2017 Marvel Spoiler Wrap Up (Part 1: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2)

As I said in my Thor Ragnarok review, I want to do one big review talking about all the spoilers from all three Marvel movies that came out this year. These will be the parts of the movies that I couldn't talk about in my regular review. Usually a do a spoilers review not long after the regular review but this year has always been filled with special circumstances. I thought I'd create a longer review, broken up into a couple of parts, to talk about the spoilers of each film and also use this as a Marvel 2017 wrap up and talk about where the franchise is going and where my head is with those movies.

I'll repeat my sentiment of the Thor review that 2017 was a pretty safe year for Marvel. In April they released the highly anticipated sequel to the movie that nobody thought was going to be successful in 2014 but is often cited as people's favorite Marvel film, Guardians of the Galaxy. In June, they released Spider-man: Homecoming. While it was the second reboot of the wallcrawler and the third iteration of the character, I think putting him in Civil War gave people just enough of a taste that we were all really excited about this new outing. Like I said in my Ragnarok review, it was probably the "riskiest" of the three but the quotations on that word are highly emphasized. And then there's Thor Ragnarok. Thor is one of the original Avengers. While he may not be a favorite, people are still going to go see a movie about him just because he's an original Avenger. And when people started seeing the trailer and hearing that the Hulk was going to be in this film, it was a no brainer that it was going to make money and even be a pretty good film.

How did Marvel do this year?

Well they didn't do badly. This was the first year that there were three MCU films released and while I definitely have my opinions on them, I will admit that the films were, as a whole pretty decent and overall entertaining. At the end of the year I'm going to do a countdown to the best superhero films of the year. I'm going to say it right here, I don't think any of these are going to be at the top of that list, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy them. These were entertaining and enjoyable films. Good times at the theaters.

But I want to talk some spoilers and then some overall Marvel thoughts. So let's start with the first Marvel film that came out this year, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.

Guardians of the Galaxy Spoilers (There are some Thor Spoilers in here too)

The main thing worth talking about in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume two is Yondu. The main thing to talk about is his death but something I do want to mention is just how his character turned into something really great in this movie. He is retconned a little bit in order to fill a bit of a father figure role but part of what makes his character work in this film is his relationship with Rocket. While I still think the character change of heart is still a little rushed and doesn't totally make a lot of sense, especially with what I remember about the first film, they do a good job creating sympathy around this character and Michael Rooker gives a performance that makes us all see ourselves in Yondu. So much that when he sacrifices himself for Peter, it is a pretty emotional moment, especially combined with the heartbreaking performance from Chris Pratt (Again, he's kind of transcended this franchise).

One notable thing about Marvel this year is that they are starting to take fan notes and actually kill off some characters in a way they will not come back. They do it in Thor with Odin and they do it in Guardians with Yondu. While I applaud Marvel for actually creating some stakes in this universe, I will still give them crap for killing off characters like Yondu and Odin and waiting till Phase 3 to actually have some "meaningful" deaths.

The only thing separating Yondu and Odin's death from Quicksilver's in Age of Ultron is the fact that they actually do a good job with the emotionality of these deaths and these were characters we were a little more familiar with. But still they're not huge characters and them not being in the universe doesn't exactly affect the Avengers or the Guardians of the Galaxy in a big way that raises the stakes at all. Yondu, while turned into a character with some depth, probably didn't need to be in Infinity War, and Odin spent the first Thor movie asleep and the second one... Honestly I don't remember what he did during The Dark World... These were not characters that were really important in the overall scheme. So yeah, way to start raising the stakes a little Marvel but I don't think they were really raised that high.

I want to talk about Ego next.

I think this might be the thing that really bothered me about Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. You have the opportunity to have a living planet as a villain, played by Kurt Russell, and what do you do Marvel? You have him be the same one-shot pretty paper thin villain you always do.

I mean Ego was a lot more interesting that Ronan the Destroyer int eh first film, but he spends the majority of the movie being a good guy and only really turns at the end. Now he was evil the whole time but he's quickly defeated by the end of the film and we go back to our status quo. You have a villain who is an entire planet! You have Kurt Russell playing him. You have a special relationship between this villain and one of your main franchise stars, why kill him?

Since seeing this movie I have watched a couple videos talking about the merits of this film and I imagine that if I re-watch this film, I will probably have a change of heart about this film. I stand by a lot of the comments I made in criticism of this film, but I am open to changing opinions and forsee that occurring when I watch it again, one day. But the element of this movie that might sound contradictory is that I often criticize Marvel for being too franchise-y and having no conclusiveness to it. Ego in my opinion exemplifies them utilizing that conclusiveness somewhat correctly, so while I applaud them for doing the right thing story-wise, speaking from a franchise perspective, I don't get why they didn't keep him for future installments.

Something impressive about this film is Ego's story with Peter's mother. First off they use some really good visual effects to recreate young Kurt Russell. But his main plot is to plant a piece of him on different worlds and conquer the entire universe.

Peter is included in this plot because he shares the same celestial power that Ego does and Ego wants to use him to fulfill that conquest.

One of the greatest moments is when Peter seems to be coming around to Ego's side and he sees the upside of conquering the universe like Unity from Rick and Morty... and then Ego messes it up by telling Peter that he was the one who put the tumor in Peter's mother's brain. Again, I go back to the notion that Chris Pratt is better than this franchise because that moment you see Peter's wonder turn into anger and he just lashes out and shoots the crap out of Ego.

This is a very emotional moment and what do they do with it?

They throw a Hassellhoff joke in there...

This is why Guardians of the Galaxy didn't do much for me. While there are a lot of good emotional moments, they can't quite give it the full impact it deserves because they gotta throw a bathos joke in there. The same goes for when Ego and Peter are fighting later, both of them using their power and it's this really emotional father and son fight and... Peter fights him with a Pac man Avatar...

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 does its humor really well.

Baby Groot and when he eventually becomes Teenage (or adolescent) Groot was hilarious at the end. I'm really looking forward to how they use these characters and humor in Infinity War. But overall, as much as I want to like Guardians 2 as a serious movie, I can't. And I think I might call it the Hassellhoff Marvel effect.

That's the majority of the Guardians of the Galaxy spoilers.

There was the end credit scene where the Gold People bring up the fact that Adam Warlock is going to show up. I'm going to be honest, when I saw that I said out loud, AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR ADAM WARLOCK.

I have since read that Adam Warlock will probably appear in Infinity War and he's more likely going to be an element of a future Phase 4 film. But even still I have to just point out to Marvel that they have about fifteen billion characters they have yet to announce. Captain Marvel still hasn't been introduced in the universe and now we're throwing Adam Warlock into the mix? And when I say she hasn't been introduced, I mean there's been no mention of her at all in any of the recent movies. The only way we know that Captain Marvel is coming is because Brie Larson has been cast as her. We don't know when she's showing up or anything and we're giving Adam Warlock a post credit scene? Give me a break.

Again, while I may enjoy Guardians 2 on a second viewing, right now it is at the bottom of my top superhero films of 2017 list because it was just underwhelming.

This will be part 1 of a couple of future posts. Let me know what you thought of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 as far as spoilers go. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Part 2 coming soon.