Disney rang in the new year by treating Marvel Studios fans to the first official image of Guardians of the Galaxy. The image is a line-up of the film’s protagonists much like the concept art revealed over the summer. Star Lord (Chris Pratt), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) are front and center with the actors appearing in character for the first time. I’m not really into Pratt’s weird facial expression. I like how Saldana looks as Gamora, but I’m worried that she risks being typecast as an alien action star (re: Avatar). Bautista looks almost exactly how Drax the Destroyer does, which is awesome. Groot and Rocket Raccoon haven’t changed much from their concept.
Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my most anticipated films of the year and is a pretty risky move from Marvel and Disney. However, if they could turn Iron Man from a B-list character to a full-fledged AAA star, they can do the same with the Guardians. August 2014 can’t come sooner. You can read the official synopsis below.
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.