There are a number of set visit reports about to float in for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, but Digital Spy has revealed their chat with writer/director James Gunn. Though the interview was conducted some months ago, even before Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper were cast as Groot and Rocket Raccoon respectively, Gunn does offer more insight to the Marvel space epic's main villain, Ronan the Accuser, and much more. First, he was asked what made Chris Pratt the right actor for Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord. In his response, Gunn indicates (again) that we'll eventually see the Guardians cross paths with The Avengers; namely Tony Stark aka Iron Man. "I was really looking for somebody who was like Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man, somebody who could come along and inhabit this character and add something to what was already there," he admitted. "I didn't want to see Chris because I didn't think he was right for the role – I knew him a little bit from Moneyball and I knew him as the chunky guy in Parks and Rec. it seemed ridiculous to see Chris Pratt. But finally I agreed to see him and he came in, and he was at probably his chunkiest because he had just gained a lot of weight for this Vince Vaughn movie, but he read and about 20 seconds into it I knew he was the guy." He continued, "When you're a writer, you always look for someone who can take what you do and make it better than you imagine. Most people are always doing sort of more vanilla versions of what you wrote. Everybody else [who auditioned] I thought would kind of get run over by Robert Downey Jr if they were ever in a movie together, and I think that Chris could completely hold his own and kick his ass. He is charming, but at the same time he is a guy who bumbles a lot and somehow through that bumbling ends up in a graceful position, and he constantly does that throughout the movie."
When asked how the dynamic between three villains--Ronan, Nebula, and Korath--works out, James Gunn expained: "The primary antagonist is Ronan, so everybody else he works for or works for him. He is the primary villain, and he is a really twisted guy, he has a really religious bent in this film. He has a very sick and twisted view of what morality is; strength is virtue and weakness is sin and that is what he lives by, and I think he is very scary because of his beliefs, which are real to him." Asked how much backstory will we see for the main Guardians of the Galaxy characters, the director replied: "You know a bit about where Drax came from, you see where Gamora came from to some degree and you hear about Rocket, but the only one you really see the origin for is Quill." What about Marvel easter eggs? "It depends on how you define easter egg, but the amount of characters from the Marvel universe that we have in this movie, down to very, very minor characters, is enormous," continued James Gunn. "We have way more characters in this movie than any other Marvel movie, and way more Marvel characters, so it is a lot of stuff. For me being an actual Marvel geek, it has been great."
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits–Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand - with the galaxy’s fate in the balance. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is presented by Marvel Studios and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gilian, Djimon Hounsou with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Commander Rael and Benicio del Toro as The Collector. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the film opens August 1, 2014.