PREVIEW - Guardians of the Galaxy: What We Know So Far

Monday's 17-minute IMAX preview sets the stage for the August 1st release.

Story by Matt Cummings and Zak Sousa

Marvel Studios has quickly become the most talked-about entity in film, generating a steady buzz and great movies since Iron Man premiered nearly 6 years ago. A world filled with Captain America, Thor, and The Hulk was just what a tired movie industry needed, and moviegoers agreed, flooding the theaters as 2012 brought us the ultimate superhero mash-up The Avengers.

But that was Phase One, and Phase Two is off and running with a few more bumps in the road than predicted. For every Captain America: The Winter Solider - now the country's #1 grossing domestic film - there's the recent departure of Ant-man helmer Edgar Wright and news that a team of writers have been brought in to perform on-scene triage of the script. And even with the most difficult year in Marvel Studio's history since the late 1990's - when it sold X-Men and Spider-man off to keep the lights on - it's the imminent arrival of Guardians of the Galaxy that represents the biggest risk for The Studio That Could. Expanding a franchise is one thing (see the Alien prequel Prometheus), but launching an entire universe of new creatures and off-world conflicts that will someday connect with Avengers 3 is something else entirely. So, it's incredibly important that GoTG not only establish the 'Cosmic' portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also create the kind of following that takes us to Phase 3.

With Monday's release of 17 minutes of the film to select IMAX audiences around the country, we now have a better picture of the world Director James Gunn is crafting and how characters from it could eventually affect the Avengers universe. The purpose of this article is to set down what we know, what we expect to see, and discuss questions that the TV spots and the preview did not answer. This article assumes you have seen the teaser and trailers for the film, and are generally up-to-speed on the five Guardians introduced therein.

Villains Become Heroes...

We think it's safe to assume that The Guardians of the Galaxy are not necessarily galactic villains, but powerful by-standers who individually became embroiled in separate conflicts that have brought them all to the notorious prison called The Kyln. Based on their individual comic histories, some of them have connections to none other than Thanos - yes that Thanos - and have either voluntarily left or currently seek to destroy him,. Enter Peter Quill aka Starlord whose job it is to wrestle these potentially dangerous egos into the universe's version of The Avengers.

Their job seems to be simple: either re-capture or destroy the orb seen at the beginning of the trailer before Thanos gets his hands on it. But The Mad Titan has 'Guardians' of his own, including Nebula (Karen Gillian), who appears to hold a grudge against Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the most dangerous woman in the universe. A potential 'Guardian' is the Kree character Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), whose Judge Dredd job of judge-jury-executioner apparently takes him through the Guardian's path. He's the painted-up and cloaked one in the trailers carrying the giant anvil called The Universal Weapon.

Based on the IMAX preview, we know the five escape and form an uneasy alliance until the orb is found, blowing stuff up and making fun of each other along the way. What happens before that job is complete - including the appearance of Thanos, the true nature of Ronan, and about a dozen other things are up for speculation, some of which we tackle below.

What We Don't Know...Yet
And while Monday's preview gave us an excellent sense for how this new universe exists, there are still many questions we hope get answered when the film is released. Here now are just a few:
Why has Ronan the Accuser aligned himself with Thanos?

In the comics, Ronan is an extremely dangerous character, but has never carried out the work of Thanos. Yet here, his shadowy origins and purpose are making us wonder if we'll be seeing a different Ronan than the one portrayed in the comics. Perhaps he is aligned with Thanos but soon betrays him when he learns Thanos is assembling The Infinity Gauntlet, a device that's also being portrayed a little differently in the MCU. Instead of him pursuing 7 stones that form a metal glove, the gems appear to be actual devices, from The Tesseract to The Ether. The orb featured in the GoTG trailers seems to be one of them.

How has an Earth human found himself so far from home?

Alien abduction seems likely, and we've heard that a small sequence in GoTG will clear this matter up. But why is Starlord seeking the orb in the first place? Is he the futuristic version of Indiana Jones, seeking fortune and fame under a disguise? And what does the orb do?

Why does Drax the Destroyer seek Thanos?

In Monday's preview, we hear Drax tell Starlord that his goal is to destroy his ultimate enemy - from the comics, we know this person to be Thanos, but his name is not uttered in the sequence. Is this version of an interstellar mafia whack job still on the table, or has Drax's target changed?

What role does Taneleer Tivan / The Collector play in the film?

At the end of Thor: The Dark World, we see one of the original Elders of the Universe accept The Ether from Lady Sif and Fandral. But what role will he play in GoTG? We hear him quietly celebrate the arrival of The Ether, but what is his ultimate role in the film? And will his desire to collect unique items from around the galaxy bring him face to face with The Guardians? And what about the strange brown form under glass next to him in Thor? Is that the meta-figure Adam Warlock?

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There are a ton of other questions that only the film at this point can answer. But upon watching the Monday preview (and the trailer above), our impression of the Marvel Cosmic Universe is clear: this is going to be a big adventure film on worlds far away from Earth, and the events which bring The Guardians together will surely resonate throughout the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. How that plays out will be both exciting and amazing if Gunn can weave no less than eight character origins into just over 2 hours (122 minutes to be exact). For now, our excitement at seeing how he achieves that is just as noteworthy as establishing a universe that's about to get a lot bigger.

For now, take a look at the full run of images Marvel has released.

Guardians of the Galaxy is directed by James Gunn and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel as Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Nova Prime Rael and Benicio Del Toro as The Collector. It opens on August 1, 2014,

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