In a recent interview, James Gunn continued to praise the talented Chris Pratt, who will play Peter Quill/Star Lord in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy this August. He compares the actor to Star Wars' Harrison Ford, who played a sort of similar character to the one Pratt will play. "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 goes on to talk about the amount of weight that Pratt needed to drop to play a fit character, but says that it didn't bother him that he was chubbier than the other actors who auditioned. "He lost 80lb of fat and gained 20lb of muscle for this movie," said Gunn. "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." Gunn also discussed what he thinks makes the movie different than the other major blockbuster movies this Summer. "There’s never been a movie like it. It’s fun and funny, and surprisingly dramatic – an antidote to over-inflated blockbusters. And if you don’t believe a movie with a talking raccoon can be dramatic, you need to see it." Do you think Chris Pratt is a good choice for the lead character? Sound off below, and catch Guardians of the Galaxy in theaters August 1.
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.
Directed by James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy will star Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon, and Vin Diesel as Groot, with Michael Rooker as Yondu, Benicio del Toro as The Collector, Karen Gillan as Nebula, and Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser. The movie will hit US theaters on August 1, 2014.