Growing up, I never thought that superhero movies would be such a huge aspect of my life. I am not particularly a huge comic book fangirl, nor even particularly a comic book movie fangirl. And yet I have found myself in the position with many others, where I am seeing nearly three Marvel movies a year. I don’t have the energy to open up the discussion on DC today, let’s stick with the Feige-verse for now.

I enjoy almost every MCUl movie I see. They know what they are doing, they know they can put out 3 movies, all between B and A-‘s, and print money. They have had an absurd record as far as opening weekends go, I am not sure if there has been a Marvel property in recent history that hasn’t been objectively a massive success. But the first Guardians of the Galaxy was when it really first kicked in for me. I am a sucker for classic music used in new, fun ways (translation-not Suicide Squad ways) and the cast and plot really just made for my favorite Marvel movie. And since Edgar Wright never got to do Ant Man, the original Guardians remains my favorite. That being said, I was anxious going into the second. The first won me over by surprise, and I knew that my expectations for the second would only leave me at least a little underwhelmed. And I was terrified they would over use baby Groot. They did, but I digress.

That being said, this was a really solid, fun summer blockbuster. I had more complaints about this than in the initial, but this still stands in my top Marvel movies just in story and execution. It feels like a different, more off beat property than The Avengers, which is tiring slowly to me. The Guardians movies just seem to have a more relatable rag tag quality than the very classic superheroes of the rest of the MCU, save for Wolverine. James Gunn also walks the line of “funny” and “real emotions that make you want to cry while listening to Cat Stevens” better than any other current director in comic book franchises.

It would be hard to get too into this without getting into spoilers, so let’s just talk Kurt Russell. I was not as much of a fan about the plot of the sequel as the first, but Kurt Russell is just the best, so I will forgive the weird father plot line that got really out of hand quickly. This highlights the main issue I have with the MCU. The scale of the conflicts are always way out of proportion. Not every movie has to have the entire fate of the universe on the line. Sometimes there can just be one truly evil person who wants to ruin one to five people’s lives, and that can be interesting too.

But as I said, nothing with 70’s Kurt Russell could disappoint me. 7.5/10