For the Guardians of the Galaxy, it's a family affair

After the success of the first film in 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the equivalent of that difficult second album. You have to try to repeat the original triumph as well as justifying your existence with a little extra for the fans.

For the most part this film achieves what it sets out to do but at times it does feel a little bit like a place-holder. There is a strong sense that, as the first part of the third wave of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is something of a bridgehead to the Marvel Cosmic Universe. As such nothing of significance really happens  in narrative terms; indeed you could argue that the most important part of the film’s narrative comes in one of the film’s five – that’s right, five – post-credit sequences.

Having established the Guardians in the first film, this one concentrates on defining relationships between the characters; like almost everything else this summer it’s about family. Ostensibly it is about Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and his search for his origins which leads him to his real father, the splendidly named Ego (Kurt Russell). As originally conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966, Ego, the Living Planet was a villain of sufficient scale to tax The Mighty Thor. Here he is a little more manageable by adopting human dimensions but there is still something not quite right about his attempts to win Dad of the Year.

Otherwise the relationship between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) is examined as are those between Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Yondu (Michael Rooker) and, of course, the ‘unspoken thing’ between Peter and Gamora.

In plot terms the film is quite flabby, as those seventies Marvel galactic epics tended to be, and could easily lose 20 minutes. However it survives on the grace notes with witty one-liners, clever Marvel Easter eggs, and the charm of Baby Groot; nowhere more so than in a very clever opening actions sequence to which the rest of the film never quite lives up.

The film’s greatest strength is its visuals with the scenes on Ego’s planet especially stunning. This is the first film shot on Red’s Weapon 8K camera and the richness and depth of the colour palette is breath-taking. It is almost, but not quite, enough to distract you from the fact that nothing much is going on.

Like the first film this one is pretty much arranged around Peter Quill’s mix tape and given that we end the film with him having access to many more songs then this is a franchise that’s going to be around for some time. I don’t have an issue with that – the first film set a high bar but this one, for all its shortcomings, is still pretty entertaining.

And as for those end credits scenes; three are okay, one is absolutely crucial, but the last one is flat out hilarious and a real treat for long-time comic fans.