On May 5, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is bringing a beloved Marvel Studios chapter to an end. Rounding out their trilogy, this group of cosmic crusaders will take their final flight together, and it’s no secret this movie will be an emotional one. In an exclusive interview, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with the man behind it all, the co-writer and director for every GOTG installment, James Gunn, about what we can expect from our screening and beyond.

Part of this interview was previously published with the first-look clip of Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) backstory, where Gunn walked us through how he brought these Counter-Earth critters to life, from conception to screen. Here, Gunn digs into what inspired his interest in Rocket Raccoon, which ultimately led to the first Guardians movie in 2014, and pinpoints the differences between the comic book origins to what we’ll see in theaters. About Vol. 3, Gunn goes on to say, “I thought the second movie was pretty emotional, but it didn’t have the effect that this one has had on audiences,” adding, “…even though there’s a lot of comedy in it like the other two movies, it doesn’t play as a comedy.”
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Because this will be the last adventure with the Guardians together, Weintraub inquired about the possibility of fans getting a box set in the future, if Vol. 3 had a lot of deleted scenes, and why he always gives himself extra time to shoot the third act. Check out the full interview below for all of Gunn’s answers and more on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

COLLIDER: I would imagine that the performances you’re able to bring out in Guardians 3 are a direct result of all the R&D from the first two films.

GUNN: Totally, yeah. And the [The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special] and [Avengers: Endgame], and everything. The other thing to note is, the score in the [Counter-Earth] scene is really amazing, by John Murphy. It’s a really beautiful, beautiful score. And for me, that’s where things kind of came together was, when John did that.

Exploring Rocket’s Backstory

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COLLIDER: Talk a little bit about when you told Marvel and Disney that you wanted to explore the backstory more of Rocket and his friends, and where he came from. Was there any sort of resistance to depicting any of this, or was it like, “This is the story, we’re gonna do it.”?

GUNN: I really don’t ever remember any resistance. I think that people were really good with it. I mean, there was a time when I talked to those guys about just doing the Rocket story, like the third movie would actually just be Rocket. Then we decided to do it as a Guardians movie with the Rocket story inside of that. But I don’t remember any resistance.

I did draw all of the animals, I know that. I actually drew each one of those animals and put them in the script. So the drawings of all those creatures are in the script, Lylla and Floor and Teefs, because I had a very specific way that I saw them looking. But no, Marvel was pretty great, they just kind of let me do my thing. I think they were happy with the first two movies, so they just kind of let me do my thing with this and never were intrusive.

Is Rocket’s backstory a throughline through the entire film where you’re constantly going back?

GUNN: Yep, yeah, it’s like [The Godfather Part II], right? We go back repeatedly, so the story is being told in two different ways at one time where we go back and forth from the present day to the past. Through a lot of the movie, it’s really… Rocket’s about to die. So it’s about the Guardians trying to save Rocket’s life, and as they’re trying to save Rocket’s life, he keeps getting closer and closer to death, and as he’s getting closer and closer to death, we go into him and we experience what his memories are.

Rocket’s backstory has been explored in the comics. For the characters, how much are you pulling from the comics, and how much are you making it your own thing?

GUNN: There’s some that’s taken from the comics, but there was always this concept of Halfworld, and of course, Lylla is his girlfriend in the comics, but it’s a little bit different than that. I didn’t see it exactly like that. It was very important for me to tell this story because this was the thing that got me to write the first movie, and so people out here have asked, “So when did you come up with this backstory? Where was it?” And I said, “I actually came up with the backstory before I wrote the story for Guardians 1.” So Rocket’s past, his history, was a part of who I thought Rocket was from the very beginning.

I’ve told the story many times, but Marvel first came to me, and they said, “Are you interested in this?” And I was like, “I don’t know, it seems like Bugs Bunny with the Avengers. I don’t know, it seems like it could be goofy.” And on the way driving home in this terrible traffic from Manhattan Beach to Studio City at the time, I was sitting there and I say, “Okay, there’s a talking raccoon. If that raccoon existed, how could it really exist? Like where would it have come from?” And I just kind of had this vision of this really horrible past for this little animal that was taken as an animal, a little innocent creature, and turned into something he wasn’t supposed to be, torn apart and put back together again, and that his life was incredibly painful, and he was incredibly alone because there’s nothing else like him. And so that idea of Rocket was there from the beginning. I think for me, the only question at the beginning was, was it the High Evolutionary, or a nihilist who created him? So, yeah, that’s always been there.

Will There Be a Guardians of the Galaxy Box Set?

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Have you already spoken to Marvel/Disney about doing some sort of really cool Guardians box set eventually on Blu-ray where you can include extras that have never been released for the fans?

GUNN: I mean, yeah, that would be cool. We haven’t ever talked about that. The only thing we talked about, of course, is the screenings that are happening around the country with all three movies that are playing the day [Guardians 3] comes out, or leading into the night the movie comes out, which I think is great and cool.

Are There Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Deleted Scenes?

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Do you have a lot of deleted scenes from the first two films, the third film, on a box set? Are there a lot of extras that maybe people haven’t seen?

GUNN: No. The thing for me is, I work hard to not have deleted scenes. This movie probably has the fewest deleted scenes because it was pretty tight. I worked on this screenplay, for a lot of reasons, way longer than I worked on the other screenplays. The screenplay took me way longer to write than both the first two movies, so, it was pretty worked out by the time we got to soundstage.

You know, we were going through the deleted scenes the other day because we start to put those together for when the movie is eventually released on home video and all that, and there’s not really that many deleted scenes. There’s two? There’s lots of fat, like a lot of it was just cutting fat and making it move faster and more succinctly, but it’s more about speeding it up. So there’s extended scenes more than deleted scenes.

What was it like actually showing the film in its as-close-to-completed form for the first time to friends and family or early screenings, and what did you learn from those early screenings that maybe impacted the final film?

GUNN: Well, I think I learned a lot. I do it a lot. I show a lot of what you think of as test screenings, but most of my test screenings really start very early. Even before I ever show it to Marvel, I have a group of tight friends and filmmakers who I show the movie to after I’ve cut for seven weeks, eight weeks. And so they see the movie and that’s my first round of notes. My brother Brian is always a part of that group, Dave Yarovesky is always a part of that group, Kumail Nanjiani is always a part of that group. So I show those guys the movie, they give me notes, and so I do that a lot, these little mini screenings that help me to sculpt it. So by the time I get to the actual, quote-unquote, test screenings, I usually feel pretty confident that the movie’s at least okay. And then I do the test screenings, and then you always learn a few new things because you have a bigger audience.

I think that for this one, the first thing I learned was that the movie worked really well from the very beginning, that everybody felt really good about it, and that’s through all the test screenings as well. It was a very, very fluid process, but it’s more emotional than the other movies. Listen, I thought the second movie was pretty emotional, but it didn’t have the effect that this one has had on audiences. At least with our test screenings, it’s a much more emotional film. And even though there’s a lot of comedy in it like the other two movies, it doesn’t play as a comedy like the other two movies did primarily. So that’s a pretty big difference. And it’s just being careful with how much you show, what’s too much for audiences. You don’t want to traumatize children. So it’s about all of that, but also, another very interesting thing to see is just how things got more and more and more intense as visual effects come in, and the movie always gets better. So the movie always tests better and better and better as the visual effects come in. But in this case, it was how much less of a comedy, how much more emotional it became as the visual effects came in.

There Are Over 3,000 VFX in GOTG 3

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The VFX industry is obviously really struggling because there’s so much demand in the pipeline and only so many talented artists. Can you talk about any VFX struggles you had to bring everything to life?

GUNN: It’s gonna be a boring answer because they were great. They were just great. You know, it’s Wētā FX, and we used a lot of different houses. We used Wētā, we used [Sony Picture Imageworks], we used Framestore, we used [Industrial Light and Magic]. But the bulk was Wētā and Framestore, who I’ve worked with now on many movies, and so I know all those guys very well.

I’m really pretty specific from the beginning about what I want, and my movie doesn’t change a lot like other movies do. We don’t have this thing where we’re constantly shifting everything around like happens in a lot of big movies because test screenings aren’t going well. Test screenings went great, everybody liked the movie. It’s just about, you gotta tighten things up, gotta move this fast, this sequence doesn’t work as well as you want it to so you gotta fix it up a little bit, but the guys were great.

It was a struggle to get them to do the amount of visual effects we had because I think we have, honest to God, I think we have over 3,000 VFX in the movie. So, it’s visual effect shots, because I also shoot a lot of camera movement, and quick. So it’s a lot of shots. But you know, they did really well from the beginning in getting us what we needed, and they worked hard. But again, I have a really good relationship with these guys because I worked with them for a long time, and I think that if you talk to them, too, you see that we’ve always worked really well together.

It’s also about knowing what you’re gonna do and not just changing things up all the time. I mean, some things you’ve got to change because you make mistakes, but if you’re planned out well enough then you don’t do that so much that the film can’t maintain it. And I think sometimes what you see in films is, you’ll see sections where the visual effects look great and then you get to a section that’s like, “What is going on?” And a lot of times you find out that’s because they didn’t put that section in until a month before they had to lock the film. I really do everything I can not to do that. I don’t go to set without a finished– I want the script to be finished at least six months before I shoot, always. Because I don’t understand rewriting while you’re shooting and all that because it just messes up the movie. If you’re spending this much money on a movie, then you’ve got to treat it with respect, and you’ve gotta have things prepped as well as you possibly can. And it doesn’t mean you don’t ever change, but that you gotta be pretty well-prepared.

Image via Marvel Studios

I could tell you story after story on film sets I’ve been on where they clearly had no third act.

GUNN: Always. But another thing on my movie is, the way I budget my time on the schedule of the films, my main rule is that you take the same amount of days to shoot act three as you do act one and two combined. Because that’s why so many spectacle films suck anyway. You get a great first act and then the second act is maybe okay, and then the third act, nothing comes together, everything’s different, and it doesn’t increase in pace or anything because you’re shooting it for the same amount of time you’re shooting act one and two. And so I always give us more time to shoot that so that the movie gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And no movie does it like this movie that starts so intimate, so small, just about these characters, and then just keeps getting bigger as we go on. But beginning in the way that it doesn’t– This movie isn’t about saving the universe. This is about the characters dying, it’s about the Guardians.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 premieres in theaters May 5.