When the first Guardians Of The Galaxy hit theaters, you might have thought director James Gunn would be multiplex-hopping to check how his first Marvel movie was registering with audiences. But no, Mr. Gunn was busy working on his first draft of the follow-up, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, which landed the greenlight around the same time. And it’s no wonder, as he’s recently confirmed that the sequel will boast new characters, locations and a new story NOT seen in the comics.
In a chat on the Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend podcast (thanks to /Film), Gunn actually verified that his script is original and not culled from the Guardians comic run:
It’s not really based on anything. The story for Guardians 2 is an original story that I came up with that I started working on actually while I was shooting Guardians 1, and it’ll answer some of the questions that were put forth in the first movie about Peter Quill’s father and who he is and what’s going on with that. We’ll get to know some of the characters a little bit more and then we’re going to meet a couple of new characters who will be very important to Guardians movies and probably important to the Marvel Universe as a whole.
New characters to not only the GoTG movies, but the entire MCU? That’s an exciting prospect. Luckily, that wasn’t all Gunn had to say:
It’s different than what’s in the comic books. Peter Quill’s father is somebody different in the comics. So then when the movie came out, we got green-lit on the sequel right away. I went in and I sat down with those guys and I’m like, ‘Okay, here’s what I think the sequel should be.’ And they were like, ‘Oh, whoa. That’s risky, but okay.’ Now I’m going to turn over the story in a few short weeks and we’ll find out how well it works.
Risky, eh? If there’s one thing Gunn brought to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was a careful dose of originality and vision. While any new director in the ‘universe’ has to partially align the content so it matches the other canonical movies, there’s still plenty of room to take big risks. Which Gunn did… and they paid off! Choosing to mix up the comic book continuity and his own ideas – most of which made Guardians so much darn fun – sounds like a recipe for another winning flick. Bring it on.
Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 opens on May 5th 2017.