Earlier this week, Disney took to Spain's annual CineEurope to debut footage not only from next year's Avengers: Age of Ultron, but also some scenes from the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy. While descriptions seemed unlikely, Total Film has come through with a detailed rundown of what was shown for the James Gunn-directed Marvel space epic. Below you can read excerpts with a spoiler warning, but hit the source link further down for the full description. Things kick off below right after the scene in which Peter Quill is confronted by Korath and then chased by the villain.
Also standing out was Groot, a tree-being who can grow and alter his shape at will, as the situation requires (at one point an arm is puffed into a bunch of twigs to use as protection against machine-gun fire, and he can also extend his height to reach important items). He also steps up to defend Quill from the attention of a hulking space-brute, lifting the aggressor skyward via his nostrils. And, even in the limited footage we saw, there was a good sense of the range that Groot gets out of the only three words he can speak: ‘I am Groot.’
The choreography of the whole sequence was impressive, not only in how it juggled the roles of the Guardians, but also the innovative action itself (particularly when a sneaky bit of hot-wiring by Rocket renders the prisons anti-gravity tech useless…) and the ever-present humour.
Following that escape sequence, we were also shown an excerpt from later scene, when Quill is being held captive on Yondu’s (Michael Rooker) ship. Quill was brought up by Yondu’s people, as evidenced in their red leather garb: the same type Quill was sporting at the beginning of the film. We didn’t see enough of Rooker’s performance to get a true sense of the character, but he looked awesome, with bright blue skin and a red mohawk. The scene took a sudden shift when Rocket appeared to ‘save the day’ in a particularly unsubtle manner, with some ridiculously heavyhanded negotiating tactics. His failed attempt at a rescue leads the entire group to be taken hostage. “I didn’t have time to work out the minutiae of the plan,” he grumbles.
Again, make the jump over to Total Film to read the Guardians footage description in its entirety.
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. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is presented by Marvel Studios and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gilian, Djimon Hounsou with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Commander Rael and Benicio del Toro as The Collector. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the film opens August 1, 2014.