James Gunn talks Guardians Of The Galaxy

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“I’ve done a lot of studying with real raccoons”

With the casting for Guardians Of The Galaxy beginning to come together, director James Gunn has been talking about what we can expect from the project, and how it fits in with the rest of the Marvel universe.

“In terms of a lot of stuff we’re very much like The Avengers , where it’s a very big, huge movie,” says Gunn in an interview with HeyUGuys . “It’s different because it’s cosmic, it’s in outer space, it’s very colourful.

“We have a whole history of science fiction behind us that we’re dealing with, and borrowing from, and also fighting with to create something unique. But at the same time there’s a lot of stuff it has in common with The Avengers .”

Indeed, when it came to casting, Gunn had one eye on The Avengers in terms of how he wanted to populate his movie…

“I was very specific that I wanted it to be somebody really extraordinary,” he says of Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord. “I really had Robert Downey Jr. in mind a lot. You had this guy who came in and he inhabited Tony Stark, when you first saw Tony Stark he blew your mind, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing.

“We saw a lot of good performances, but it wasn’t until Chris came in and he read and I was like, ‘oh my God’, this guy has his own, very particular, amazing take on the character that blew my mind, blew me away. Then I thought, this is the first guy I could see sharing the screen with Robert Downey Jr. and giving him a run for his money.”

And what of Rocket Raccoon? Everyone’s favourite pint-sized sidekick has yet to be cast, but Gunn has been doing his homework with regards to getting his look right.

“I’ve done a lot of studying with real raccoons, and we had real raccoons come in. We’ve done photography with them, I’ve played with racoons, and fed racoons, and dealt a lot with real raccoons to get some of the behaviour down.

“It’s really, really important to me that Rocket Raccoon, who is the heart of the movie, is not a cartoon character, it’s not Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers , it’s a real, little, somewhat mangled beast that’s alone. There’s no one else in the universe quite like him, he’s been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine.”

We can’t wait to see what they come up with. Guardians Of The Galaxy will open in the UK on 1 August 2014.

George Wales
George Wales

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.