Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 Trailers: 7 Reasons To Be Concerned About The Film
Too. Much. GROOOOOOT!
In a weird and wonderful turn of events that nobody would have predicted three years ago, Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy is getting a sequel - Vol. 2 - which will land on our screens in May of next year.
That first movie was a huge gamble for the studio, introducing characters that were just as unknown to comic-book fans as they were to the general public. Fortunately, that gamble paid off to the tune of over $700 million at the global box-office, spawning the aforementioned sequel and a ton of hype to go along with it.
We're positive that Vol. 2 will be great - Marvel rarely lets fans down, and hopes are high that this streak will continue. But there are a number of areas, across both trailers, that have given us a number of doubts as to the quality of the final product - and they're more than a little worrying.
7. Shaky, Uninspired Visuals
Because Guardians Of The Galaxy is set among the cosmos, it's relying on the strength of its cinematography to invest us in a world that, for the most part, is built on top of a green screen.
The first movie did a superb job here - the world packed a visual punch while still feeling lived-in and engaging. The second trailer for Vol. 2, however, does raise a couple of concerns in terms of the film's aesthetics - more specifically, a couple of shots look a little uninspired, and a little rough around the edges.
The first red flag is what seems to be one of the movie's central set-pieces; a fight against a gigantic, CG, tentacled beast, a creation that looks incredibly unconvincing and feels like it's lazily been stolen from Pirates Of The Caribbean's Kraken.
Battles against huge computer-generated monsters rarely work onscreen - just ask The Mummy Returns' Scorpion King or Green Lantern's Parallax - they feel fake, and so lack stakes, and it's a shame to see as creative a property as Guardians tread this path.
Elsewhere, the shot of Star-Lord's ship barrel-rolling away from an enemy swarm looks like a PS3 cutscene that's been ripped from Star Trek Beyond's Enterprise-destruction sequence, and here's the kicker; Vol. 2 is being shot by Henry Braham, whose filmography features the visually-atrocious The Legend Of Tarzan and the lacklustre The Golden Compass.
Let's hope Guardians is third time lucky, then.