The internet exploded on February 18^th, when the full trailer of Marvel’s upcoming movie Guardians of the Galaxy was released. If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch it below.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” Trailer

Although the trailer does a decent job introducing all the players on the most recent incarnation of the team, let’s just talk about some of the faces that we saw (in order of appearance).

Peter Quill AKA Star-Lord (Chris Pratt)

Peter was raised by a single mom after his father tried to kill him as an infant. His mother was killed by a pack of aliens claiming to end the “Spartoi bloodline”. This was not the last time he butted heads with aliens. He next encountered an alien called the Master of the Sun while working for NASA. It was looking for someone to become the next Star-Lord, an interplanetary policeman. Peter volunteered but was passed over for another colleague. When NASA wanted to ground him, he refused and stole a ship to the spacestation to take his colleague’s position. The Master of the Sun granted him his wish to become Star-Lord and avenge his mother. He formed the new Guardians of the Galaxy team to keep the universe intacts.

Drax AKA The Destroyer (David Bautista)

Arthur Douglas was living a normal happy life with his wife and daughter when Thanos flew by. Thanos (otherwise known as the baddie revealed at the end of The Avengers movie) thought that he’d been made, so he annihilated the car that the Douglas family was in. Unbeknownst to Thanos, his father Mentor was watching him and decided that his tantrums should no longer be ignored. Mentor captured Arthur’s feeble soul and fashioned a humanoid body to protect it. Thus Drax the Destroyer was born with the singular drive to prevent any more destruction by Thanos. He joins the Guardians of the Galaxy team with his former ally, Gamora, to prevent the destruction of the universe from Phalanx.

Gamora AKA The Most Deadly Woman in the Universe (Zoe Saldada)

Gamora’s story has an unhappy start when her entire race of alien humanoids was killed by a zealous religious sect trying to develop a new world order. She was saved by Thanos and raised her to be a skilled fighting machine. After years of mentorship, Thanos made plans to destroy the universe and Gamora didn’t want to take any part of it. She tried to kill him, but ended up nearly dead when Warlock (another member of Guardians of the Galaxy) captured her soul. Without getting into too much detail about other story arcs, Gamora does get her body back and eventually joins the Guardians of the Galaxy to help atone for her assassin past.

Rocket Racoon (Bradley Cooper)

So Rocket’s inception is a tricky story but here’s the gist: these humanoids colonize a planet to house their mentally insane patients. They abandoned their facilities after funding cuts and left the patients in care of servant robots. Radiation from a star that went nova gave the robots conscience and they decided they were tired of serving the patients. They went on to genetically engineer the companion animals to have sentience to look after the patients. One of them was Rocket. He basically served as a protector for the humans as some of the animals become malevolent and greedy. In terms of joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, he became a member after Star-Lord saved him from the Kree aliens.

Groot (Vin Diesel)

Basically Groot is a king of an alien planet that crash landed to Earth and the townspeople weren’t too keen on being ruled by a tree. He wreaked havoc in the small town where he landed until a local scientist genetically altered termites that left him for dead. Then Groot ended up captured by The Collector and was held in his personal zoo until Mole Man blew out the zoo’s security system. After being chased by S.H.E.I.L.D. and escaping into space, he was jailed with Rocket Raccon. A beautiful friendship was formed and the rest is history.

BONUS: The Collector (Benicio del Toro)

You may recognize his face from a previous Marvel movie. He was spotted at the end of the Thor: The Dark World when the Asgardian warriors trusted him to keep the Tesseract safe. Might not have been the best decision.

All and all, Guardians of the Galaxy may be a tricky movie compared to some of Marvel’s recent releases. It’s a decent sized team with no prior character movies, quirky humanoid characters that may not charm everyone in the audience, and possibly a complex story arc. Regardless of the pitfalls that may or may not come, I trust Marvel. This movie has an A-list cast, amazing special effects department, and a budget that can deliver a quality movie. I think it was a great idea to utilize the campy angle with the trailer. Honestly, it’s a thrown together team of miscreants so you know there’s going to be something to laugh about.

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