I watched this for the first time On Demand over the weekend and am looking forward to picking it up on Blu-ray. It's weird to think that the writer of Tromeo and Juliet now makes some of the most entertaining family movies and successful scifi franchise. I'm generally not a fan of big CGI movies but this is one of the few exceptions. I thought it was a pretty strong sequel and for the most part felt it was on par with the original. However I think some of the dialogue that was meant as humorous was not only unfunny but kind of bad. (Not all of it was though.) The soundtrack was great as to be expected. Visually the art direction was beautiful and trippy. There was so much going on I feel I will need to watch it a few times to catch everything. The story is fun and exciting and full of comic easter eggs. I thought Michael Rooker gave an excellent performance and the ending was genuinely touching. The reveal that Ego was Peter's father worked despite it not being comic accurate. There are a bunch of fun cameos. I really liked the Stan Lee scenes with the Watcher and the David Hasselhoff appearance was unexpected. One of the things this made me excited for is seeing Robert Downey Jr interact with Rocket in the next Avengers sequel.

So, I just got around to seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 tonight and wow, what a disappointment.

It's not a patch on the first movie. To be totally honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the Marvel Studios' films (or modern superhero films in general), but I loved the first GotG film. This sequel was such a come down that I'm wondering if I saw the same film as the other posters in this thread, who all seem to be unanimous in their praise.

The biggest problems with the film for me were that its structure was a mess, its plot was flimsy and really obvious (I saw the big revelations coming a mile off), and its script was full of cringe-inducing over-sentimentality. On the latter point, it felt much, much more saccharin than its predecessor, in a painfully overly emotional American way, which is not something I ever like, I'm afraid.

Something else that this sequel really lacked was the adult Groot. He was a brilliant character in the first movie, but the sickeningly cutesy, blatant merchandising opportunity that was "Baby Groot" wasn't enough to fill the void. I just found Baby Groot irritating and unfunny. And while we're on the subject of Baby Groot, that sequence in which he kept bringing the wrong item to Yondu and Rocket Racoon, when they were incarcerated, went on way too long and wasn't even funny to begin with.

Drax the Destroyer was sadly reduced to a one note comedy character, missing all the heartbreak and pathos that made him interesting in the first film. The new character Mantis was unengaging and little more than a plot device.

Star-lord and Gamora seemed woefully underdeveloped too, with their relationship barley advancing at all -- the script even pokes fun at this lack of character development, by referring to their "unspoken thing". Poking fun at this lack of development doesn't excuse it though, or make it any less damaging to the film as a whole.

Overall, Vol. 2 was definitely entertaining in places and made me laugh a few times too, but it also felt very formulaic. Especially in the way it made so much use of slow motion scenes, while '70s soft rock anthems played in the background. I know that this use of cheesy 70s music was a striking feature of the original, but it was used just sparingly enough in the original film to prevent it from getting boring or repeatative. In Vol. 2 it just felt like the director/producer kept hitting you over the head with the soft rock and slo-mo. It smacked of milking a formula to me.

Like I say, this was a real disappointment.