guardians of the galaxy

We've seen college course offerings focus on the 'Harry Potter' universe, comic books, and even one specifically for 'The Walking Dead,' but now it's Marvel's turn to educate younglings about the intricacies of their Cinematic Universe.

While 'Guardians of the Galaxy' was able to pleasantly surprise people with how good it is, now all eyes are on 'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' and whether it can live up to the original. One thing we've all wondered about the sequel is whether the Guardians would be introduced to any Earth-bound heroes, or vice versa. Could there be any new members of the Guardians of the Galaxy?

Marvel Studios and the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man transformed Robert Downey Jr. from a has-been into one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, so it's not surprising that he'll sing their praises outside the context of the movies he stars in. However, he recently took it a big step further, declaring 'Guardians of the Galaxy' to be the best Marvel movie yet. Yep, even the ones that he's not in.

By now, everyone is familiar with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, where people heed the call to throw buckets of ice water on themselves to spread awareness of ALS and raise donations to support The ALS Association. Everyone, from your many Facebook friends to A-list celebs have been participating, but, for us, there's nothing like seeing the likes of Thor, Iron Man and Star-Lord step up to the plate.

Although 'Guardians of the Galaxy' has already been in theaters for several days now, that's not keeping Marvel from releasing some fun 'Guardians' goodies -- like this latest featurette, in which Chris Pratt takes a very MTV's 'Cribs'-style approach to showing us around Peter Quill/Star-Lord's spaceship, the Milano.

Family trees in the Marvel universe -- cinematic or purely comic book -- tend to be a little twisted. When it comes to James Gunn's upcoming 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' that's definitely still the case, thanks to a pair of adopted sisters that look poised to spend the film's runtime slowly moving away from each other and towards opposite ends of the personality spectrum, with plenty of hand-to-hand combat to keep things strange.

Remember how we got to see 17 minutes of Marvel's 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' out in theaters next week? While we could only show you a few snippets of what we saw at the time, a new five-minute clip from the film debuted online that reveals more from that IMAX sneak peek.

'Guardians of the Galaxy' has already begun screening for press and the early word is that it's good, lives up to the hype, is the kind of movie that 'Star Wars' prequels should have been and so on and so forth. And that's all well and good, but this is a Marvel Studios movie so we have one big question: what about the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' post-credits scene...

On Monday night, July 7, Marvel teamed with the folks at IMAX to screen 17 minutes of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' for fans ahead of the film's August 1 release. Tickets and seating were first come, first served, so you can imagine the turnout, but we were there to take in all the never-before-seen footage. And boy, was there a lot to take in. Directed by James Gunn, 'Guardians of the Galaxy' stars Chris Pratt as the thief-turned-hero Star-Lord, Zoe Saldana as assassin Gamora, Dave Bautista as the crazed Drax The Destroyer, Bradley Cooper as the trigger-happy Rocket and Vin Diesel as the tree of a few words Groot, as they band together to stop the villains plans of Thanos and Ronan The Accuser. It's one of Marvel's most ambitious films to date, taking the universe established with The Avengers into outer space, and here's everything we learned from the 17-minute 'Guardians of the Galaxy: An IMAX 3D First Look.'

The newest 'Guardians of the Galaxy' spot is just brimming with color and confidence, unafraid to step out and say "Hey, this is a movie where Chris Pratt bickers with bitter, gun-wielding raccoon for two hours."

Nathan Fillion, who has appeared in director James Gunn's previous films 'Slither' and 'Super,' as well as one of the director's 'PG Porn' shorts, will indeed be making an appearance in 'Guardians of the Galaxy' -- though in a much smaller capacity than you might have assumed.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will soon blast off into the farthest reaches of outer space for the studio's most ambitious film yet, 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' and Empire immortalized the new band of heroes -- and villains -- with their own magazine covers...