By Rudie Obias | 7 years ago

Disney and Marvel Studios quietly released the first production still for Guardians of the Galaxy earlier this week, further cementing the movie as one of the most-anticipated movies of 2014. It’s also one of the few blockbusters this summer that’s not a sequel or a reboot, but rather based on one of Marvel’s stranger properties. To many people, Guardians of the Galaxy might as well be an original summer movie about space outlaws and aliens. Now new plot details surrounding the film have emerged with an official synopsis.

As pointed out by Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny, there has been some confusion about the identity of the film’s central villain. While there are three in the film, Benicio del Toro’s Collector isn’t a main villain, but will still play a big role in the film. Instead, the main villain is Ronan the Accuser, played by Lee Pace. The Collector will serve as a bridge between Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy. McWeeny teases:

The Guardians are going to need something from him, and we’ll see what happens when Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Drax, and… Groot all show up on his planet asking for access to something in that collection.

That certain something is believed to be one of the Infinity Gems teased at the end of Thor: The Dark World.

As for the film’s heroes (and I use that term loosely), while Chris Pratt is in the position to become a superstar with his role in the new Marvel movie, and possible in the lead role in Jurassic World, newly returned WWE wrestler Dave Bautista, who plays Drax the Destroyer, is expected to be a standout in the space adventure. McWeeny describes the character as:

…driven by revenge [and] has turned his body into a road map of private misery and loss, with ornate tattoos that tell the story of how he was left alone in the universe, filled with nothing now but rage.

Bautista’s performance has apparently received nothing but praise from other Guardians cast members. “Every single person we spoke to on the set talked about how blown away they were by what Bautista has been doing with the role,” says McWeeny.

Along with the new image of the team, Disney has also released the film’s official synopsis and a list of the movie’s cast and characters. Although Glenn Close’s character is listed as Commander Raes, the film’s writer/director James Gunn corrected the error and cleared up the character’s name and title via his Facebook account. Glenn Close will instead play Nova Prima Rael, the highest-ranking Nova Corps officer in the film. “I don’t know where they got this ‘Commander’ stuff from,” Gunn added. Here’s the official synopsis:

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor/i>, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team — the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits — Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand — with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.

The new Marvel movie also stars Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Rooker, Olivia Lovibond, and John C. Reilly. Guardians of the Galaxy hits theaters everywhere on August 1, 2014, in 3D.