GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL .2
The award for this issue’s toughest interview: Baby Groot. That little guy knows how to keep a secret.
' It's unlike the first movie in so many ways. It's wild, its daring ' JAMES GUNN
Alot of people in the press would say, ‘How does it feel to be in the first Marvel movie that’s not going to work?’” reflects Chris Pratt, casting his mind back to before 2014’s Guardians Of The
Galaxy had been released; before he was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet; before the Guardians were a brand name to rival the Avengers. “I used to get that question. ‘You’re not Thor. You’re not Iron Man. You’re not the Hulk. No one knows the Guardians of the Galaxy, and now you’ve made this big movie that cost all this money. You must be a little scared, right?’ I was like, ‘Fuck – now I am!’”
Those fears proved to be unfounded. Before release, the cosmic superteam looked like the unlikeliest comic-book heroes since Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron
Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2008. The fact that they had a gun-toting Raccoon and vocabulary-challenged tree in their line-up didn’t help their case. But GOTG was one of the biggest hits of the year, with audiences and critics ($773m at the box office and 91 per cent on Rotten
Tomatoes), as fans from all quarters of the audience lapped up its retro stylings and dysfunctional dynamic, with the ragtag characters proving as eclectic as the platinum-selling soundtrack.
“It came out,” continues Pratt, “and we surpassed everyone’s expectations because it was a great movie – commercially, critically very well received – but also those expectations were very low, so it was easy to surpass them. Now the expectations are very high, so there’s more pressure than before. But I still think we’re going to surpass expectations, so in that regard it’s going to be similar to the first movie – but in so many other regards, monumentally different.”
Yep, the tables have turned, and Pratt’s roguish spacefarer Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill now has the “legendary” status that eluded him during his outlaw years. Along with his reluctant surrogate family – emeraldskinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), grieving warrior Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and, of course, tree-thing Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) – Quill’s now on the right side of the law for a change, after saving the galaxy from blue menace Ronan the Accuser. The Guardians are in hot demand, and can now charge exorbitant fees for their services. Talk about life imitating art. Increased expectations come with increased pressure though, as Saldana was all too aware of: “You’re panicking, going, ‘What did we do last time that worked so well? Should we do it again?’ You start overthinking everything,” she laughs, before admitting the pressure dissipated once they got back in the groove.
Michael Rooker – who plays Ravager (and Peter’s surrogate father/kidnapper) Yondu – approaches the sequel with a sporting analogy, explaining that you want to run and jump further on your second attempt. “We did the first one; it was a great Olympic gold medal,” he croaks in his trademark gravelly voice.
“Now we’re making an Olympic platinum medal: we’re going to jump even further and higher.” For writer/ director James Gunn, the promise of a hungry audience outweighed the pressure. “Going into this knowing that people love these characters [ and] are waiting to see more from these characters, that gave us a great amount of freedom,” he tells TF. It certainly makes a change from the anxieties of making the first film, when Gunn (then best known for edgy indies Slither and
Super) didn’t know if GOTG would be too esoteric for general audiences. So, when you know there’s an audience out there clamouring for more, what do you give them? Erm, something completely different, apparently. With
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 picking up immediately after the first film, Gunn and Pratt were adamant about avoiding a step-by-step retread of the original. It stands to reason: if the first film’s success was down to its mould-breaking originality, a copycat sequel would never cut it. Pratt compares Vol. 2 to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club
Band reinvention. “They took a giant risk by releasing an album that was monumentally different from a thing that had made them so relevant,” he muses. “It was so evolved for them, and I think that’s the same with [Vol. 2]. This story is completely heightened. It’s unlike the first movie in so many ways. It’s wild, it’s daring and it’s moving away from what made the first one a wild success, and trying something that we are taking a swing and a risk and a shot at: the possibility of being better than the first movie.”
For Gunn, Vol. 2 is a continuation of the first film rather than a replication, and in a comparison that’s likely to have geeks swooning, he thought about the world-building follow-up in terms of
Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin’s books, assembling a universe and dipping into it, rather than trying to cram every element of the world into one sequel. “What matters is telling a great story about a single piece of that pie,” he asserts. Gunn also spent time thinking about “sequels that don’t just ape the successes of the predecessor” during his eight-month writing process. “I think there’s a real tendency to go, ‘People loved when the gang met. So what’s our moment like that. People loved when Quill did a dance-off. What’s our dance-off in this movie?’ And trying
to fill in those slots.” Instead, Gunn threw out the structure of the first film in favour of a direct continuation – using the original as a jumping-off point more than any comic-book material. One way in which the sequel is set to be definitively bigger is in the Guardians line-up itself. The original five – StarLord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Baby Groot (more on that little tree cutting later) – are present and correct. But their ranks are swelling. Quill is still hoping to share a piña colada and a walk in the rain with Gamora. “Gamora has rubbed off on Peter,” confirms Saldana. “Because Peter has a good heart and everything, but is so selfish. So, ‘Me, me, me, me, me.’”
Drax, meanwhile, remains as a deadpan and irony-free as ever. Former pro-wrestler Dave Bautista was wracked with nerves when it came to shooting
Vol. 1, his first big acting project, “But stepping back into the role, it just felt like… I don’t know, it was just so easy to step back into it.” Rocket remains as mercenary and trigger-happy as ever, even if he’s no longer the smallest member of the Guardians. With much of the first film’s casting occurring at the 11th hour, Vol. 2 meant Gunn could tailor the writing to the actors. “Drax isn’t tailored for me,” counters Bautista. “Drax is tailored for James. He writes for Drax to amuse himself… I’ll deliver the line, usually in typical Drax deadpan, and I can just hear him laughing.”
But what about the newcomers? The first additional Guardian this time around is Karen Gillan’s Nebula. The bald, blue badass fought on the side of Ronan in the first film, escaping in the final moments. “I don’t remember anyone definitely telling me I’d be back, but I sort of knew I’d be back… I have no idea why I was so presumptuous!” considers former Doctor Who assistant Gillan, who only had to shave the underside of her hair this time, rather than her full bonce. “[ Nebula]’ s kind of having to enter the team of the Guardians, but she’s very reluctant about it,” she adds. “She has some unfinished business with [ adoptive sister] Gamora, that she really, really needs and wants to sort out. There’s a lot of interaction with the sisters, but she definitely interacts with the other characters as well, which is kind of funny, to see her in that mix.”
Also joining the Guardians is Pom Klementieff’s Mantis. Sporting empathic, mind-reading abilities (and a connection to Peter’s missing father), Mantis’ fully black eyes and a pair of forehead antennae add to her insectoid appearance. Klementieff fizzes with excitement when she recounts joining the team after being a massive fan of the first film (who wasn’t, right?). “I mean, it’s a little bit weird when you first arrive on a movie set with the people you meet, and you’re the new one,” she beams. “But they made me feel at ease and welcome and wonderful. But first it was like, ‘Hello, I’m the new one!’”
And filling the villainous spot left empty by Ronan is Ayesha, the
shimmering gold leader of the Sovereign people, played by Aussie actress Elizabeth Debicki (most recently seen in The Night Manager). Without being able to spill much in the way of details (“I know, I’m so infuriating!”), Debicki does confirm that Ayesha “does have a villain presence in the film”, as witnessed in the trailers. “She certainly turns into a force, in a way, against the Guardians,” she adds. “She’s the High Priestess of the Sovereign people, and the Sovereign people are all obsessed with the purity of their race, and the genetic modification to create this perfect race. The High Priestess is the most exacting and demanding of them.”
Perhaps the most significant new addition might prove to be a character notable by their absence in the first film: Peter’s father. Gunn and co revealed at Comic-Con 2016 that Kurt Russell would be playing Star-Lord Sr., aka Ego the Living Planet. The obscure Marvel character has been appropriated for this role in the film; in some comics strands, Peter’s father is J’son, a royal from the Spartax planetary system. It was actually Pratt who suggested Russell for the gig. Gunn describes Russell as “underrated”, and admits he caught his eye recently in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. “I think also, for Chris Pratt’s father, we needed someone who was equally, wonderfully, mischievously charming – and that’s what Kurt is. They have a very similar vibe to them… I think a lot of us would like to have Kurt Russell be our dad. I certainly would.”
“Kurt’s amazing,” adds Pratt. “He truly outworked us, and I consider myself a really hard worker. I try to do as many stunts as I can. He’s up there on the wires longer than me.” As for Russell himself, he admits to being “a little behind the eight-ball because I hadn’t seen the first movie” when first presented with the script. Once he caught up with the original, it became immediately apparent as to why he was on their wishlist. “I recognised right away, because of the tone of that movie and especially Chris’ character, why I would be someone that would bring – theoretically, anyway – the right baggage to play his father, and to play
' Nebula enters the team, but she's reluctant. She has unfinished business '