Warning: this article contains spoilers for The Bad Guys 2
The Bad Guys 2is finally here, continuing one of DreamWorks' newest franchises after the huge success of the first film back in 2022. One question that is brought up every time a sequel comes out is whether it is able to stack up to the original.
While second installments in franchises can very often feel like a cheap imitation of the original,DreamWorks has made a name for itself over the years by making incredible sequelsto properties that seemed like they could have easily gone wrong. Some, likeShrek 2orPuss in Boots: The Last Wish,have become even more beloved than the first film.
The firstThe Bad Guyswas great, and while it hasn’t gone down as the absolutepeak of DreamWorks' best movies, it was a solid family film. It includes great voice acting, animation, and characters. Thankfully,The Bad Guys 2managed to mostly live up to the first.
However,whileThe Bad Guys 2was solid, it made one big mistakethat, to be fair, many sequels have fallen victim to. It stops the new movie from joining the ranks of DreamWorks' best sequels, despite all the solid moments it has.
One of thebest aspects ofThe Bad Guyswas that it felt pretty fresh, telling the story of a group of villains that need to be reformed, while also showing off some of the more entertaining aspects of the heist genre. Thismade for a fairly unique family movie experience, even if the story was still fairly predictable.
On the other hand,The Bad Guys 2felt like it was retreading a lot of the same ground as the first moviewhen it came to the movie’s overarching plot. It also revolves around a series of heists, but more importantly, it felt like the character arcs it presented were pretty similar to what already happened in the first movie.
The majority of the characters ended the film as pretty much the same people they started as.
The continued heists felt like a natural extension of the franchise, as it is a heist series. Simply moving away from that aspect of the movies would feel pretty jarring. However, the issue arises when those heists feel too similar to what has already happened, such as during the wedding, which felt like fairly standard heist fare.
When it came to the returningcharacters, it felt likeThe Bad Guys 2didn’t really know what to do.Most of the central cast doesn’t get the opportunity to change all that muchthroughout the movie, and the majority of the characters end the film pretty much the same people as they started.
Wolf did have a small arc, but it essentially just rehashed what happened in the first movie. We see him again grappling with whether turning bad would lead the team to better lives. Realistically, it makes sense for him to doubt himself, and it could have been interesting, but it passed by so quickly and had such little effect on the plot that it felt superfluous.
Governor Diane Foxington
Zazie Beets
The rest of the characters felt pretty static. Even though Diane underwent a significant change from governor to secret agent, it felt like it just happened with no real time to focus on what she was thinking, other than when she and Wolf revealed their true feelings for each other.
The Second Movie Tells A Much Bigger Story
However, it is still worth pointing out thatThe Bad Guys 2is nowhere near terrible.The film still very much succeeds at being an entertaining time for audiences of all ages. The voice cast and animation are still stellar, and the film manages to increase the stakes in a way that feels believable despite its zaniness.
The Bad Guys 2ends with a fight in outer space over a giant magnet that attracts all the gold in the world towards it. While that sounds completely insane, and like the series has massively jumped the shark,this is already a very heightened universe, and in the context of this series, the ending works extremely well.
Even outsideThe Bad Guys 2’s ending, it has a lot of great set pieces.The opening chase scene is a wonderful way to start the movie, reintroducing this universe and the characters in a way that feels like it fits in perfectly with where we saw them at the beginning of the first film.
While the action inThe Bad Guysfranchise tends to be less focused on hand-to-hand combat than other action films,there are a couple of straight-up fight scenes, mostly involving Diane, which are excellentexamples of animated brawls. Using the framing of the anthropomorphic animals makes these moments work well.
However, great action and set pieces can’t make up for weak and repetitive character arcs,whichthis sequel unfortunately suffers from. It’s a solid summer family film, but it doesn’t manage to surpass the original, makingThe Bad Guys 2slightly worse off when compared to what came before.
