After the major revelations of the Civil War and finding another Infinity Stone with help of the good Doctor we set controls for outer space to meet back up with five schmucks just trying to keep off the Nova corps bad side. We open surprisingly not in space but in 1980's Missouri with a fine young Meredith Quill (played by Laura Haddock) on an outing with a "Spaceman" named Ego who shows her a special pod which he planted. 34 years later we find the Guardians on the planet of the Sovereign, a race of golden skinned navel gazers who've hired them to protect their special batteries from an interdiminsional monster in exchange for retrieving Nebula so they can claim the bounty from the Nova Corp. They get the job done but Rocket, being the smartass rodent that he is stole some of them, so now the Sovereign is pissed and High-priestess Ayesha (played by Elizabeth Debicki) sends out her literally remote controlled ships to kill them. (I personally love the fact that the interfaces are designed like an Arcade machine, get it cause to them war is a game, heh heh heh.)
The guardians manage to escape and crash-land on a nearby planet no thanks to Rocket and Peter having a pissing contest over their piloting skills. They somehow don't die and encounter Ego played by Jack Burton himself Kurt Russel (which already earns this movie 10 points on the awesome board) and his aid Mantis (played by Pom Klementieff) who reveals himself to be Peter's dad. He was the one who originally hired Yondu to bring Peter to him after his mom died so he can raise him but well, we all know how that turned out. Speaking of Yondu is excommunicated by the rest of the Ravager community by his mentor Stakar Oogord (played by Sylvester Stallone) for breaking the Ravager code. They may be space bastards but they do have a code, one rule being that they don't deal in kids.
After Stakar leaves Yondu takes a job from Ayesha to capture the Guardians and bring them to her for stealing the batteries. Back with the family reunion, Peter and Ego arrange to go back to his planet to reconnect and learn about his heritage. Eventually after a conversation with Gamora, Peter's convinced to go, but not alone. So Peter, Drax and Gamora go with Ego and Mantis to his planet while Rocket, Baby Groot and their prisoner Nebula watch and repair their ship. Eventually Yondu and his Ravagers find the ship and corner Rocket, but during the battle Yondu is betrayed by some of his men when he refuses to turn in Peter.
One of his lieutenants Taserface (yes seriously) leads the mutiny but it only worked because Nebula got free and destroyed Yondu's fin. Speaking of Peter he and his party arrive on Ego's planet, which is his main body. See; Ego is a cosmic entity called a celestial who eventually learned how to shape the molecules around him until he created his planet body, layer by layer. But he still lacked meaning in his existence, so he created a biological body for himself so he can go out into the universe to find other life. Eventually he found other life, one of which was Peter's mom where he learned about love, eventually that love resulted in Peter.
Back with the Ravager mutiny Taserface finished killing all of the Yondu loyalists but before he kills Rocket; Nebula convinces him to keep Yondu and Rocket so they can cash in their bounties in exchange for 10% of the cut and a ship to Ego's planet. After she kills Gamora she plans on taking her revenge on Thanos for her life of augmentation and torture. After Yondu comes back to his senses he, Rocket and Baby Groot manage to escape with the help of the surviving Yondu loyalist Kraglin (played by Sean Gunn yes James' little bro, yay nepotism.) With a new fin Yondu, Rocket and Baby Groot tear ass through the ship but not before Taserface sends the Sovereign the coordinates of Yondu's ship. After Yondu, Rocket and the guys trip balls going ludicrous speed (during which we confirm that yes, Stan Lee is a Watcher) and have some character development they land on Ego's planet.
Before they show up however Nebula finds Gamora and nearly kills her. After a little round of girl on girl the two finally start to reconcile before stumbling upon the literal skeletons in Ego's closet. After confronting Mantis she tells Gamora and Drax the truth, that Ego has actually been having several children across the universe trying to find one who could channel the same power of the celestials as he could so that he could execute his master plan. Those pods that he showed Meredith, they're parts of him which when activated terraform the planets they're planted on into extensions of himself, but he needed the power of another Celestial to activate them. Peter nearly falls under his swap but Ego botched it up when he told Peter he was the one who gave his mom her brain tumor since he saw her as a distraction from his ultimate purpose.
So naturally after learning that his dad's not only a cosmic deadbeat but as his true dad put it, a jackass Peter proceeds to kick Ego's ass. Eventually the Sovereign show up to make things more complicated but Yondu and Nebula deal with them. With his families help Peter kills Ego and escaped the planet's explosion. But not without casualties; Yondu gave up his suit to save Peter after his mask was trashed in the battle. As the Guardians cremate Yondu's body the rest of the Ravagers come along to pay their final respects to their dead brother in arms. So our movie ends with Nebula going off to deal with her own daddy issues and the Guardians coming together as a family.
Though destruction comes before creation as our post credits scenes start up with Stakar meeting back up with his fellow founding Ravagers. We also see Kraglin practicing with Yondu's repaired arrow and fin and Groot's teenage period. More importantly we end with Ayesha relling about losing the batteries and wasting their resources, but believes that she'll be saved the wrath of the council once they've seen her new birthing pod and its first creation, a new artificial being whose sole purpose is to kill the Guardians of the Galaxy who she's decided to name Adam. Also the Watchers get sick of Stans ramblings and just leave him alone.
Once again The Guardians of the Galaxy proves themselves to be my favorite part of the MCU. As always the music choices in this movie are awesome (with the exception of "My Sweet Lord" but whatever it actually works in context) and the story this time is much more personal now that the world building and other exposition was covered in the first movie. Mostly dealing with how almost everyone in the main cast has a messed up past, Rocket being experimented on, Peter growing up without a father, Yondu betraying the ravager code and the people who not only saved him from slavery but gave him a place to belong, Gamora and Nebula's torture at the hands of Thanos, and those were just the ones off the top of my head. Basically the tragedy behind the comedy or what makes Deadpool work. Speaking of Peter, Ego is a really effective villain in this movie, not only is his goal monstrous but well, he gave Peter's mom a brain tumor just because she was a distraction.
Just like Peter's real dad said "he may have been your father boy, but he weren't yo daddy." All that Ego wanted was to be not be alone, so his master plan is to turn other planets to extensions of himself, thus wiping out all mortal life in the universe. I mean couldn't he just rent out his planet to people who would basically worship him for the god he thinks he is and thus solve his loneliness problem? I mean sure they'd grow old and die but really as long as Ego had people to play his own personal real life global Sims game there really shouldn't have been a need to go through all of this trouble. But we needed a villain for this movie that would be a bigger threat then a religious zealot with an infinity Stone so there's that I guess.
Though speaking of Yondu, he may have been a thief, a murderer and sometimes just a blue dumbass, but he finally did something right. There've only been four times a piece of media brought me close to crying. There was the ending of Burial at sea Episode 2, Episode 10 of Madoka, the ending of Forest Gump and now Yondu's funeral scene with all of his ravager bothers paying their last respects. Now trust me it takes a lot for me to start leaking so this movie was definitely doing something right. Mostly it was the Cat Stevens song but hey it really did the job.
Surprisingly while Volume 2 was still just as funny and crazy as Volume 1 it was also the most emotional movie of the MCU so far. Though for me the family themes were about as subtle as a bulldozer. Though surprisingly I didn't expect the Watchers to be in the MCU since if I remember right their movie rights were in the hands of Fox since they owned the Fantastic Four movie rights and thus would fall under that umbrella, same as Ego. But in hindsight I guess that was a sign for things to come. Now after a long overdue homecoming there's only one movie left to go before we end the March to Infinity, and how fitting that our end is synonymous with the end of the world.
Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.
Guardians of the Galaxy is owned by Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Motion picture studios based off "Guardians of the Galaxy" created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.
Dragon Ball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT is owned by Funnimation, Toei animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama.
Dragon ball Z abridged is owned by Team Four Star.
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