Awesome / Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The Guardians being cool guys. Not shown: The piece of debris about to hit Mantis.

Previews and Trailers

• In the first trailer, it appears that Drax is swallowed whole by the Abilisk. And then it looks like he starts stabbing it from the inside. Turns into a funny moment in the actual film when it does absolutely nothing.

Film

• The opening battle with the Abilisk (despite a lot of it being in the background). Special mention goes to Gamora killing the beast by slicing it downward from its neck wound.
  • Some mention must go to the opening credits, where Baby Groot dances merrily to "Mr. Blue Sky" while the other Guardians deal with the Abilisk. It's explicitly shot like a long take, and James Gunn described it as "the most hugely insane shot I've ever done".
• With their weapons down, the Milano is a sitting duck for a pursuing Sovereign ship that's having a much easier time maneuvering the Quantum Asteroid Field (that is, an asteroid belt where the asteroids blink into and out of existence on a whim) they're flying through. Rather than try to help end the spat between Peter and Rocket that's compromising their flight path, Drax elects to head down to the hold, grab a gun, attach a tether to his belt, put on a spare space suit, and leap out of the ship to shoot down their attacker.
  • A subtle one, but Peter and Rocket still manage to successfully maneuver the ship out of the Quantum Asteroid Field while arguing and constantly stealing the main ship controls back and forth from each other. And despite the aforementioned ship shooting at them (although they did take some hits). The other pilot had to be completely focused on the task to do it, by comparison.
• Ego makes his grand entrance destroying what's left of the Sovereign fleet pursuing the Guardians while riding atop his spaceship with reins made out of cosmic energy as he playfully waves to the misfits he rescued.
• The Ravagers try to ambush Rocket and Groot in a forest. Emphasis on try. Rocket is a Trap Master who was already on to them and has filled his ship's surrounding area with booby traps; particular examples including a box unleashing a Flechette Storm on one group of Ravagers and a set of anti-gravity mines that repeatedly send several Ravagers into the air. Rocket also shows that he's no pushover in close quarter combat by disposing of a couple of stragglers with his claws alone. It takes Yondu's personal intervention to finally capture him.
• When Taserface announces his captaincy, Rocket mocks him so hard that even his own mutineers laugh at him!
• After a long, painful attempt at getting Baby Groot to understand he has to go take Yondu's replacement crest from his quarters, Yondu takes control of his arrow and near singlehandedly kills the whole Ravager crew. Once he reaches the main deck of the ship, it literally rains slain Ravagers.
  • And the part where Yondu makes full use of the network coverage by sending the arrow throughout the ship while watching it via the CCTV. The closest that Rocket can even match that is shooting though the walls to nail the Ravagers that show up on the right cameras.
    • The whole thing kicks off with Yondu (wearing a much bigger fin closer to the original comic book character), Rocket, and Baby Groot engaging in a slow-mo Team Power Walk out of the cell and into the hallway with expressions of pure bad-assed "you guys are all dead."
    • It should be pointed out that Rocket is Guns Akimbo and taking out about two people a second, it's just that he can't keep up with the Person of Mass Destruction that is Yondu.
  • To put into perspective, do you remember when he killed Ronan's men in the previous movie? That was nothing. The whole crew of mutineers, perfectly aware of what he can do, are still completely defenseless against it. They don't have the time to fire a single shot at him, and the one time someone manages to dodge, Taserface wasn't the primary target anyways, and still dies when the tank of fuel Yondu sent his flaming arrow against explodes. Yeah, you read that right; the arrow was on fire at the end.
    • Honestly, it's hard to tell just how damn fast that arrow moves, possibly anywhere from above the speed-of-sound to a fraction under light-speed, but it's awesome either way. Only those with Super-Speed could legitimately avoid this weapon trying to kill them.
  • When Baby Groot sees one of the Ravagers who abused him earlier while he was in the birdcage, he immediately goes to make the guy pay by tripping him up with his roots and then hurling him off a catwalk to his death, all the while making battle cries mocking the sort of taunting said Ravager subjected him to.
  • The topper? The whole thing is done to "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay and the Americans and gloriously matched to the action before bursting into a full-on orchestral and choral adaptation as the massacre reaches its climax.
  • We get a hint of how truly badass Yondu is earlier in the movie when Taserface discusses mutinying with Kraglin over Yondu being "soft":
    Kraglin: If [Yondu's] so soft, why are you whispering?
  • After the massacre kicks off, it becomes painfully clear that if he hadn't been in a dual Heroic RRoD and Heroic BSoD at the time, Taserface's mutiny wouldn't have gone anywhere. Yondu absolutely slaughters the entire crew without so much as taking a scratch while still performing little flourishes like shattering one mutineer's mug of beer to shock him and then comes back to kill him.
• For a moment, it looks like Gamora is going to choke Mantis out after finding a catacomb in which Ego stores the skeletons of his thousands of children. Then Mantis, perhaps in a moment of realization whispers out, "You are scared." And Gamora immediately lets go, suddenly hit by a wave of fear.
• Peter, upon finding out that Ego gave his mother the brain tumor that killed her, snaps out of his reverie and immediately draws both guns and blasts him until his physical form is nearly destroyed. Had it been anything less than a Celestial, Quill would have reduced them to cinders.
  Peter: But my mother...you said you loved my mother.
  Ego: And that, I did. My river lily who knew all the words to every song that came over the radio. I returned to Earth to see her three times, and I knew if I returned a fourth, I'd...I'd never leave. The expansion...the reason for my very existence would be over, so I Did What I Had to Do. But...it broke my heart to put that tumor in her head.
  Peter: (slowly breaks free of Ego's influence) ...what?
  Ego: Now, now alright, I know that sounds bad—
  (cue a furious Peter blasting Ego's physical form to kingdom come)
• During the battle with the Sovereign ships, Yondu's ship's weaponry becomes inoperable because of damage to the weapon's power core. Cue Nebula plugging herself into the ship's mainframe to use her cybernetic power cells to power the weapons. It doesn't just power them, it overclocks the lasers to turn the ship into an omnidirectional laser cannon that annihilates the entire Sovereign fleet!
  • Right before this, Yondu warns her that what's going to happen is going to hurt. Nebula just offers an affable "promises, promises", daring the ship to live up to the warning. And though it's quick, Yondu grins in approval at her boast.
  • Nebula fell from the then exploding ship and lands right on her feet from a high fall afterwards. It really did hurt, but she barely seemed the least bit worn out from all that.
• Gamora picks up the gun from Nebula's spaceship (you read that right) and fires it back at her. Keep in mind, the gun is twice her size and yet she picks it up as if it were nothing.
  • The entire fight between Gamora and Nebula is pretty awesome, with Gamora being able to outrun Nebula's ship and Nebula's insane amount of determination to kill her sister.
• Up to the end, Peter's control over the Ego Planet's energy is quite lackluster. However, when he sees his friends are in danger, and on Yondu's Don't Think, Feel advice, Peter manages to harvest enough power to become a Physical God and get into a fistfight with Ego.
  Peter: You shouldn't have killed my mom and squished my walkman.
  • It helps that this crowning moment of awesome begins with Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". Almost as though subtly hinting Peter tapping into his powers. The first few notes (complete with beats) gives a feeling like Peter's heart-felt memories are building power.
  • Not only that, but when the song starts up, it has a soft reverb to it, as if it's echoing in the cavern they are fighting in. Peter is playing the song using Ego's planet itself.
  • Later, just before the bomb goes off, Ego tries to convince Peter not to kill him because if he does, he'll be mortal just like everyone else. Peter's response?
    "What's so wrong with that?"
  • The very fact that Ego said that at all. He knows he's about to die, he's trying desperately to stop it. He's lived for millions of years and powerful enough to destroy the universe as we know it, and now — for maybe the first time in his life — he's scared. After what he did to Peter, to Meredith, to all his other progeny, and all the other innocents he killed and would have killed, it's very satisfying to see him terrified in the face of his own mortality.
    • For the extra Catharsis Factor, Ego dies the exact same way he killed Meredith. Instead of a metaphorical one, a literal time-bomb was placed directly next to his brain. It's just his death was more immediate and oh so satisfying. Even better is the way Ego's true form/core reacts to the bomb implanted in him by Baby Groot. As the countdown progresses, the giant brain which beats like a heart begins beating in an increasingly frantic and desperate manner, obviously trying to escape its imminent destruction. That's definitely the look of a Lovecraftian monstrosity scared shitless for its own life.

• The epic Team Shot of the Guardians as Ego's planet explodes in the background. And then Mantis is hit with a piece of debris.
• Yondu riding his ship on top of Ego. It doesn't kill him, of course, but Yondu still makes a good entrance.
  Yondu: Hey there, jackass!
  • Yondu outdoes Ego in every way save for raw power. Whether his magic arrow is a device someone else built that was deemed too impractical and unwieldy to be mass produced, or whether he designed it himself, Yondu is a savant with it. He teaches Peter more about how to wield Celestial power in a few minutes than his father (who is an actual Celestial) managed to teach him in a few days, and when they eventually clash (Ego with a massive pillar of rock and energy and Yondu with his tiny arrow), Yondu manages to artfully annihilate Ego's attack.
• At one point, Ego constructs a colossal body of stone to attack with. We also see some yellowish stone begin to coalesce around Peter... It cuts away for a moment, before coming back to show that Peter has literally made himself into a stony Pac-Man, who destroys Ego's stone-body in the only way appropriate for that form. Doubles as a Funny Moment and a Call-Back to him mentioning the monument he planned to make when he perfected his powers.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy killed a Cosmic Eldritch Abomination (explicitly mentioned to be a Celestial) by working together and having baby Groot plant a bomb on its brain while the rest fought the aforementioned entity in a massive battle that must be seen to be believed. The Avengers may have saved Earth from invasion, but the Guardians themselves killed a cosmic god, who in the original comics is a threat that Thor, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four have trouble with, and who gave a good fight to Galactus.
  • Three films into the third phase of the MCU and looking at who Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy have defeated, the Avengers are starting to look like amateurs by comparison. And it's glorious.
• Mantis temporarily puts Ego to sleep. And not just his human form, but the entire freakin' planet goes to sleep once she lays her hand down.
• THIS. LINE. ALONE.
  Yondu: I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!
  • Later on, when he's carrying Peter out of Ego's atmosphere to safety, Yondu is also holding Peter in the same pose.
• The Theme Music Power-Up during the final fight, when Star-Lord refuses to lose the family he loves for the father he's never known; never break the chain indeed! Also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment.
• Yondu's funeral is awe-inspiring, both visually and emotionally. So that's how a Ravager dies.
• Several of The Stingers certainly qualify:
  • This single line will no doubt send chills through any Marvel fan:
    Ayesha: I think I will call him Adam.
  • The original Guardians of the Galaxy, composed of high-ranking Ravager captains, reunite after Yondu's death.
    Stakar/Starhawk: Let's steal some shit.
• Probably one of the best, if not the best Stan Lee cameo with him talking to the Watchers! Amazing for people who wanted to see the Watchers in the MCU and the perfect Fandom Nod for those who believed in the "Stan Lee is the Watcher" theory!
• A villainous and completely offscreen one, but whatever Thanos has done to convince Gamora that he can't be killed. Gamora, who has just helped kill Ego the Living Planet, thinks this of Thanos, who still doesn't have any of the Infinity Stones. We know Thanos has done things that are heinous, but things of that much magnitude? Villainous Offscreen Moment of Awesome and also Nightmare Fuel. We clearly haven't seen anything yet.
• A subtler one for Baby Groot: when Rocket is preparing him to take the bomb down to plant on Ego's core, he instructs him on what to do to activate the bomb's timer, and explicitly tells him not to press one certain button. During test runs, Groot continuously thinks he has to press that one button, and he runs off to plant the bomb before Rocket can do something to disable the button. He plants the bomb, is about to push the button... but stops, and manages to push the correct one instead. Despite his seemingly lesser intelligence since his rebirth, he remembers Rocket's instructions at the last second, and in the process averts many expected tropes that viewers thought they saw coming.
• While clearly intended as a comedic moment, and despite Kraglin's inexperience with it, Drax survives and remains conscious after getting speared in the neck with Yondu's arrow. And also the fact that it wasn't a deep wound, considering that it can go through several people and spaceships like a hot knife through butter

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