He back and he’s buff ... again
Chris Pratt and the gang return for more Guardians of the Galaxy fun
LOS ANGELES — Sequel fatigue is always a problem for Hollywood moviemakers.
But one redo proved to be irresistible for Chris Pratt and the folks behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
In the second movie, there’s another Peter Quill shirtless sequence showing off Chris Pratt’s ripped upper body.
Director and co-writer James Gunn has complete creative freedom on the films but jokes that Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige insisted on the reveal Part 2.
“There’s a beefcake clause,” says Gunn with Pratt, Feige and the cast at a West Hollywood hotel.
Pratt, who is currently juggling two mega-franchises with the Guardians and Jurassic World series of movies, shrugs off the Quill vanity replication shot.
“It hasn’t hurt my career,” he says of being objectified as a hunk. “We’re props. They shine a lot of light on us, and paint us up with makeup, and they take a camera and point it at us. Half the time, what ruins it is us talking.”
Certainly fans enjoyed the look, the tone and the banter of the first Guardians film which earned great reviews and a healthy box-office of more than US$770 million.
Three years later the Guardians’ gang of space misfits is back on track to save the universe but with a few twists as the avenging Sovereign society of superior aliens tracks them down.
As they do, Quill connects with his birth father Ego (Kurt Russell), a living planet, who shape-shifts to human form. Ego’s a celestial being who just might be hiding something from his son.
Meanwhile, Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) meets Ego’s protege, the naive Mantis (Quebec City-born actress Pom Klementieff ). Gamora (Zoe Saldana) continues her galactic battle with sister Nebula (Karen Gillan). Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) is just as cantankerous while Groot off shoot Baby Groot (again voiced by Vin Diesel) ups the cute factor.
Besides the veteran Russell, Sylvester Stallone has a small role as Stakar a.k.a. Starhawk who issues a warning to Ravager leader Yondu (Michael Rooker), once Quill’s surrogate dad.
Special effects action again combine with one-liners and few sly post-modern winks as the golden oldie soundtrack informs the story points. The tunes include Electric Light Ochestra’s Mr. Blue Sky, Sweet’s Fox on the Run and Looking Glass’s Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) — another ‘earworm’ candidate matching Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling from the first Guardians movie.
Indeed, Guardians 2 is a delicate balance of emphasizing the comic energy of the first film and providing something new in the second.
“The thing that I didn’t want to mess up was the movie just trying to be a rehash of the first movie,” Gunn says of his sequel. “People were surprised by the first movie, and so far people have been surprised by the second film.”
At the centre of it all is Pratt’s Quill, of course. His dim-witted doofus Andy from Parks and Recreation is now a distant memory. But Gunn still exploits the actor’s familiar likability from the show and the first Guardians.
“Chris Pratt is great because he’s funny and he’s sexy and he’s got this vulnerable side,” says Gunn. What Pratt relishes in Guardians 2 is the prominence of defining what a family is in various forms and for assorted reasons.
“This is very much a family movie, and I like it,” Pratt says. “It’s really universal because I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t felt that (family feeling) at some point in their life.”
In fact, Gunn’s motivation, besides providing an entertainment that pushes the boundaries of odd, is to celebrate the Guardians’ quirky bonds.
“It’s a movie about outcasts for outcasts,” Gunn says. “There are people all over the world that it touches, and that’s the most rewarding thing, by far, about making these movies.”
So the good news is Gunn, Pratt and the rest of the outfit have already signed to do a third Guardians which may or may not conclude the cheeky space adventure series.
You can also expect to see the Guardians mob show up in the Marvel all-star extravaganza, Avengers: Infinity War, set for a high-profile release in May of 2018.
There’s more. During the Guardians 2 credit scroll there were hints of what’s to come with images of original Guardians Aleta Ogord (Michelle Yeoh), Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames), a potential Miley Cyrusvoiced Mainframe, and Starhawk (Stallone). How does it all shake out in the Marvel world?
“Where we see them in the future,” Fiege says, “time will tell.”