Trailer Thoughts: Guardians of the Galaxy

Yesterday, Marvel/Disney released a set of three photos from the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy (check here), the first movie in the Marvel Cinematics Universe that will take place entirely in space and will feature the wider (science) fantastical world of Marvel comics. Its going to feature the team often dubbed as the Cosmic Avengers and has some interesting star power behind it in the form of Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana in two of the lead roles with WWE wrestler Dave Bautista in a third and the other two CGI-animated characters being voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel.

We also got a 15-second teaser trailer at the same time, which was kind of nice, but far too brief. Personally, I don’t like teaser trailers. They are far too short to do anything really, even if I end up liking them. But then, but then just this morning, I saw a tweet by actress Karen Gillan in which she shared the FIRST FULL TRAILER of the movie! And I was hooked. Man, if the movie holds up to what this trailer is showing, this movie is going to be great.

Pretty much all the Marvel movies till now have been serious affairs. Sure, we’ve had Tony Stark as Iron Man doing some great one-liners and humour moments, and we’ve had plenty of awesome interactions between Loki and Thor, whether in their own movies (the Thor movies that is) or in Avengers, but we haven’t yet had a Marvel movie with a strong comedy feel to it. And it looks like Guardians of the Galaxy is going to be fulfilling that role.

I mean, just look at the trailer. It screams comedy. It screams that Marvel takes its comics-verse seriously and that it is not afraid at all to take chances with it, to go all-out with the fantastical. This is full-on space opera and this is excellent.

We have the Guardians here, in all their glory. We have two highly jaded members of the Nova Corps (with John Reilly as one of them!). We have Nebula, a Marvel cosmic character that I’m really excited about seeing on the big screen, and she seems to be getting a lot of action scenes too. We have Ronan the Accuser, another character I’m similarly excited about. We have Djimon Hounsou (Djimon Hounsou!) in a role that I have little idea about (but Wikipedia tells me he is a Kree, so squeeeee!). We have Benicio del Toro reprising his role as the Collector from the end-credits scene in Thor 2: The Dark World. We have Rocket and Groot being total badasses.

We basically get some really awesome scenes. Its like a collage. My absolute favourite part is when the Guardians are getting processed by the Nova Corps. The back-and-forth between Reilly’s character and Serafinowicz’s is really great. I just love their attitude.

Some really excellent visuals here, and a really good trailer music track as well. What’s not to like? I’ve only read a handful of Guardians of the Galaxy comics, but after watching that trailer, I have a mind to read through all the ones starting with those written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. I’ve heard that the Guardians in the movie will hew closely to what these writers gave us a few years back, so that’s interesting.

The only thing I kind of am not so sure about is the possible sexual tones with Zoe Saldana’s character Gamora. I really hope that that’s not what that scene is about, some romantic link-up with Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord. I don’t know what kind of a relationship these two have had in the comics, but I think that there are enough romance angles like this in the MCU. We shall see.

And just as a closing point, I have one thing to say, and that’s not to Marvel or Disney or anyone else associated with this movie. This is to DC and Warner Bros. And here is what I have to say:

FUCK YOU

Both DC and its parent company continue to dither on a Wonder Woman movie, saying she is not filmable because she is tough for audience to relate to, or whatever the latest version of that crap is. I have news: Marvel is giving us a gunslinger talking raccoon in space and a talking tree in space. You have no argument. Go home.