Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy, based on the Marvel Comics of the same name and the last Cinematic Universe Phase 2 film prior to Avengers: Age of Ultron, received its first official still and plot synopsis as 2013 comes to a close.
Disney release the image and synopsis almost exactly seven months before Guardians of the Galaxy is set to opening in theaters everywhere on August 1, 2014. It features a mug-shot lineup of the five members that make up the intergalactic group: Peter Quill/Star Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), Damore (Zoe Saldana), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel, though his name does not appear in the official cast list, not a stretch considering the character only speaks his name in the Marvel Comics).
Guardians of the Galaxy was written and directed by James Gunn based on a story by Gunn and Nicole Perlman. It’s a radical departure from previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films as approximately 90 or more percent of it takes place in outer space. San Diego Comic-Con fans roared in applause after sneak-peek footage last summer, but it’s a shot in the dark to try and predict how general audiences will react or relate to a film that co-stars a CGI-generated talking space raccoon with an attitude problem.
Joining the core cast comprising the Guardians of the Galaxy are The Walking Dead’s Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close and Benicio del Toro as The Collector, seen briefly during the post-credits scene of Thor: The Dark World.
Here’s the official synopsis for Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy:
An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits: Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon; Groot, a tree-like humanoid; the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand – with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.
The rumor surrounding this mysterious “orb” is that it will be part of the Infinity Gauntlet, the same way the Tesseract is. The overarching plot at play in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is that Thanos, the menacing alien seen during the first The Avengers post-credit scene, is collecting the various components of the Infinity Gauntlet that he will eventually use to attack earth, possibly in The Avengers 3.
We should see the first trailer for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy sometime between January and Captain America: The Winter Solider in early April.
