As Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits the big screen, hitting the charts – in all likelihood – will be the selection of seventies and eighties nostalgia tunes that make up the film’s Awesome Mixtape Vol. 2 soundtrack album. Vol. 1‘s set list was a joy back in 2014 and with the newbie boasting ELO, Fleetwood Mac and Cat Stevens, once again James Gunn has assembled a crowd-pleasing musical delight.
I love a good soundtrack me. When music is deployed well in film it has the ability to transform a good scene into a great one, a classic even. Indeed, many ionic scenes and sequences pepper the lineage of film history due to their accompanying number; as such, I couldn’t help but wonder what the ultimate film soundtrack would be? The list I’ve assembled, a hand-picked collection of my favourite music usage in cinema, is by no means definitive and I welcome your comments and suggestions, but this is an album that I would very much like to own…
In many ways, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 feels like the superhero film that its director, James Gunn, always wanted to make. Back in 2014, the first in this soon-to-be-trilogy was widely regarded as a bit of a risk for Marvel, its titular protagonists being a lesser known team of heroes than the Avengers. It did, however – aiming squarely for a joie-de-vive tone and a whole galaxy of mainstream fun – prove to be a rip roaring success. Such features are largely carried over into Vol. 2 (does this mean Guardians of the Galaxy is retrospectively Vol.1 now?), yet, with a soundtrack drawn more deeply from the nostalgia catalogue than the recognisable hits that peppered the former and a focus on character development over heightened stakes, Gunn’s is a more prominent and untethered directorial hand this time around.
It’s surprising just how unnerving it feels to be watching Jim Broadbent in a – relatively – sedate role. Usually the embodiment of joviality in his work, The Sense of an Ending sees Broadbent unveil a performance which is painstakingly controlled, and fastidiously measured to the point of nuance. Not that this unexpected from the award winning star of Iris and Moulin Rouge, but it is certainly a welcome shift in tone from an actor normally typecast as beaming, booming and bumbling.
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