Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2: 10 Reasons The Original Is Better

4. The Final Battle Did Something Different

So many of the MCU's movies have struggled to come up with compelling, inventive final battles, yet by concluding with a dance-off between Star-Lord and Ronan, the first Guardians of the Galaxy defiantly flipped the bird to the giant-beam-in-the-sky finales and prolonged sequences of city-wide mass destruction that characterise so many other superhero films.

It was an hilarious subversion of the MCU formula that arrived just as it was starting to truly wear thin, but Vol. 2 appreciates it can't really play the same trick twice, and so simply reverts to the huge-scale, complex, CGI-driven warfare it seemed to be mocking the first time.

That's not to say Vol. 2's final battle is bad, because it's not, but it does feel decidedly more ordinary and familiar than the first film's more pared down and hilarious send-up of what audiences expected.