Artists of all sorts are intimately familiar with the million and one bell curves that make up the creative process; create something, love it, blink your eyes a couple of times, hate it, change one or two things about it, still hate it, put one thing back the way it was, love it again… well, you get the idea.
All of this to say it’s as humbling a process as it is a gratifying one, and not even the one and only James Gunn is free from such fickle clutches; it may be hard to imagine, given the heights he’s reached and the hearts he’s won with his many films (including his beloved Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, which is due to be capped off with Vol. 3 this weekend), but Gunn himself admitted to it earlier today.
During a Twitter AMA with fellow Guardians veteran Karen Gillan, Gunn was asked what the hardest scene to film in the entire trilogy was, and the filmmaker pointed to the expositional balcony scene with Star-Lord and Gamora in the first Guardians film as his answer, but not for the reason you might think.
Apparently, Gunn hated what he had originally written for that scene so much, that it led to him physically ripping the corresponding page out of the script, re-writing the scene in 20 minutes, and shooting that instead. Indeed, we have no trouble believing that the hardest scenes to shoot are the ones that were created moments before actually filming them.
The new DC gaffer would later go on to name a second answer in the form of the “hallway fight” scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, noting the sheer amount of planning and work that went into bringing it to life, so it sounds like we have some especially dazzling action to look forward to this weekend; whether we’ll be able to see it through all of our tears, however, is another question entirely.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will release to cinemas on May 5.