If that werebear with a Gatling gun doesn’t make you want to see this Russian action flick, what will? Guardians (aka: Zaschitniki) is set to be Russia’s first entry into the Superhero Blockbuster market. While it won’t be in theaters until 2017, you’ll want to keep an eye out for if it ever hits the American shores.

Check out this first teaser that gives us some glimpses of the characters:



There’s another teaser that shows a smidgen more right here.

Apparently what we’re looking at is a team of cold war super soldiers gathered by a group called “Patriot” to defend Mother Russia from supernatural threats. Anton Pampushniy will play Arsus (aka Wildman) that’s the Gatling-packing werebear. Sanzhar Madiev is Khan and he’s the one with two giant curved blades. Alina Lanina plays Xenia or Waterwoman. Rounding out the team, controlling those stones is the team’s geomancer Ler or Landman played by Sabastien Sisak. You can see there is a sort of elemental theme here; earth, wind, water, and bears.

Here’s a clip of Khan taking out some bad guys with a combination of super speed and his almost comically curved blades.

Pretty badass right? Makes you wonder why The Flash never carries a knife. The movie is scheduled to be released in a couple of months, and as of now, there is no American release scheduled. If the movie does well, we can probably expect to see it get at least a limited US release. If we all keep throwing love at these trailers it will probably help.



Come to think of it, while this is probably a wholly original idea it does remind us of one of the lesser known, but exceptionally cool Marvel teams: The Winter Guard (First Appearance: Iron Man #9, 1998). Both teams have a similar composition with their very own werebear, but The Winter Guard has Crimson Dynamo, a guy in a Soviet-Era Iron Man suit, who was sort of combined with another character to create the Whiplash villain for Iron Man 2.

All these characters got their start in an even bigger Russian Marvel team with the delightful name “The Soviet Super-Soldiers” (First Appearance: Hulk #258, 1981). These folks were mostly involved in clashes with Iron Man and Black Widow and still show up from time to time whenever the story lands our heroes in the motherland. Fun Fact: Ursa Major (Marvel’s Russian werebear) was a mutant, so if we even see him on the big screen it will probably be in Fox’s X-Men films.

The Winter Guard did show up in the Avengers Assemble cartoon of the early 2000’s with a slightly modified lineup. Marvel has a clip on their YouTube:

That concludes your regular installment of werebear news for the week. If you have any other favorite werebears feel free to give us the hot tip in the comments below and while you’re there let us know, if they dub this movie into English for a US release, which of the Critical Role cast would you see in which parts?

Proshchay!

Header Image Courtesy Argunov Studios