Who Are the Guardians of the Galaxy?

by Chris Vegvary

For those of you who may not be aware, Marvel still has two films planned in “Phase 2” of their plan for their cinematic universe before the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the next being Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which will be followed by Guardians of the Galaxy. There are many people out there unfamiliar with this band of misfits from the comics, which is a group of outlaws and aliens that come together to fight for the greater good.

The leader of the group, Peter Quill, is also known as Star-Lord, and will be played in the film by Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation, Zero Dark Thirty). Star-Lord is the only human member of the team, and one can speculate that with Chris Pratt playing him, there will be quite a bit of humor coming from this character. Another member of the team is called Drax the Destroyer, played by former professional wrestler Dave Bautista, who is essentially the Wolverine of the team, in that he is a vengeful, unstoppable killing machine who is targeting Thanos, the person responsible for his death and the death of his daughter. Although in the comics, Drax was killed when Thanos invaded Earth for the Cosmic Cube (or Tesseract, as it’s called in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), his origin may be altered since it is believed that Thanos won’t invade Earth until the third Avengers film.

Gamora, a green-skinned alien woman played by Zoe Saldana, is the adopted daughter of Thanos. She is known as the deadliest woman in the galaxy, and while she is initially loyal to Thanos, she appears to eventually have a change of heart and has a major bone to pick with Thanos, on account of his evil agenda. Groot, who is of a race of large, tree-like aliens, will be played and voiced by actor Vin Diesel. Groot can possibly be seen as the Hulk of the team, with his incredible strength, ability to heal (by absorbing wood), and seemingly low intelligence (being able to say only one phrase: “I am Groot.”).

Finally, we have Rocket Raccoon, an anthropomorphized raccoon who has endured genetic alteration and experimentation, and who is an expert with guns. A smart-mouthed little guy with a lot of spunk, Rocket is as hilarious as he is deadly, and should provide some decent comic relief throughout the film, although it has been stated that the character will not be like a cartoon character. Rocket Raccoon will be voiced by Bradley Cooper.

Now that you know who the Guardians of the Galaxy are, does that make you more interested in seeing their adventures on the big screen? While they won’t each get their own individual movies like most of the characters from The Avengers did, it should be interesting to see a space epic with Marvel characters who may one day appear to stand beside the likes of the Avengers when Thanos decides to invade Earth.