After the roaring success of director James Gunn's space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy, fans are eager to see what's next for Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and the newly-miniaturized Groot (Vin Diesel). Guardians of the Galaxy 2 wrapped filming earlier this summer, and since then writer/director James Gunn has been happily answering as many fan questions as he can... without upsetting the Marvel snipers, of course.

The first teaser trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy at this year's San Diego Comic-Con showed clips from a battle in which the team go up against a strange alien space beast, but since that teaser was only seen by the lucky few in Hall H, it wasn't until earlier this week that everyone else got a look at the monster in a newly-released piece of concept art. Now, Gunn has offered a bit of insight into exactly what that thing is.

Speaking in a Facebook Q&A from his Los Angeles home, Gunn explained that the monster is "an Abilisk, a multi-dimensional being, and the Guardians have been hired to fight him." This speaks to the Guardians' new status in the sequel: no longer just a ragtag gang of criminals, they are now well-known heroes - defending the galaxy and enjoying the celebrity that goes hand-in-hand with that. Though Gunn didn't offer any more details about the sequence, it seems likely that this is an opening battle sequence or something that takes place early in the film, in order to establish the Guardians' new role.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 concept art

It's unclear what exactly the "multi-dimensional" part of this multi-dimensional monster means, though the simplest explanation would be that it can travel between different dimensions, or that it originated from a particularly nasty one. When the picture was first released, a fan on Gunn's Facebook page pointed out that the Abilisk bore a resemblance to the monster in his 2006 horror movie Slither - to which Gunn responded, "I just can't escape the tentacles, no matter what type of movie I'm making."

The Guardians won't spend all their time fighting weird tentacles monsters, however. Star-Lord will finally get to meet his father, Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell). It was confirmed at Comic-Con that the movie's main villain will be Elizabeth Debicki's character, Ayesha, who could prove to be a lot more difficult to defeat than a tentacled space monster.

Doctor Strange opens November 4, 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – May 5, 2017; Spider-Man: Homecoming– July 7, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok – November 3, 2017; Black Panther – February 16, 2018; Avengers: Infinity War – May 4, 2018; Ant-Man and the Wasp – July 6, 2018; Captain Marvel– March 8, 2019Avengers 4 – May 3, 2019; and as-yet untitled Marvel movies on July 12, 2019, and on May 1, July 10, and November 6 in 2020.

Source: James Gunn