The Big Picture: Who Are The Guardians of the Galaxy?

[Canadamus Prime]

Looks absolutely ridiculous, but could be a fun ride none the less.

 

[shogunblade]

Can I admit to everybody on The Escapist that I actually don't like Hooked on a Feeling at all? I get why the song is so popular (I associate it more with that creepy Dancing baby on Ally McBeal then I do this movie), but I don't really care for it? It just feels wrong to me. I so like the original by BJ Thomas, but that's just me.

OT: I'm actually looking forward to this, and I can't say why. It feels so different from the Avengers movie that I can't not be interested in it. It's darker, it has characters that haven't been licensed out all over and I feel good about it for those reasons alone. It's going to feel really different, but I think everybody in Disney realized that when they grabbed James Gunn for the film.

Speaking of, I'm gonna check and see if Super and Slither are on Netflix...

Great video, Bob. I had no idea who these characters were, and I still don't, but at least I have something resembling a fighting chance to talk about the characters should somebody come asking... or maybe I'll refer them to this video, instead.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

With John C Riley in this, I know if his character dies or something all I would think is, "Tekietoooooo!"

 

[truckspond]

At least this awesome movie won't be delayed too much in Australia (Hopefully!). I am looking forward to seeing this one

 

[Azure Knight-Zeo]

Aren't the Kree the same race that Captain Marvell is from? So is this also hinting at a Captain Marvell (and by proxy a Miss Marvel) movie in the future?

 

[Grimh]

Don't worry if you're not that knowledgeable Bob, there are probably somwhere around a googolplex of videos and articles explaining to me just who these people are.
I learned a new word today by the way!

Anyway I'm liking this new trailer analysis format, mostly because I'm increbily lazy.

 

[selce]

As someone coming into this film with absolutely no knowledge of the Marvel universe besides what the films from the past few years has shown me, this is awesome and cant wait to see this!

 

[Baresark]

I love the Guardians of the Galaxy. I have since I was 7 (going on 26 years of comic reading here). One of my first comics was a Silver Surfer comic. If you spend years reading Surfer comics, you run into every single intergalactic hero, villain and organization that Marvel has. It's just so much more grand than any of the stuff that takes place on earth. Everyone was going gaga over the Marvel Civil War, I was going gaga over Annihilation (which the Guardians played in integral role in). When Richard Ryder came back to a visit to Earth after that event, he was dismayed and distraught to how disconnected the entirety of Earths super beings were to just how close they came to absolute unstoppable destruction. Sure, some kids got blown up by a mutant who explodes, that sucks. But whole entire worlds were wiped out and they are all so clueless. At the time Richard Ryder was in full possession of the Nova Force and it was a grand joke when he was attacked by government cronies who thought he should "register" (almost as funny as when Tony Stark tried telling Thor he should register, after cloning him without his permission and that clone killing Giant Man by throwing his hammer through his chest)... I'm rambling. I guess my point is that the cosmic stuff was always my favorite. And it's about damn time it got some lip service and us fans got some fan service. Marvels galactic continuum has the Star Wars universe beat by spades. I simply cannot wait.

 

[SeaCalMaster]

Finally! A movie role suited to Vin Diesel's level of acting ability!

 

[chiggerwood]

Oh come on like this movie is actually going to be goo- is that a gun wielding racoon? FUCKIN' HELL! I am there!

 

[Saltyk]

You know there seemed to be a lot of little details in this trailer that I would have never known. It's always good to have a more knowledgeable person such as Bob walk me through it. I think that helped me get a bit more interested in this movie, seeing the bits of obvious set up for expansion of the Marvel Cinematic universe.

I have to Be Honest, off the Top of it, the only Reason id watch this movie is Rocket Raccoon, im sure i will like the rest of bit, but a Raccoon with a Gun kinda is a good Draw for me, says the Bird with a Grenade

Can I be honest? That's sort of what grabs my interest in this movie, too. It just sounds so stupid and ridiculous at first. Can you seriously imagine this guy existing in the same universe, much less fighting alongside, Captain America?

Try not to steal his girlfriend from the guy, though. They seem happy together.

Whoever made the inspired decision to use "Hooked on a Feeling" for this movie is a genius who deserves giant bags of money. I cannot watch the trailer without a big grin on my face as a result of the juxtaposition and camp of the whole situation.

Agreed. I feel like the song and how it's used will help it stay in the conscious of casual viewers. I'm really hoping it does do well. Marvel has yet to have a flop and I hope they continue that streak.

 

[Sergey Sund]

I'm a comic-loving person (seriously, I have an IKEA Billy shelf full of them. And yes, I am bragging.)
In all those comics, plus the loads more I have read ...... let's just say "at the library", ok? ... the Guardians have come up an astonishing rare amount of times. So, at last, I am on almost equal footing with non-comic fans.
That this is being made as a movie is akin to those sports films about that one baseball player from the 50s .... except that no-one remembers him, only few people know about him broadly, and no-one has any goddamn clue about how the story will play out or HOW IT WILL END.
It's a bold step for a movie/comic firm to go off-checklist and not make the comic book film adaptation about the guys that everybody knows .... but about some rather obscure, "small-time" heroes. This is an exciting thing. It opens up almost the entire archive of Marvel heroes for film adaptation.
Comic fan? Not a comic fan? You should go see this.
Why?
Because by doing so you tell Marvel & Co. that audiences want a more "diverse" hero roster. It will be possible to adapt more "risky" (read "financial unappealing") comic books. This is a good thing because - and here you need to believe the comic consoisseurs - there is a lot of good, interesting stories in there (for everyone), which you, as a movie goer, want to see adapted.
TL;DR go see this movie.

 

[Metalrocks]

lol. thanks for the infos. now i want to see it.

 

[Sergey Sund]

Incidentally - The Destroyer: Isn't he kind of like Riddick? Beause the times I've seen him in comics (Annihilation) he's just a stronger, more bullet-proof version of Riddick. Down to the knifes, and the everybody-is-scared-of-him-except-he's-using-only-knifes-wtf? attitude of everyone around him.
And Vin Diesel in the same movie, but as another character? Hilarious.

 

[CelestDaer]

Finally! A movie role suited to Vin Diesel's level of acting ability!

Psst: Iron Giant was Vin Diesel, too, he hardly said two full sentences. But most of the internet will break down if you so much as utter 'Superma-an!'

 

[Admiral Reasonable]

Does this mean within the next few movies we could be getting a shout out to my boy Beta Ray Bill?

 

[RandV80]

I have absolutely nothing against this upcoming film, but I think it's going to bomb spectacularly if Disney doesn't spend nearly as much on the advertising as they will making the film itself.

A lot of effort, perhaps, but not as much money. This trailer was fantastic and it generated a ton of buzz. If they can keep marketing the movie like this, they should be good. I hope they don't show too much.

The trailer really did absolutely nothing for me.

Once you get past the CGI reskinning it's painfully obvious that much of the cast are the same sort of standard issue Science Fiction archetypes you've already seen a thousand times before. It'll take a little more than turning a tired cliche into an anthropomorphic talking squirrel to convince me that the movie is worth paying to see. And I'm a little disappointed how easily people have been bought off by the computer generated sleight-of-hand that is being used to hock a small portfolio of standard issue Sci-Fi cardboard cut outs.

I think what I'm trying to say is I was hoping for a strange new animal, akin but different from The Fifth Element. Once you get over the fact that guy is a tree and that guy is a talking squirrel, it just feels kinda like bad generic science fiction.

No offense but you sound like someone who would go to ends to describe how bad Avatar actually was, regardless of the fact that everyone and their dog went to see it and the vast majority enjoyed it.

Way to much detail for your specific tastes. The average movie goer will look at this trailer and see Marvel + looks like lot of fun like Ironman/Avengers + a ****ing Raccoon! = ticket sold! I mean Marvel's been continuously hitting it out of the park with second tier comic book hero's (I'd call Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and X-Men 1st tier), some may be getting weary but overall people trust the brand.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

No offense but you sound like someone who would go to ends to describe how bad Avatar actually was, regardless of the fact that everyone and their dog went to see it and the vast majority enjoyed it.

Avatar serves as irrefutable evidence that James Cameron could assemble a completely functional pitch-perfect symphony orchestra out of refuse that had at one stage belonged to other people. Cameron is the Han Solo of movie making, but only if Han Solo was expected to assemble the millennium falcon out of stolen parts every time he had to do the Kessel Run.

 

[Therumancer]

This looks like lots of fun, and I'm glad you covered it in video instead of in a text-only version.

I remember the original Guardians of the Galaxy run, now that I saw your pictures for it, but didn't remember the Raccoon. Perhaps it was after my time buying comics. It is good to see another MCU lighthearted, but non-spandex, version of a comic movie. It's also cool that this is a property I can explore to my semi-geeky wife together.

I'd love a NOVA movie.

Also, is Star Lord an attempt to do the snarky personality correctly, which Green Lantern failed at?

We are unlikely to ever get a decent Nova movie, largely because they replaced Richard Ryder with this kid Sam Alexander which I guess some people like, but to me it's sort of like how Kyle Raynor wasn't worthy of polishing the ring never mind replacing Hal as earth's main Green Lantern (never mind for how long he did it).

See, right now Marvel has plans to turn Nova into this huge property, one of the big issues going around with the "Marvel Super Heroes Online" game (love it or hate it) is that one character they had permission to use but have been unable to release from the first year's intended stable is "Nova" largely because Marvel kept deciding it wanted
to try raise the price to use that particular character after the fact. What's more there was some grappling apparently over the possible existence of doing a Richard Rider "enhanced" skin since the general consensus among marvel fans who are into comics enough to play a game like this and care about the character is pretty much that Sam Alexander should go die in a fire, but only after contracting malignant testicular cancer and having a case of oral herpes rot most of the way through his brain.... or to put it bluntly, while Sam has some fans among newer comic readers, especially due to his appearance in the fairly recent "Ultimate Spider Man" cartoon (which has everyone acting like immature brats... and is really kind of terrible for that reason, which I won't go into in more detail) real fans, especially the guys who are likely to actually drop money on merch or pay $10 to $30 for a playable character in a FTP Diablo clone loathe him.

That said the skinny is that Bob appears to be right, because when you follow this rabbit hole (which some obsessives apparently have) Marvel has Nova pegged as being one of their major successes to be, and their intention is quite probably to have the Nova power passed over to a young Sam Alexander which is the version of the character they seem to be interested in using and promoting and want to be the "known" Nova at this point.

To some extent I can sort of see why, as a general rule Nova pretty much works like a combination of Green Lantern and Spider Man, dealing with a lot of the same power and responsibility issues while operating on a somewhat higher power level. I can see why Marvel might see this as potentially being a big success. That said, as I've rambled about above, they seem interested in using the worst possible version of a character. Sam Alexander being probably the worst idea since "Rage" and for the same reason (Rage being a 12 year old kid with super strength who hung with The Avengers for a while).


-

On a side note, I actually do know a bit about Guardians Of The Galaxy and have rambled on about it before. One thing that kind of bugs me about this is that "Star Lord" is supposed to be a galactic law enforcer himself. Indeed part of the original gag was that the alien that offered the mantle of "Star Lord" (along with a host of weapons and gimmicks, which were later removed from the character) turned Peter Quil down, he was on his way back to Earth from a space station to face what amounted to insubordination charges, and pretty much turned around and claimed the mantle anyway. They are instead calling him an "Outlaw" which sort of makes me wonder where exactly he's going to be leading a team called "Guardians of The Galaxy" which sort of got away with that conceptually because they were with Star Lord (not that I was ever entirely clear on who he enforced the law for, or whose authority he represented, my memory is failing and Wikipedia doesn't fill in all the blanks). Of course he's been rebooted several times, but still "Outlaw" just doesn't quite feel right. I suppose as Bob pointed out they are re-doing the character to try and merge Vance Astro (who himself is a giant cup of beans) into it. It will be interesting to see if this version of Star Lord winds up having telekinetic powers.

The biggest wild card of the group is really Drax, because honestly his whole "out to kill Thanos" schtick is the entire character. They still might be doing that, but he's a fairly one note character. I could see him either being awesome, or just sort of being there. That said it seems a bit odd that even Ronan the Accuser should be able to manhandle Drax quite that easily, Ronan is quite powerful, but they call this guy Drax The Destroyer for a reason. Even The Hulk would probably wind up having a problem with doing that (and and I seem to remember one of the "OMG Ouch" scenes of the whole Infinity Gauntlet fight is when both Drax and Hulk punch Thanos at the same time side by side, from which it's supposed to be truly amazing and a testament to his new power level that even a Mad Eternal is not paste after taking that hit).

That said I'll be giving it a shot, it should be interesting, but I have to agree it's going to be a gamble.

 

[AliasBot]

Drax the Destroyer's family was killed by Thanos. Gamora is Thanos's adopted daughter that turned rogue. Nebula may or may not actually be Thanos's daughter. From what I can glean from Wikipedia, the Guardians tangled with Thanos in a major plot arc in the comics. Thanos is also [insert verb somewhere between "guessed" and "confirmed": speculated?] to be the major villain in the eventual Avengers 3.

So I'm betting Guardians 1 is there to lay some groundwork and available backstory for Thanos, and if the first movie is successful, Guardians 2 (in Phase Three) will see the full release of and chaos wrought by Thanos, at least toward the end of the film, which will lead into Avengers 3, where the Avengers and Guardians, whatever their respective teams look like by that point (expecting casualties or at least retirements/recruitment somewhere in the ranks of the Avengers), will have to team up to take Thanos down.

Basically the movies are a vehicle by which to introduce a major future villain, and generally to test the waters of how weird their movies can get while still being successful (potentially setting the stage for the next effective-main-character/"Tony Stark" of the movie-verse, the sorcerer Doctor Strange, as well as future movies building off of the massive scale of the Marvel universe beyond Earth, involving Nova, etc.) Whatever the case, it's gonna be fun and I fully anticipate going to see it about 3 times in theaters.