Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2: 10 Reasons It's Better Than The Original
Even if at first you do succeed, there's always room for improvement.
For quite a while, it seemed to be a universal opinion that sequels were always inherently inferior to their originals. Even films that were better than the ones that came before were dubbed as being at fault simply do to the fact that they were sequels.
This day and age, it's a slightly different story. There are some sequels that have not only surpassed the originals, but utterly blew them out of the water. This is true in the comic book genre especially.
The Captain America trilogy only improved with each instalment, Iron Man 3 is arguably the best of its respective trilogy, and Logan is already being considered the single best X-Men film, despite it being the series' tenth instalment. Sure, sometimes sequels do still fail to live up to their predecessors. However, the notion that this is an absolute rule is all but dead in the water these days.
Enter Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the follow-up to the immensely successful first film that shocked audiences when it took the world by storm back in 2014. It was a great film. One of Marvel's best, to be sure. However, there are certain factors that make the new sequel stand above its predecessor in the grand scheme of things.
The Guardians didn't only come back. They came back bigger, badder, and better than ever before.
10. The Plot Doesn't Hinge On Setting Up Infinity War
While the first Guardians of the Galaxy was undeniably an amazing film, it still had just a hint of the phase one MCU feel about it. Which is to say that the plot seemed to rely just a bit too heavily on setting up a future film.
In the first Guardians, Thanos was waiting in the wings and acted as the driving force that helped move things along, all while not really doing too much of anything. At least not anything that will be relevant until Infinity War hits theatres in the summer of 2018, that is.
It originally looked as though Thanos would actually play a bigger role in the first Guardians, but in the end, his involvement was little more than a teaser for the third Avengers film. Meanwhile, the Infinity Stone itself was simply a plot device that drives this point home.
In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 however, Thanos does not appear whatsoever and is only very sparingly mentioned. And when his name does come up, it actually serves a purpose - to help develop both Gamora and Nebula's respective character arcs.
More importantly, without Thanos acting as a quasi-chessmaster, Vol. 2 is far more self-sufficient than its predecessor. Therefore, it's able to tell its own unique, well-rounded story without having to devote too much time to setting up another film.