Looking back, it seems incredible that anyone could have doubted that The Guardians of the Galaxy would become the movie success of the year, sweeping all before it as it powers towards a likely worldwide $800 million box office haul.
But as with anything that steps outside the box of tightly held expectations of what will and won’t work, the James Gunn-directed romp across the stars, which featured a talking genetically-modified raccoon, a grown up kidnapped Earth boy with delusions of naming grandeur, a green-skinned warrior princess with one hell of an adoptive father, a strong, monosyllabic tree and a blue-toned muscle man with revenge on his mind, brought forth the naysayers who opined that a Marvel film without Spiderman or The Avengers would leave the moviegoing public cold.
But thanks to an inventive script, which deftly took the mickey out of science fiction conventions, even as it paid grand and visually impressive homage to them (the closest example I can think of movie-wise is The Princess Bride, which was both a parody and a standard bearer for the fantasy genre) and stuffed full of witty oneliners and hilarious set pieces, The Guardians of the Galaxy was a much needed breath of fresh air in the superhero genre, which particularly in the well-oiled Marvel stable, was in need a little bit of a creative shake up.
So successful has the film been in fact that it has already been greenlit for a sequel, due in 2017, and now an animated series due to air next year on Disney HD, which had a teaser trailer released for it as the just completed New York Comic Con, and which is included for your viewing pleasure below.
You can’t really divine too much about the direction of the series from the brief snippet of test footage which features a brief and characteristically witty exchange between Peter Quill and Rocket Raccoon but it does seem to promise that it will hew, at least in spirit, to the tone and look and feel of The Guardians of the Galaxy movie which can only be a good thing.
It will also do a nice job of tiding fans of the movie over until the next instalment of the franchise hits theatres in the far off days of 2017.