James Gunn On Guardians Of The Galaxy - Films - ShortList Magazine
Setting the tone
“I love Blade Runner, but since then, space has either been very dark, or very green and I wanted to return the colour that used to exist in science fiction. People think it was all green screens, but we actually had some of the biggest sets ever. Our prison set was made of 350,000lb of steel.”
Live-action meeting CGI
“A couple of the actors have dated in the past, but I don’t think Chris Pratt [who plays Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill] and Bradley Cooper [who voiced Rocket Racoon] have ever met each other. My brother Sean played Rocket on set with Zoe [Saldana, who plays Gamora], Chris and Dave [Bautista who plays Drax], then Bradley came in and took what Sean began and finished it off in a recording booth.”
Peter Quill being Han Solo-meets-Indiana Jones
“As much as I like Harrison Ford, Chris Pratt is able to do more than him. Honestly. He’s a true modern American hero. He lost 80lb of fat and gained 20lb of muscle for this movie, I didn’t even want to audition him at first. But he was so good I thought, ‘If we have the first chubby superhero, then fine.’ He wouldn’t have been the first actor in Hollywood to have a CGI six-pack.”
Choreographing battles
“The fights are really important. Zoe is a ballet dancer, so that type of movement is natural for her, but Karen [Gillan, who plays Nebula] isn’t the most athletic person in the world [laughs]. It wasn’t just the fights between people – the space battles were choreographed, and were a lot more complicated.”
What makes Guardians so different
“There’s never been a movie like it. It’s fun and funny, and surprisingly dramatic – an antidote to overinflated blockbusters. And if you don’t believe a movie with a talking racoon can be dramatic, you need to see it.”
