Guardians of the Galaxy: Marvel mess in the making?

Should have parodied the Avengers trailer

"If we can't protect this galaxy, then we can sure as hell.... guard it"
"Wait, don't those mean the same thing?"

* cut to Rocket Raccoon screaming "BLAM! I murdered you!" roll credits *

had the trailer been two minutes of Rocket Raccoon shooting people in the face, I would have been stoked

I kind of want some footage of Bradley Cooper's voice coming out of his mouth so I can decide how ridiculous it'll be

Bookmark for future ILX use:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/19g4ycv0n85ohgif/original.gif

okay that did make me lol

Looked kind of like a big-budget syndicated show rather than a movie to me.

I think it looks fun enough.

"What a bunch of a-holes"

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL)

Is it Peter Serafinowickz saying this?

It just seems way too soon in this Marvel universe roll-out to go all Howard the Duck campy. I like James Gunn, generally, but gathering an A-list of the B-listers does not necessarily give me faith in the franchise.

Too bad Fantastic Four is in some sort of neo-Marvel rights limbo. That would have been the perfect vector to further expand this movie universe into other galaxies/dimensions. I know that reboot is on its way, but the fact that it, Spider-Man and X-Men exist in some sort of parallel Marvel universe really muddies one of the best attributes of the brand.

I imagine they'll find away round all that eventually, a film starring spidey, the x-men and the avengers would be like the biggest money spinner ever.

looks entirely entertaining to me. I like it when the Marvel movies are funny (Thor)

I imagine they'll find away round all that eventually, a film starring spidey, the x-men and the avengers would be like the biggest money spinner ever.

Sony cobbled together a whole new Spidey franchise just to keep the rights so I don't think they'll be giving them up anytime soon.

An film starring amusement park with spidey, the x-men and the avengers rides, plus Star Wars, plus of course Disney, would be like the biggest money spinner ever. That's likely the end game once the rights diaspora is reigned in.

so... Orlando?

I don't really get how Sony Pictures can have licensed the Spider-Man pictures "forever" but I can't find any concrete details on how their licensing from Marvel works

I think it's a rights in perpetuity thing as long as Sony doesn't let the series lapse for X number of years. Marvel sold off those franchises when superhero movies were at their nadir.

Eventually, though, Disney will have enough money to just buy them all back and then lock up copyright until 4500 AD.

That's still an insane deal; I guess Marvel was coming off bankruptcy a few years earlier, but it seems incredibly unwise in retrospect

I've heard of these kinds of licensing agreements before (if X property is not activated within Y years, rights revert back to property holder) but to allow this to go on in perpetuity is nuts

The Amazing Spider-man was basically the equivalent of Corman's Fantastic 4.

In terms of timing, not so much in terms of budget

I wish they'd done that as a loose continuation rather than a reboot; Raimi did the origin story pretty much perfectly.

It was painful watching them try to differentiate the new origin story from the old one. Worst part was robbing Uncle Ben of "With great power..." and replacing it with some weird off-brand paraphrase instead.

a spiderman movie was in the works for so long that 'this will never actually get made' wasn't a totally unfair assumption. guardians trailer looked good enough to me, sets the tone and looks worst case scenario the movie version of hitchhiker's guide. could imagine it not doing well and ending up an honorable flop like scott pilgrim or underperformer like pacific rim but if it's a hit it opens things up for marvel in a huge way (esp compared to wb/dc where they're so timid from having fucked up their properties they have to bundle wonder woman into a movie that already has superman and batman in it). i don't own stock in disney so why do i give a fuck if this is 'too risky' or they're making this move 'too soon', if it flops they'll keep doing what they're doing and take a tiny baby step out of the comfort zone somewhere else (ant man apparently), if it doesn't maybe summers become alot more interesting and fun.

steve gerber's 70s guardians of the galaxy isn't his best work, but does contain at least a few moments of genuinely visionary strangeness, whereas - like that panel reproduced above - this new iteration just seems to be awful zany garbage

I guessing having absolutely no experience with Guardians I just think "hey it's Chris Pratt and this looks fun" but I guess ymmv

all I know about Guardians is that they have a tree that only knows one sentence and a homicidal raccoon

That's the worst kind!

Bendis take on Guardians in recent issues has had laughs but been much less goofy. Kind of wondering if he was a script advisor of some sort and the comics series is adhering more to the post-movie outlook.

This incarnation, when the first appeared in Annihilation, were great. Better than the 70s or 80s versions by some margin. The following eponymous series was solid, and they were decent all through the big cosmic sagas of the 00s. However, once Bendis started writing them in the NOW! version they turned to crap.

True, seems like an attempt to bring them into the earth sphere of Marvel politics

The fact that each member of the team has some sort of baggage with either a galactic civilization or a galactic-scale individual (Thanos!) is kind of a good hook and Abnett/Lanning were good at characterization.

my impression is that Bendis is the go-to-guy for helping mold the current post iron man 2 movie canon arc

my impression is that Bendis actually hates action sequences and will bend over backwards in order to make more room for teenagers bickering with each other about their feelings

(in fairness, sometimes this approach works)

he should be writing the x-men movies

it's only working sporadically on the X-Men comic books

There's a "brain trust" of sorts shaping this stuff -- Bendis, Joe Quesada and I can't remember who else. Possibly Jeph Loeb (*shudder*) -- xps to forks

Yeah, it is Loeb, which makes me irrationally angry.

Bendis is great at dialogue and slow-burn plots and hopeless at complicated multi-character action-packed narratives as far as I can tell. I was obsessed with his Daredevil/Alias period but gave up following him after one of those messy cross-title Avengers stories.

Loeb is a decent-enough premise guy but don't let him try to outline

teenagers bickering kinda IS the core of the X-Men, they can't be punching each other alla the time

xps Quesada definitely involved, when he "stepped down" from EiC he moved into the movie/TV stuff fulltime

I've been trying to figure out if coming up with easy-to-follow plot ideas in broad strokes is his main strength. All his Batman stuff was very understandable but I just thought it was boring as hell. When he tries to write characters it gets... less good.

Loeb, that is

OTM. Get Loeb to do the plots and Bendis to do the character and dialogue and you're golden.

he used to be good, really!

Sorry, the Ultimate universe stuff is now the lens through which all Loeb work will be viewed. It's just that way.

This looks fun and campy in a good way (as opposed to dreary and campy like John Carter or similar).

Ha, my wife just watched the trailer and came to me with so many confused questions.

Like "Batista!?"

How are people not stoked? Granted I know nothing but this is solid trailer action.

The action stuff looks good. the words coming out of the actors suggest nobody involved in the script knows how to write funny jokes.

really hope they go over Star Lord's origin because he got such a raw deal and the character has a lot of motivation to be a jerk

it looks like two different films jammed together.

SOP for comics adaptations, right? Origin story + 1st adventure in one film.

Eh, I'm not so sure that will be the case with this one, since it has to fit into the broader story they're telling with the other films. With Iron Man 3 films in, Thor 2 in, Captain America on 2, Avengers a juggernaut so huge the second one is on the radar, this movie is a balancing act. Since I'd argue the characters are much less familiar than the aforementioned, it has to be origin, adventure, as well as pushing the bigger story forward. Because I can't imagine people will be satisfied with this if the only big picture glimmers it gives comes five minutes into the credits.

Or, you know, maybe they will! Resolution of the Infinity Gauntlet story at this rate will be post-Avengers 2, I believe.