you to go with it, so shut up.) Of course, Ego doesn’t tell Peter his aim, but Peter’s friends figure out that Ego is up to no good when they find tens of thousands of skeletons in a cave on Ego’s planet—which is, of course, actually Ego himself, so how he lets them find the skeletons isn’t clear. (I know, I’m supposed to go with it, so I’ll shut up.) Then Ego reveals (for no good reason) that he gave Quill’s mother brain cancer (for no good reason) and therefore killed her (for no good reason).
So now Quill wants to kill Ego, and when he figures out Ego’s scheme, it’s his duty to kill Ego. And he does it with relish in a scene that will bother me even more when I am compelled to take my children to see this dud of a picture about which they are very excited because they so loved the first one, as did I. I don’t want to give them any ideas is what I’m saying.
Oh, and if that’s not enough patricide, another character gets to deliver a monologue about how she wants to kill her father—she has good cause because he kept cutting off various limbs of hers and replacing them with machinery—and is going to make it her life’s mission to do so. So now we have not one but two patricides to contend with.
James Gunn tries to deflect this odd kill-the-father fixation of his by having Quill discover that while Ego is his genetic father, his real, emotional father is the intergalactic Mafioso named Yondu (Michael Rooker, terrific here as in the first) who stole him from Earth at Ego’s direction. Yes, I know: In 21st-century America, your family is the family you assemble, not the family you were born into; but since Quill spent years thinking Yondu might eat him, he should probably not be as upset as he is when Yondu buys it at the end of the picture.
When it comes time to make the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie, maybe James Gunn could just have Chris Pratt and the green lady and the tattooed guy and the squirrel and the tree try to steal stuff, and then save the universe pretty much by accident, the way the whole business started.
Make ’em laugh, Gunn.
Correction: This review originally referred to Rocket as a squirrel. He is a raccoon.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.
