Following on from earlier, some more news for two of the most interesting and rumour-mill fueling titles coming out of Marvel studios.
While it was almost expected that both Guardians of the Galaxy and Edgar Wright’s insanely long in development Ant-Man would finally be getting an official announcement, especially considering all the recent buzz about the two films, Marvel still surprised Comic-Con attendees with very early looks at both of them.
The Ant-Man reveal was done rather sneakily as Wright had spent most of yesterday morning on Twitter and Facebook lamenting the fact that he was stuck in London, when he really wanted to be at Comic-Con. But then just before the Iron Man 3 panel (more on that later) was set to commence, the British writer-director revealed his ruse by joining Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige on stage to much fanfare. The two then officially announced the film, with Wright addressing his inspiration for the film as well as it’s glacial development pace.
“Hello gang. I was tweeting that I was in London earlier, but I just bounced here. Wrong movie, wrong studio. We talked about it in 2006 and I’m taking the Terrence Malick approach. It’s something that we have continued to work on. When I was very young I read a reprint of Man in the Ant Hill from ‘Tales to Astonish.’ I always felt there was a great film to be made out of it.”
“Ant-Man will kick your ass, one inch at a time.”
The audience was then treated to the under two-minute long test reel that was recently revealed to have been shot by Wright as a means of showing his vision of the character to the Marvel execs. Though, for obvious exclusivity reasons, there’s no upload of the footage, The Playlist has a nice description of it:
“In a long white hallway, a miniature ant-sized Ant Man walks towards two giant (or normal size) bad guy agents wearing sunglasses and holding large hand guns. The look of Ant Man is very slick, sort of a modernized take on the classic comic look. Fans should be pleased. As he gets closer to the two men, he turns into a full-size man. The agents react and open fire. Ant Man charges them, leaps into the air, and disappears before their eyes. Turns out he’s back to ant size and running right down the middle of a pistol held by on of the agents. He leaps from the gun right into the right cheek of the agent delivering a full-sized blow. The agent’s face ripples in slow-motion reaction from the blow. Ant Man transforms into full-size form and makes short work of the two men. As they lay on the ground, an elevator behind the two men opens. Musack plays from the elevator. Ant Man calmly steps over the two men and gets into the elevator. The footage is brief, running only about a minute, but quite impressive. Ant Man looks good and the clip gives a nice idea of the possibilities for the character and the film. “
That actually sounds pretty damn cool, and I cannot wait to see the footage for myself. Interestingly though, no release date was given for the film
The other big announcement was of course Marvel’s official confirmation (at last) that their slated August 1st, 2014 release would indeed be Guardians of the Galaxy. But while not much more than that was said about the film, something major was indeed shown in the form of concept art for the film, which at least revealed some of the characters that would be involved.
For those not in the know, that lineup from left to right is Drax the Destroyer, Groot, Peter Quill aka Star Lord, Rocket Raccoon and Gamora. There’s no word yet on whether or not that is the final lineup as there are a couple of big names like Adam Warlock and Phyla-Vell nowhere to be seen. Understandably, both those characters have rather convoluted histories, so it could be that Marvel are just trying to streamline the film, but they do play rather significant roles in the group, so it would be a shame if we don’t get too see them.
As for the concept art itself, with the exception of Star Lord, who’s missing his iconic peaked helmet and thus looks a bit insectoid, everything else looks spot on, with my two favourite Guardians, Drax and Rocket Raccoon looking as badass as ever.
Last Updated: July 16, 2012
