“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” grows up to be better than the original

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Raider Times photo / Courtesy Walt Disney Pictures

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) return for “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”.

Zachery Mazzie-Smith, Raider Times staff

    There is a famous question that comes to mind when hearing about a sequel: “Will it be better than the first one?”

    “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is one of those movies that poses that question. This movie was action-packed, comedic, and, of course, musical.

    There were a lot of things that I really liked about this movie. The movie was both funny and serious. The main objective for the movie was an extremely serious topic, the fact that the main character was trying to connect with his father, who was not there for him growing up. But I think the writer and director did an amazing job at working in some comedy to ease the seriousness of the movie, without the jokes being unreasonable.

   Another thing I liked about the movie was that it stayed loyal to the story from the first movie, as do most comic book movies. For example, at the end of the first “Guardians of the Galaxy,” one of the characters, Groot (who is a tree-like creature) is blown up and all that is left is a twig. In the second one, it starts off with Baby Groot, who grew from the twig that was left over in the first movie.

   My favorite part of the movie by far, was the relationship between two of the characters, one is Rocket, a genetically modified raccoon who is extremely intelligent, and the other is Yondu, an angry alien space marauder. Both of these characters have bad attitudes at everything, which makes them a great match. They become great friends due to their angry attitudes toward the world around them.

    Now, if I am going to be honest, there was not a lot about this movie that I disliked. One of the only things that could have been better was the quantity of settings. In the first “Guardians,” there was much more exploration throughout the movie with lots of different planets and area; in “Guardians Vol. 2,” there were only a very small amount of different settings. I believe that this takes away the value for some of the viewers, because seeing the same place for an extended amount of time can get boring.

    Now onto the burning question, “Is it better than the first one?”

    In my opinion, “Guardians Vo. 2” was better than the first movie because the character development was better. I really felt like I could connect to each and every main character in the film. The first “Guardians” just didn’t do that for me.

    I highly recommend this film to all the sci-fi/superhero movie lovers out there. All in all, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” was an amazing movie, filled with sci-fi action, hilarious jokes, and an ’80s soundtrack that fits the movie quite well.

–May 5, 2017–