Gamora - Eliza Dushku Another character with a past that connects to Thanos in weird and creepy ways, Gamora was trained to be a bad ass warrior of the "deadliest woman in the universe" type. This is important because getting a hot actress is not enough. We need a hot actress who can also do some bad ass fighting on screen. Two that come to mind are Eliza Dushku (who played a bad ass jewel thief in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back before being an ever badder ass assassin in Dollhouse) and Rosario Dawson who played a bad ass warrior hooker in Sin City... which is the only movie where bad ass warrior hooker doesn't sound like a typo. Phyla-Vell -Keira Knightley The daughter of Captain Marvel and also the lesbian lover of Moon Dragon (the alien daughter of Drax Destroyer who was abducted by Thanos) this character would likely be the first LGBT super-hero to make a big impact on the big screen. If handled properly this could be a chance for Marvel studios to dodge the "lezploitation" route and have a character who highlights a struggling demographic that is woefully under represented in the genre of super heroes. I can't say why, but the first actor to come to mind for this character would be Keira Knightley. She has both the gravitas (see Eternal Sunshine among other movies) and the action chops (See Pirates for the Carribean) to pull this off spectacularly. Mantis - Devon Aoki A martial artist and telepath of german/vietnamese descent, Mantis helped Star Lord form the team by using her powers to convince the various members to join... which is a huge gold mine for inter-team tension. While the classic look of the character is "sorta caucasian with an emphasis on the last five letters of caucasian" it seems that the current version has greener skin, presumably because no other skin-color in the cosmic crayola set says "not from earth" better than green. For martial arts bad assery, my mind immediately gravitates to another sin city almnus, Devon Aoki who played the silent bad ass Miho.
Groot -
A tree like alien who came to earth to abduct people for experiments before becoming less of a dick, Groot is rather reminiscent of the Ents from the Lord of the Rings movies. Much like Star Lord, but to an ever larger degree, this is a case of needing to focus more on the voice of the actor than the face. Two voices that come to mind are Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen and Lance "Colonel Hackett" Henriksen. Personally, I'd go for Henriksen, because it'd be so cool to see his face mo-capped into a tree face. If you don't know what Peter Cullen's face looks like you should not google him because Optimus Prime will never seem as cool again. Rocket Raccoon And so, we finally arrive at the character who could end up making or breaking a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, the talking raccoon warrior. A character from the 80's that was added onto the new team, Rocket Raccoon strikes some people (including some of our writers here at What Culture) as too damn silly to be in a super hero movie that expects to be taken seriously. This is what makes him such a great addition to the cast. Anyone here remember the lead up to Marvel's Thor movie? A lot of people all across the net were asking "how can such a scientifically grounded world as the one Iron Man lives in have room for a magical god like Thor?" before the movie hit screens. That question was answered by the movie so well, that no one looked at the trailers for Avengers with any doubt. Anyway, this is yet another role where all you need to cast is the voice. Since Greg Ellis has already done a brilliant job with voicing the character in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and the aforementioned Avengers cartoon it only makes sense that he should continue doing so. As for how to make the character work visually, I'm thinking a combination of puppetry and cgi similar to the monsters in Spike Jonez's "Where the Wild Things Are" would be sweeter than a swisher dipped in cherry sauce. Click "next" below for the final part...