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Two of the year's most anticipated movies—Guardians of the Galaxy and A Million Ways to Die in the West—are giving fans their first look at both star-studded summer flicks with just-released production stills.
Guardians of the Galaxy—or GotG, for short—features Zoë Saldana (far left) as the green Gamora. She stands beside Chris Pratt, who plays the leader of the Guardians Peter Quill/Star-Lord. Bradley Cooper voices the raccoon character in the middle named Rocket. Wrestler Dave Bautista looks menacing as Drax the Destroyer, and Vin Diesel plays Groot, the hyper-intelligent tree-like creature on the right.
Based upon the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, Guardians of Galaxy opens Aug. 1. To get audiences up to speed before then, Disney released a synopsis for director James Gunn's movie.
"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 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."
GotG also features the talents of Glenn Close, Benicio del Toro, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace and John C. Reilly.
Universal Pictures' A Million Ways to Die in the West, by contrast, takes place in—you guessed it—the Wild, Wild West. Writer/director Seth MacFarlane plays a humble sheep farmer named Albert who feels humiliated after his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) leaves him for the man who runs their town's local "moustachery" (Neil Patrick Harris). Enter Charlize Theron, who plays Albert's more age-appropriate love interest—and the mysterious wife of an infamous outlaw, no less.
Debuting May 30, it also stars Liam Neeson, Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman.
(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)