Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 Trailers: 7 Reasons To Be Concerned About The Film

Too. Much. GROOOOOOT!

Guardians Of The Galaxy Groot
Marvel Studios

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

Guardians Of The Galaxy Groot
Marvel Studios

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.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.