Four Things from the New GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Trailer

So Marvel has unleashed the new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer upon us, and it's fueled not only the hype train but the speculation train as well. Aside from making me froth at the mouth for the premiere, it also shed some light into some interesting things about the upcoming movie. Well, four things to be exact!

BATISTA AS DRAX!

Sure the trailer had lots of fantastic imagery, but I kept going back to that big brute with knives Drax, played by Dave Bautista, also known as the WWE wrestler Batista. He was one of my favorite wrestlers in my impressionable teen years, so to see him get equal screen time with a cast that's brimming with heavyweights like Academy Award-winner Benicio del Toro and Academy Award nominees like Glenn Close and Bradley Cooper is amazing!

KNOWHERE!

Comic book fans' eyes probably went wide at the sight of that gigantic floating head in the trailer, and for good reason: it's a reference to Knowhere, the Guardians of the Galaxy's headquarters in the comics! First appearing in Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Nova #8, Knowhere is awesome by virtue that it's the decapitated head of a Celestial, one of the biggest and most powerful races in Marvel's cosmic pantheon. The jury's out whether the head in the trailer is of a Celestial or if there is such a thing as a Celestial in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the fact that they put it in there is making me giddy!

RONAN!

We finally see a clear shot of Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Kree bad ass and main baddie of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Despite ditching his green threads for bad-guy black, the Universal Weapon hammer that Pace is wielding is undeniably Ronan's! It's accusin' time!

INFINITY GEM?!

One blink-and-you-miss-it shot in the trailer showed someone's hand (possibly Ronan's?) grasping strange purple energy. Given that the Collector (Benicio del Toro) is in the movie, and given that one of the Infinity Gems in the comics is colored purple, could it be possible that that energy thing is one of the Infinity "Gems" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Only time will tell.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is quite the gamble for Marvel, what with all the relatively unknown characters, but the awesome stuff we saw in the trailer gives me hope that we're about to see Marvel's cosmic renaissance very soon.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy hits theaters August 1, 2014.