No spoilers -- I took a chance on this and, after the first awkward 10 minutes of failed jokes I was glad that I had. Considering the literary train wrecks that were the other Marvel film serials and others like Transformers, I was quite skeptical. Guardians, however, turns out to be exactly how a film universe aught to look like.
The first thing that needs to be praised here is the actual depth of the characters, most importantly their ambiguity. Characters we met in the first film as well as this one are not fixed in their relationship to each other, the protagonist, or us as the viewers. The character reversal was subtle, well paced, and significant to the plot as well as its over-arching message about the significance of relationships of all types.
In general, the writing didn't miss a beat with character development. For the first time in a long time I've watched a superhero film and felt a connection to almost every character by the end of it. It was brilliant in other ways, but this one aspect is what will have me paying for a ticket at the cinema to see Vol. 3
The graphics were surreal. When showing wide views of landscapes and scenes it was okay, but when we saw our characters close up in these environments it looked like real live people inside a computer game. A little too hyper-real. The integration was done quite well, though.
I also quite enjoyed the use of modern music. Not in-your-face and is a pleasant backdrop.
SPOILER BELOW
SPOILER BELOW
Let's talk about Peter's father. The conveniently named "Ego." A god who floated in the void for millions of years before crafting himself into a planet and generating a humanoid avatar to travel the universe in search for biological life, only to come to the realisation that his only purpose could possibly be to live out life's imperative: to seed himself across the universe and eventually dominate all life. This name, Ego, is surely a slap in the face to those who aren't so great with the pattern recognition and reading subtext. I hadn't seen anything as blatant since Tom Hanks in "A Hologram For the King" attended a coke-and-booze fueled party (away from the prohibitionist laws of Saudi Arabia) in the Danish embassy, gaining entry with the code name Søren Kierkegaard. This story is as old as the hills. The Ego, the supposed father of the Self, who has no concern for anything or anyone outside of his agenda to egoically become and absorb everything, attempts to seduce the child/Self - sometimes half Human and half monster, like here - into becoming his source of power to achieve that goal, only to be overthrown by the child/Self. This is profound Jungian and Gnostic material, and the film pulls it off brilliantly.
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