As you might expect, the biggest movie of the year is getting a home video push that has the kind of budget that could finance a couple of independent films. Marvel‘s "Guardians Of The Galaxy" has been a runaway success, and they don’t want you to forget it’s coming to your local retailer very soon (just in time for holiday shopping). They have director James Gunn pounding the pavement, and talking to press, to keep people like us writing about the movie. Well, guess what Marvel, your plan worked. As there’s all kinds of odds and ends to mention.
With "Guardians Of The Galaxy 2" already slated for a May 5, 2017 release, of course, many of the questions Gunn has faced recently was about where the sequel might go. He’s been purposefully vague, but apparently a direction has been locked down. “The story is written and that’s it” he offered in a recent Q&A (via Slashfilm), and while he won’t reveal specifics, Gunn is determined to deliver something different.
"I think the main thing with moving on is we can’t just repeat ourselves," he said. "We can’t just say ‘Okay, well let’s start with something sad and shift into something really happy with some music and let’s have the Awesome Mix work in exactly the same way only with songs from the 80s instead of the 70s.’ All of those things, that doesn’t interest me. For me the shift is really about getting to know the characters on a deeper level, knowing them more intimately and uncovering facets of those characters that make them more real to us. At the center of what works about Guardians is that people like the characters."
The director all shot down recent chatter that he already has his mind on a third movie. "There was a big rash of ‘James Gunn Was Thinking Of Ideas For Guardians of the Galaxy 3.’ I don’t think I really said that," he stated. "What I said was ‘I had ideas for Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I knew what I was going to do for that, and I had ideas for beyond that.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean Guardians of the Galaxy 3 because there are a lot of different characters in this movie that could go in a lot of different directions. And some of the characters I’m most interested in aren’t necessarily Guardians of the Galaxy."
So, is he talking spinoffs, other characters? Your guess is as good as ours, but one thing Gunn won’t do is be painted into a corner for his future efforts to simply lead to the "The Avengers: Infinity Wars" movies. "I don’t feel beholden to that stuff at all. I think it’s really about the Guardians and what they are doing. We’re not subservient to the Avengers," he tells MTV. " ‘Guardians 2’ is not a movie that’s made to move toward ‘Infinity War.’ It’s something that’s made to move toward future cosmic movies, so I don’t feel that that is something that affects me that much." We’ll see what Kevin Feige says about that.
But will Gunn give any details, such as the characters he wants to focus on and explore? Sort of. "Yondu and Kraglin, the Ravagers. And I love Nebula. I think that she is underutilized in the film. I want to see more of her. The Collector," he told EW. "He’ll reappear. I don’t know if he’s gonna been the next one. I do think his story is really compelling, and I think he’s one of those very interesting shades of gray characters."
So muse on that for a while, and below, check out a deleted scene from ‘Guardians’ featuring Nebula, plus a plethora of Blu-ray related featurettes. You can can own it on December 9th.
