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“The first Guardians movie is about becoming a family, and this one is about being a family,” says director James Gunn, who also wrote Vol. 2 .

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Oh, dear. At Pinewood Atlanta Studios, director James Gunn is overseeing a scene for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and things are not going well for Marvel’s team of misfit superheroes. In one corner of the soundstage sits the Guardians’ spaceship, the Milano, which has crash-landed on a forest planet named Berhart and is in need of repair. Much the same could be said of the group’s dynamic, as Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and Drax (Dave Bautista) depart their downed transport to meet Quill’s mysterious father, who is played by the legendary Kurt Russell.

The quartet leave behind Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and Rocket is none too happy about it. “Hope Daddy isn’t as much of a d— as you are, orphan boy,” he snaps, courtesy of an off-camera line reading from Gunn’s brother Sean. (Cooper’s voice will be added later.) “What is your goal here?” Quill fires back. “Trying to get everybody to hate you? ’Cause it’s working!” The emotionally turbulent vibe is reinforced by the scene’s soundtrack: Fleetwood Mac’s rock classic about tortured love, “The Chain.”

“The first Guardians movie is about becoming a family, and this one is about being a family,” says director Gunn, who also wrote Vol. 2. “And being a family’s a lot harder than becoming a family. That song, for me, means the Guardians can never break the chain — and also maybe it’s about, they’re gonna break it. Who knows?”

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Well, Gunn does for one — and everybody else will when the director’s much-anticipated sequel arrives in theaters May 5. But you don’t have to wait until then to find out much, much more about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Simply pick up the new Summer Movie Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly to read about Gunn’s film and a veritable host of other big screen releases including — but by no means limited to — Baywatch, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Snatched, The Mummy, Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, War For the Planet of the Apes, Dunkirk, An Inconvenient Sequel, Atomic Blonde, The Beguiled, Transformers: The Last Night, and the Joel Edgerton-starring chiller It Comes at Night. Outside the movie realm, you can check out a first look at the upcoming season of House of Cards, an interview with Lena Dunham about the end of Girls, and Caitlyn Jenner’s Pop Culture of My Life.

How did we fit it all in? Well, following the advice Kurt Russell gives at the start of John Carpenter’s cult classic Big In Trouble China, we never drive faster than we can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.

Image zoom Robert Maxwell for EW

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