Tag Archives: Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel August 2014

What we want from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’

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guardians-of-the-galaxy-footage-leaked

We’ve seen a little bit of director James Gunn’s 2014 Marvel outing “Guardians of the Galaxy,” so we kind of know what to expect.

Granted, we haven’t seen much. Just a half-minute of footage released at Comic Con last year – it’s subsequently popped up online – and a minute of Gunn-directed footage in the middle of the credits of “Thor: The Dark World.”

Yes, the “Thor” footage isn’t from “GOTG.” But Gunn directed it and it features Benecio Del Toro as a “GOTG” character, the Collector. And yes, he’s acting weird. It is Del Toro, and it is a Gunn-directed performance.

So based on what we’ve seen so far and what we hope, what do we want to see next summer?

guardians movie concept art

Action. Based on the Comic Con preview, I don’t think we have to worry about this. The 30 seconds of footage I’ve seen has a ton of fighting and shooting and other good stuff.

Humor, but not too much. All the Marvel movies have their share of humor. The way Gunn is approaching “GOTG,” it looks like it might be the funniest of all the Marvel movies so far. But Gunn has, based on “Slither,” the ability to summon up the dramatic and horrific as well as the funny.

A little bit of weird, but not too much. Okay, so you’ve got Rocket Raccoon, a hard-bitten … raccoon who is an incredible fighter, and you’ve got Groot, an alien that looks like a tree that says only, “I am Groot!” Gunn has to be careful to not push the rest of the movie over the line into total weirdness. I’m a little worried about how Del Toro will come off, but he’s not a central character.

Thanos. We know the Mad Titan is likely to be the Big Bad in “Avengers 3.” But he’s a Guardians antagonist and Gamora, the Zoe Saldana character in “GOTG,” has ties to Thanos. So how about a little Thanos action in “GOTG?”

Ties to the Marvel Universe we know. Considering much of the story is apparently set in another corner of the galaxy, it’s hard to imagine Captain America popping in. But …

iron man in guardians of the galaxy

Iron Man! Tony Stark’s armored avenger is a member of some incarnations of the Guardians in some comics. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Robert Downey Jr. interact with Rocket Raccoon?

And it would be good preparation for “Avengers 3,” when I think all of these colorful characters are going to be all together for a cosmic blowout.

 

New Comic Con images: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ‘Man of Steel’

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The news was coming out of San Diego Comic Con faster than a speeding bullet tonight.

The Warner Bros. panel, according to online reports, included footage of Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” the latest Warners/DC reboot of Superman.

The company also released a new teaser poster showing Henry Cavill as Supes:

The Marvel Films panel had some interesting news, including some titles: “Thor: The Dark World” for November 2013; “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” for April 2014 and “Guardians of the Galaxy” for August 2014.

Those follow the previously announced “Iron Man 3” for May 2013.

The “Winter Soldier” portion of the next Cap title would lead fans to expect that Bucky, Cap’s sidekick who “died” in the first movie, will be back. That’s because in the comics, after an absence of several decades, Bucky returned as the Winter Soldier, an assassin trained and maintained in youthful form by the Soviets.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” is an even more interesting turn of events that has, so far this evening, split fan opinion online.

The movie has been predicted for a few weeks now since Thanos, Marvel’s cosmic villain, showed up at the end of “The Avengers.” The Guardians, who have been around in one form or another since the 1960s, are longtime enemies of Thanos.

As another superhero team for Marvel movie-making besides the Avengers, they make as much sense as anything and are a more likely group in some ways than the Inhumans (fan fave characters who might have too many ties to the Fantastic Four for Marvel’s film arm to have the rights to) or the Defenders (which has included, over the years, such off-limits characters as the Silver Surfer and already-familiar ones like the Hulk).

Yet “Guardians” feels like a risk because it is cosmic in scope – a concept that was tested in “The Avengers” but still feels pretty disconnected from the “reality” established in Marvel’s movies so far – and because the characters are an unusual bunch, including Rocket Raccoon.

It’ll be interesting to see who Marvel chooses to helm “Guardians” and what direction the movie takes.