Guardians Of The Galaxy Preview Footage Review 

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Guardians of the Galaxy first footage – Marvel smashes the superhero template

A manic racoon, a talking tree and a cruel green killer: will Marvel\'s gamble on this iconoclastic comic-book movie pay off?

• Guardians of the Galaxy: Marvel\'s surefire summer action smash

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Guardians unlimited: Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Star Lord (Chris Pratt), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). Photograph: Moviestore/REX

It\'s been clear for some time now that Guardians of the Galaxy is a very different kind of comic-book movie: a barmy and bombastic space opera featuring a brigade of anthropomorphic cosmic misfits whom nobody outside of Marvel comics\' hardcore fanbase had ever heard of before February\'s debut trailer. But watching 17 minutes of footage from the film, that were screened to UK bloggers and journalists on Tuesday, it soon became apparent that the latest movie from the Disney-owned Marvel Studios is more than just gently offbeat: it appears to be an entirely new kind of superhero movie – with no discernible superheroes.

Link to video: Guardians of the Galaxy: watch the trailer for Marvel\'s weirdest superhero proposition yet

We meet the Guardians, who are mostly unknown to each other, as they are to be incarcerated in an elaborate space prison known as the Kyln. There\'s Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), the maniacal, arrogant, diminutive result of "experiments on a lower life form". Groot (Vin Diesel, pulling a George Clooney in South Park) is a walking, talking tree who utters only the prosaic legend "I Am Groot" (admittedly with multiple inflections). Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is a cruel-eyed green humanoid assassin who finds herself targeted for past crimes by furious inmates of the Kyln. Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) is a tattooed, monosyllabic space brute. Peter Quill, aka Star Lord (Chris Pratt) is the only human on view, and he seems to be a bit of a twerp.

Superhero movies usually revolve around selfless figures who find within themselves the strength to save the planet. Or at the very least rescue a kitty or two from a particularly hard-to-reach tree branch. But Marvel\'s latest ensemble, at the beginning of the movie at least, just don\'t look the type.

Monster hit? … Guardians of the Galaxy. Photograph: Rex Features

While heroism may be on the back burner, there\'s no doubting the team\'s ability to take on all comers. Groot, in particular, is shown to be virtually indestructible, while Rocket is something of an evil little genius and Gamora is the sort of gorgeous green space assassin you really would not want to meet on a dark night in the Orion nebula. The Kyln, and its occupants, simply do not stand a chance.

If there\'s any criticism to be made of the footage, which may not have been fully finished, it might be that the CGI Rocket (while nicely realised) lacks the ability to express much emotion except in close-up; mugging to the camera is tough when you\'re a furry brown creature with dark beastie eyes.

Making the character more cartoon-like might have allowed for more expression, but the Marvel chief Kevin Feige was clear that the film-makers were aiming for realism. "It was always very important to us that we did not want him to be a cartoon in any way shape or form," he said during a Q&A session following the footage. "It had to be a photo-real creature. Rocket, as you can see from the footage, doesn\'t know he\'s a cartoon character, and we wanted an actor who did not play it like a cartoon."

Feige revealed that Cooper was approached after producers set up a virtual 3D walking model of Rocket and played famous movie monologues over the top. "We did it with Bradley with a scene from Silver Linings Playbook, and something about that got us very excited," he said. "We reached out and the screenplay won him over."

Feige admitted that Guardians of the Galaxy, which arrives in British cinemas on 31 July and in the US a day later, was a risky choice for Marvel\'s next film – but also said the studio was feeling confident in James Gunn\'s movie.

"I\'m not sure [making it] felt any more or less of a risk than the first Iron Man, or Thor or Captain America, he said. "Or even The Avengers itself. You know, people forget we were in production on the first Avengers movie prior to the release of those other films. So audiences had not told us yet that they liked these characters. Production got a lot more relaxed halfway through when we realised people did like these movies."

Rocket Raccoon and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy

The studio has placed its faith in unorthodox heroes before: Robert Downey Jr\'s Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo\'s Hulk spring to mind. But Guardians of the Galaxy\'s bickering cosmic space freaks really do seem set to take comic-book movies to entirely new levels of amoral brilliance. If the film is to succeed, it will presumably do so by showing this motley rabble\'s unexpected path towards the heroism of the title: let\'s hope it takes them plenty of time to get there.

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