WAMG At The GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Press Conference (Video)

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is tearing up the box office right now! After a record breaking weekend of $94 million dollars, and $160 million dollars world wide, it’s pretty safe to say that the Galaxy has embraced it’s new band of misfit guardians! Recently, WAMG attended the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY press day where director James Gunn and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Michael Rooker, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista and Benecio Del Toro talked about their experiences working together. Check it out below.

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team—the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, 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 Quill 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.

While at the conference Director James Gunn talked about how liberating it was to create a new story for the Marvel Universe :

“It was, frankly, liberating. It was, you know, for me I think I would have had a harder time trying to fit into the regular, you know, Marvel scheme of things and this gave me a chance to take what I loved about Marvel movies and Marvel comics and create a whole new universe which is really, you know, what has been the most exciting thing for, you know, in my entire professional career. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the different planets in the solar system and I — we used to create for every single planet a different alien race with a certain kinda pet and a certain kinda house and a certain kind of, you know, water system and everything.  And I would draw these pictures and I had hundreds of these pictures and had them in a box and really to me this was like going back to that childhood box and creating this, you know, fun universe.”

He also let us in on he relationship between Chris Pratt and Michael Rooker:

“Rooker and Chris like kinda hit it off immediately and the three of us would hang out a lot at my house in London. And they came and they sat down and this was when they first met each other and they started talking about all these things that they have in common. They’re both a couple of hicks and, you know, loved to shoot and stuff like that. And so they’re sitting there talking and they’re really getting along and Chris is like, you know, this wide eyed kid and he’s like, “You know, we oughtta go and hang out and, you know, like get to know each other like in a father son way so that we, you know, can bring that in the movie. We oughtta go and hang out like that” and Rooker goes, “No.” [LAUGHTER]”

Chris Pratt seemed to have an easy time taking on the role of Star-Lord, but expains that it’s not always easy to perform in front of an audience:

“You know, in terms of the attitude, that was something that like, you know, in kind of the whole process for me on this one was just trusting James really. And taking big swings and sometimes falling flat on my face and just like the big challenge for me was just trying to ignore the embarrassment of being an actor. It’s a pretty embarrassing thing to do and you got people pointing cameras at you and hundreds of people watching you as you’re trying to be great and often — almost every time you’re not. And then there’s one moment where you are and the editor will dig through all the shit to find it and then put it in the movie, you know. So the challenge is not like finding the attitude, it’s really just like being open and willing to go for it and try different things and having a director that you can trust. And so the attitude is not something that I intended or created. It’s something James intended and created by getting me to try different things and so that’s really what that was about.”

Although Gunn was not sold on Pratt as Star-Lord, he quickly warmed up after seeing him audition:

“We had screen tests of at least 20 people, actually screen tested at least 20 people of all, you know, big stars, you know, no names, looking for the right person because I really wanted somebody who could embody this character and take it beyond what was on the page in the same way Robert Downey, Jr. did for IRON MAN, essentially. And nobody blew me away. Plenty of people were really good; maybe the people were great, but nobody blew me away. And this — Sarah Finn, our casting director really deserves the credit for Chris in a lot of ways because she kept putting his picture in front of me and saying, you know, “what about this guy? Why don’t you meet with him?” And I was like, “the chubby guy from ‘Parks & Rec?” [LAUGHTER] “You’re stupid, you know.” And she kept doing it and kept doing it and finally she like really — I don’t remember ever agreeing to see Chris.  I just remember her saying okay and after this guy, you know, Chris Pratt’s here and I was like I thought I — and I was a little mad. I was like ‘I thought I didn’t wanna see him.’ But, you know, and then Chris came in and, you know, he started to read and this is a hundred percent true that within 20 seconds I was like, ‘holy shit, that’s the guy. That’s who we’ve been looking for.’ He had this thing that was himself and sometimes a role and a person are meant for each other and that’s what I felt this was. And I turned around to Sarah Finn was sitting behind me and I’m like ‘he’s the guy.’ And I’m like, “chubby or not, if he’s chubby, the world’s gonna have to be ready for the first chubby super hero” [LAUGHTER] “because he’s still gonna be better than all the other people we had.”

In fact, Pratt himself didn’t necessarily see himself as Star-Lord right off the bat:

“People probably didn’t see me. I’m not sure I even saw myself in this kind of a role. I’m never — but what’s really kind of nice about this movie and I believe this is that we did something with this movie that’s never been done before. I think this is like unlike anything that’s ever been done and I think anyone who has seen this movie would agree. I’ve never seen anything like this movie before. And I so I don’t think I was — I don’t think I was right to do anything that’s, you know, similar to what’s been done before. Like, you know, I wouldn’t have been right to do those — to do other movies. So maybe people wouldn’t have seen me in this role, but that’s because they weren’t able to have the vision that kinda James had for what this could be, you know. And so he just told me in the audition, he was like I’m just looking for someone to come in and just own this and just do what they — do their thing. And at the time, I’d been sort of having an identity crisis as an actor. I didn’t know what I was; if I was a action guy, you know, or a comedy guy. And I thought maybe I could do a combination of both, but there’s nothing out there that’s like it.  Maybe I have to develop something and my manager just kept saying GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, man. I said all right, maybe you’re right, let’s go meet on it, you know. And then James said I just want somebody to do their thing and part of me thought okay, well then I’ll just do my thing and if it’s not right, that’s okay, but now I had an idea what thing was and it was the thing that I got to do in this movie.”

To take on the role of Gamora, Zoe Saldana didn’t train as hard as she has done with her past action flicks:

“Actually, I stepped down from the training. I’ve done so many action movies and I was sort of like looking at last summer thinking oh my God, I’m in love and I just wanna chill and go to Italy and eat pasta. And then all of a sudden, James calls and he’s like, “Hey, you wanna be in GUARDIANS and be green, work six day weeks, for five hour sessions of makeup and yeah, be an alien again.” And I’m like ohhh. So then I did it, but the training process, after I kind of figured out where she was going to be spiritually, there’s muscle memory in all of the things that I’ve done in the past seven or eight years. So I was able to kind of relax with my body and, you know, work the stunt coordinators but not excessively like I’ve done on other films.”

As for Vin Diesel, he and his family have found joy in his portrayal of Groot:

“I took my kids to a screening to see this movie and they walk around the house reciting Star-Lord,  Gamora, and all the characters and something very beautiful happened in playing this role. Something that as an actor I never would have imagined. And that is when my kids see trees, they refer to the trees as my brothers and sisters. [LAUGHTER] And so, they’ll say, “Look daddy, it’s your brothers and sisters.” And the idea to be associated with trees like that is remarkable. It’s so much more gratifying than you would ever imagine. It was — I was really lucky. I was really lucky that that specific role came up.  I was really, really, really lucky that when I went to breathe life into the role, I had a director that was willing to indulge in the way that he did. I felt like I was the last person in, so I got to see all of the performances and I was so blown away by the performances.  It felt almost too good to be true.”

To find out what else James Gunn and the cast of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY had to say check out the video at the top of the page. If you haven’t seen GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, don’t miss out. Go see it now!

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