Guardians Of The Galaxy Villain Details And The Potential For Spin Offs

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Thanos-in-The-Avengers-Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is gearing up to be one hell of a spectacle, and the cosmic adventure is poised to wind up as the exclamation point on the end of summer blockbuster season 2014. Thanos, who made an appearance at the tail end of The Avengers, will figure in as one of the villains in the film, and is expected to continue to fill that role as the Marvel Universe expands into deep space. We now know that there will be at least one scene featuring The Mad Titan, and we now have a description, as well as a hint about future Guardians movies.

Be careful, SPOILERS lurk below.

Bloomberg Businessweek recently visited the production and saw some rough footage of the aforementioned scene. Here’s their description of what they witnessed, before director James Gunn and studio head Kevin Feige elicited a promise to leave the central character unnamed:

Gunn freezes a frame of an imposing-looking villain any serious comic book fan would recognize instantly. He sits on a rocket-powered throne. Feige sees something on the screen that he doesn’t like. The evildoer needs to be farther away in the frame so he looks more imperious, he says.

I like the way of saying, “that’s Thanos,” without explicitly spelling out as much. Also, I don’t know about you, but I definitely want a hovering rocket throne. That sounds like a damn good time. It wouldn’t fit in my house, but if I could afford a rocket throne, I could most likely bankroll a larger home.

Part of why Marvel movies all have a similar feel, despite different casts, directors, and writers, is that the studio plays a heavy role in the shaping the films. This exchange between Feige and Gunn as they discuss this scene provides a brief behind-the-curtain view of the how this process manifests on a daily basis. It is a very hands-on approach.

“I don’t know,” says Gunn. “I think it’s going to look cool, man.” [After Feige says he wants the figure to be farther away.]

“You just don’t want him to feel petty in that way,” Feige says. “I think it’s a fine line.”

“How do you think it comes off as petty here?” Gunn says.

“He’s so damn close,” Feige says.

“Yeah,” concedes Gunn. “I think I’m going to have him floating in space.”

Feige is concerned about the throne, too. He points at the base. “Those don’t need to be rockets,” he says. “Maybe gravity disks?” Feige says he’ll check back later.

This same article also provides a hint as to how the members of the Guardians of the Galaxy could splinter off and form another wave of Marvel movies. One possibility is to “potentially spin off members of the Guardians of the Galaxy, which include Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon, in their own features.” Those are the characters played by Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper, respectively, who make up the core of the brash young group of space outlaws. This would be the opposite way the studio approached The Avengers, when they introduced most of the individual superheroes in their own movies before bringing them together as the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. I would love to see a movie that revolves around besties Rocket and Groot; there’s no scenario I can come up with where that is not a total blast.

Guardians of the Galaxy opens everywhere on August 1.