GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 (vt GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2). James Gunn, dir., co-script with Dan Abnett, based on the Marvel comics (see IMDb for full list). Scott Chambliss, production design. USA: Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures (main production) / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (US theatrical distribution, and most of Earth), 2017.

Contrast the elegant (Modern) design of the drone ships of the very elegant Sovereigns — the drones remotely operated like 2017 military drones, plus video games — and the Industrial/Brutal, so to speak, ships and general equipment of the Ravagers. Note backstory of Nebula and the horror of her becoming increasingly a cyborg by the forced bit-by-bit replacement of her organic body with prostheses and other "mechanical elements."

For those keeping track of the motif of hexagons: they appear in the membranes ships go through for trans-lightspeed jumps; cf. and strongly contrast hexagons associated with entrapment in beehive worlds such as in "The Machine Stops".

Full synopsis available on IMDb.

Various material weapons, including an atomic bomb with the standard-issue movie count-down display, are used against the god-like "Celestial" named Ego who is a planet and incarnates himself as a human male: as played by Kurt Russell and momentarily as David Hasselhoff as David Hasselhoff, with that human male the father of the Guardian (and the film's male lead) Peter Quill. Pealing away several layers of irony, the imagery here may have an earnest meaning, especially when Peter Quill rejects Celestial godhead to be a human with friends as a pick-up family and those weapons and other gadgets.

NOTE: GUARDIANS 2 has a lot of fun with the folklore and mythic motif of the Origin Quest combined with Reconciliation with the Father — in this case, the reconciliation and the father rejected for mortality and reconstitution and expansion of that material pick-up family. If Northrop Frye and Anatomy of Criticism come back into fashion, GUARDIANS 2 invites Fryean analysis in terms of its over-all pattern as a variation on Romantic Comedy — with a new and better collection of Galactic sentients coalescing at a celebratory funeral and a heterosexual pairing — and other elements.

CAUTION: The film suffers from the four O's: over-financed, over-produced, over-long, and somewhat overblown; but the soundtrack is excellent (or "Awesome"), and the excessiveness can be experienced as part of the fun.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 08-09May17, 22Dec17