James Gunn took advice from Joss Whedon for the script of the first ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie.
The 46-year-old filmmaker wrote and directed both instalments of the Marvel Comics movie franchise, and has said that his original scripts fell flat when he gave them to fellow director Joss Whedon – who wrote and directed the ‘Avengers’ and ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ movies – because he felt there wasn’t enough of his own personality in the writing.
Speaking to MovieMaker about Joss’ script advice, James said: "When Joss Whedon read the first draft that I had written of Guardians of the Galaxy, he thought it wasn’t ‘James Gunn’ enough. I had actually been holding back. I was afraid that to make a huge commercial movie, I had to make it like other movies.
"Joss said, ‘I like the parts that are ‘James Gunn.’ Just make it more ‘James Gunn.” And that’s what I did. I was glad he gave me that vote of confidence."
Meanwhile, the director recently revealed he had "a lot more freedom" to develop the characters – which include Star-Lord, played by Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel, and Drax, played by Dave Bautista – in the recently released second instalment, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’.
He said: "At the end of the day, we’re telling a long-form story that has many different moving parts and within those stories there’s a lot of freedom to do what you want.
"And I’ve been lucky in that the most creatively fulfilling freeing experience I’ve ever had making a film has been on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ – without a doubt. Because at the end of the day any choice was mine, if there’s ever a disagreement we go in my direction.
"The entire story was written by me alone in a room back in August 2014, and it stayed that way from the very beginning."
James Gunn: Joss Whedon gave me advice on Guardians of the Galaxy
