You know what it’s like. Marvel Comics hands you one of the their B-teams and tells you to go make a movie. It’s a surprise smash, and now they want a sequel…
This is often where the trouble starts, and that’s why I can count on one hand the number of sequels that are better than the original. Fortunately, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t get a god complex and jet off on a wild tangent to find his artistic centre; nope, he looked carefully at what made his first outing such a huge success and then delivered exactly the same … only more so.
Continue reading “Film review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (The Baby Groot Show)”
Now, taking a classic piece of Manga fiction and turning it into a Westernised action flick is always going to be a “swings and roundabouts” proposition. The advantage is that you have a classic story to work with. The disadvantage is … that you have a classic story to work with. As long as you stick to the original plot and keep most of the classic set pieces from the original, then the fans will give your efforts a grudging approval at the very least, and thunderous applause if you’re very lucky (or very good). The problem is that something that is essentially a cartoon may not translate well into a live action movie. Ghost in the Shell gets away with it … just. They’ve changed enough of the sequence to make it worthwhile for the affeciandos to see it, but kept enough of the original to delight them. Not bad, not bad at all.