Benicio del Toro
Following the casting process on James Gunn’s big, fat superhero movie Guardians of the Galaxy has become a part-time summer job. Based on a host of the least-known, space-based (and in many cases, goofiest) Marvel superheroes of the last thirty years, the ever-expanding universe of stars includes a couple of A-List Latino actors: Benicio del Toro and Zoë Saldaña.
Saldaña is playing “Gamora,” a green-skinned assassin who’s actually a member of the good-guy team. This marks Zoë’s third skin color in modern film; she’s already been a blue alien in Avatar, and will reprise the role in the far-in-the-future sequel, Avatar II.
Del Toro, it turns out, will be the Big Bad in this blockbuster, playing a long-standing Marvel character called “The Collector.” (See the image). Hitfix.com, among others, have described The Collector as “An enormously powerful alien being capable of harnessing cosmic energy and seeing into the future. It is the latter ability that allowed him to prophecy the coming of Thanos, a formidable alien being with the potential to challenge the dominance of the Elders of the Universe, the powerful group of which the Collector is a part.” Not business as usual for del Toro, but not his first foray into fantasy and comic book franchises, either: he was The Wolfman in 2010, and Jackie Boy in Robert Rodriguez’ and Frank Miller’s Sin City in 2005.
Filming begins soon. We can expect to see Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker and the rest when Guardians of the Galaxy premieres in the summer of 2014.
