Guardians... or Angry Russian Bear

Skanky Vamp

Skanky Vamp

Sniffin' the Slayer
Joined
Aug 12, 2008
Messages
26,460
Black Thorn
Look, they created something new without having to 'modernize' pre-existing IP to turn it into a mockery of what it should be.

From Verge

The combined gross of Marvel's superhero movies is in the billions of dollars. The Russian film industry wants to replicate that success, but money isn't the only goal of such a film. A Russian superhero film has the power to speak to its nation's values and history, the way Marvel superheroes have done for the USA. Which is to say Russian viewers might prefer to see themselves as the heroes rather than the villains.

Guardians, or Zaschitniki, is the closest a Russian film has come to capturing the scope and production quality of the Marvel Universe. In Guardians, a band of men and women from different corners of the Soviet Union volunteer for (or are forced into) a DNA-augmenting program that gives them special powers. They're secretive existence, so far as I can tell from the footage, is upended when they're tasked with fighting a supernatural force in modern day. The story as told in the trailer, above, plays like a response to X-Men: First Class, which used the Cuban Missile Crisis as a climactic set piece

A few things to run the highlighter across:

This blade weapon is very neat, and I imagine could sell lots of action figures in the States.


A character transforms into a machine gun-wielding bear, maybe the single greatest work of Soviet Union symbolism.
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I'm sorry, did you miss the part about the machine gun-wielding bear?
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What were we talking about again?
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It looks quite good fun, but why wasn't the gun-wielding bear in the trailer?! That would have made so much sense....!
 
So...is it a bear with a mini-gun on its back or a were-bear that carries a mini-gun into battle?
And why would you transform from one version into the other when they both do the same thing?

I mean, a Transformer is either a vehicle (or whatever) or a robot with a gun, that makes a kind of sense as to why they would transform.
But that bear is clearly unusual- its got a gun/harness and isn't gonna sneak up on anybody by blending in! Then it transforms (?) and becomes...😕
 
Also, how does the bear fire the gun if he's on all fours and it's on his back?
 
1- It's a werebear with a gun strapped to it's back.
2- It fires the gun with psychic thought. The werebearmanguy thinks, fire now, and the gun fires now.
 
I like this.
If you have to make up your own superheroes then why not go all-out, balls to the wall, unsubtle my-werebear-has-a-big-gun-and-thats-awesome ott crazy!

It does however come across that their superhero ideas came out of a hat full of concepts 11 years old came up with.
 
More information from Inverse

Starring Sebastien Sisak, Sanzhar Madiyev, Anton Pampushnyy, Alina Lanina, Valeria Shkirando, Stanislav Shirin and Vyacheslav Razbegaev, Guardians takes place in an alternate historical universe where the Cold War conflict between the United States and Russia rages on. An organized Soviet group called “Patriot” has altered and manipulated the DNA of four individuals, creating formidable and unassailable superheroes who are tasked with protecting the Russian homeland from foreign threats, presumably from the United States.


The defining superpowers of the four superheroes created by “Patriot” apparently bear some connection to the strengths and traditions of the different nationalities that inhabit the USSR. Based on the teaser, which revealed scant details about these superhuman creations, it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on. One of the Guardians is a woman with blue stitching in her neck that glows menacingly, and another Guardian spontaneously sprouts a thick coat of hair on his back. These movie posters clarify the appearances of the four superheroes, but the specifics of their powers ultimately remain ambiguous.

This ferocious brown bear-man named Arsus is the fleshed out visual of the mysterious figure that grew hair on his back in the teaser. The brown bear is an infamous symbol of Russian culture that has been employed in cartoons and other political material since Tsarist society. A bear cub, for example, was the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, an emblem of Russian fortitude and ferocity. This bear superhero is exactly that: formidable and savage, as seen below by the destruction that ensues when he flexes and roars. You have to admit, we may have a Hulk, but a werebear is pretty cool too.
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This next superhero called Khan, although I’m not exactly sure what cornerstone of Russian culture he reflects. He has super speed and two very sharp scythes attached to his arms. He also wears some sleek steel armor to round out that Russian robot look, you know, the classic archetype (?), the film’s creatives were going for. Watch him wreak havoc on some overconfident and ultimately helpless men who use primal screams and futile machine guns to try and defeat this very sharp superhero.

I thought this movie was supposed to feature Americans as the enemies, but these guys don’t seem to be from America. At the end of the day that doesn’t really matter, though—they cut in half just as easily as any human body. Forget Vector Marketing’s Cutco Knives, this guy could julienne a carrot in half a second.
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The next superhero’s powers are totally unclear, although it looks like he bears some sort of magnetic force that can move rubble. His name is Ler, and he has that burly bearded Russian look about him, so maybe he’s the hunk of the group? Who knows.
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Here’s our resident female Xenia, because you know, females make up a considerable portion of the Russian population. She’s gorgeous (shocking) and has stitching up her neck and body that makes her arm glow an iridescent blue and triggers some sort of water-based power. She also wields a sharp object in the other hand, which, in combination with her aquatic command, destroys everything in sight. Her superhero outfit, also, conveniently highlights her cleavage. Sexy and destructive, now that’s an unbeatable combination!
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This last poster is the most unclear of them all because we’ve already been through four superheroes, which begs the question: who is this last monster? This bulging beast looks like a pro wrestler on electrical steroids. He appears to lead an army of some kind, as the figures behind him are in tact and not flying in all directions. Also I’m going to go ahead and guess that this is the bad guy. This also may be the way Russians view Americans nowadays.
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Mr. Pole said:
I dont get why arsus is so funny? ursus sounds too feminine.
Click to expand...

I think a female werebear would've subverted the expectations nicely.
Dangerous were-woman with a machine-gun also forstalls the 'is that guy compensating for something?' joke.
 
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