YOU MAY REMEMBER how in the touching final scene of Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 1, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) was given a brand new mixtape by his mother. As of today, we’ll finally be able to see the second tape in action.

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 hits cinemas today. This time, the Guardians are asked to defend a cache of valuable batteries from an inter-dimensional monster called the Abilisk, which they accept in exchange for Nebula (Karen Gillan).

The film sees the return of an almost endless cast of stars along with Pratt, including Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Bradley Cooper as Rocket and Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer – who had to sit in a sauna at the end of filming each day to remove his make-up, which took four hours to apply in the original.

The sequel also contains two new A-list appearances from the inimitable Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, who stars as Peter Quill’s long-lost father.

It’s safe to say however that Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), who we saw beginning to grow in the final scenes of the last film, may steal the show. Diesel lent his voice to sixteen different foreign language releases of the film (an increase from the six he did for the original).

The process of Diesel learning the script was an interesting one, as he told Total Film:

It’s very, very challenging because you’re limited to three words. There’s a secret script that I get where it has all of Groot’s lines, but the catch of it all is the only was I can say it is: ‘I am Groot.’

And on the music? Peter Quill’s first mixtape, which almost acted like an additional character in the first film and helped to raise the film to cult status, topped the US Billboard 200 charts for eleven consecutive weeks (and sixteen weeks in total).

It was the only soundtrack album in history to top that chart that consisted of pre-released songs. It not only went platinum but it almost went on to become the US’s bestselling soundtrack that year, second only to Frozen.

No pressure then.

Its director, James Gunn (who in a previous life wrote Dawn Of The Dead), felt under pressure to recreate the first soundtrack’s success but completely up to the challenge, telling Entertainment Tonight that “the second one is better [...] so I’m excited about it”.

The score for the sequel was even recorded in the infamous Abbey Road Studios. In an interview with ComicBook, Gunn explained why he was so delighted for people to hear it:

 I think it’s more diverse soundtrack. I think the first soundtrack [had] a bunch of songs that maybe you heard but didn’t know the name of the song [...]. In this one, we have some really incredibly famous songs and then some songs that people have never heard. So, it’s a much more diverse soundtrack.”

Luckily, it was unveiled ahead of the release last week, and you can have a listen right now on the official Spotify playlist before you see the movie:

Like to see if the film lives up to all the hype? Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 is on general release from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures from today. Get a taste of what the sequel has in store here.