Film Preview: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Page Revisions:

(October 23, 2016) Original
(December 11, 2016) New Trailer (#2)
(February 12, 2017) New Link (Super Bowl Trailer)
(March 5, 2017) New Trailer (#3) / New Posters (#2-#4)
(April 30, 2017) New Posters (#5-#32)

Release Date:

May 5, 2017

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “Set to the backdrop of Awesome Mixtape #2, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ continues the team’s adventures as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage.”

Poster Rating: A- / A / C / C+ / C / B- (10) / C- (8) / C / C- (4) / C / F / B+ / D

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) It’ a rather stark decision to go black-and-white, but the details matter and, along with the five primary guardians of the first film (you have to look for all of them), you have Yondu and Nebula as key components. That will surely get fans excited. I’m hoping for something with more detail in the future, but this is a solid first effort.

(#2) This is a clever and interesting design choice, putting each character’s mixtape into a stack and then including the actor names in fine print on the right. The Baby Groot at the bottom is superfluous. (#3) For cute overload, it might work, but this is a rather dull and uninspired choice. (#4) The final design is ultimately garish, filled with bright, contrasting colors that distract from the largely serious, but ultimately corny figures in the poster.

(#5) Instead of working with contrasting colors, this design goes all-in on the primarily blue, secondarily purple hues to create a blinding flash of images that stand out in a most visually offensive way. (#6-#15) Covering every character in the new film, good and bad, this set of character posters have a somewhat antiqued feel and thankfully using slightly altered backgrounds with different colors to accentuate each character. They work, but barely. (#16-#23) Another eight character posters. This batch is visually assaulting. the backgrounds are often selected for their contrasting colors shading into one another and the central character image for each isn’t particularly interest.

(#24) A busy, but basic poster design. It has the blue-purple design aesthetic of design #5 without being nearly as brash. That doesn’t improve the design, though. (#25-#28) These character-pair designs aren’t that interesting with cheaply colored backgrounds, blocky title bar and uninteresting character images. (#29) This is the continuation of the prior design in a combined, universal design that has none of the problems of the character designs, but isn’t that much more interesting. (#30) Two characters, an awful blue backdrop and large, annoying, blocky lettering. It’s an abject failure. (#31) A departure from all previous design, this stately, artistic design has a nice soft color palette and the slightly silhouetted characters are pleasingly poised. (#32) Simple. Dense. This poster has none of the wit and verve of prior designs.

Trailer Rating: B / B / B

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) There are a lot of components to this trailer that work, including the now-familiar “Hooked on a Feeling.” The only real problem is that the humor already feels a tad dated and the plot information is almost non-existent. Still, for fans it will be of huge interest. For everyone else, perhaps not so much.

(#2) They are really overselling this Cute Groot thing. That said, they understand their audience and have played up that unique lunatic quality. This should keep the film a topic of conversation until it’s released, especially if they keep putting out cutesy snippets…at least up to a point.

(#3) This movie continues to show the same degree of promise. It doesn’t necessarily look beyond spectacular, but it ticks off boxes for appeal to the core audience: fans of the original.

Oscar Prospects:

Marvel’s big 2017 tentpole release could be a player in several design categories, but whether it’s more of the same or something different all depends on how much new ground the film treads.