Guardians of the Galaxy is shaping up to be Marvel's strangest, riskiest superhero film yet. Should Iron Man be quaking in his boots?
In a small cabin on a Shepperton Studio lot, another world is being created. A few worlds, actually. Around me are
strange planets (one in the shape of a decapitated head), hulking spaceships, lush extra-terrestrial landscapes with azure waters and gleaming cities, and gaggles of unrecognisable races. Granted, they’re all in model or concept art form, but I’m utterly transported.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve come to the set of Marvel’s
Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest film from the studio responsible for blockbuster franchises like
Iron Man, Thor and
The Avengers, and this is the production’s ‘war room’. But, as production designer Charles Wood attests,
“this is just a tiny dot of what we do”. Wood has been working on the project for 10 months when we meet, leading a team of 400, and running absolutely everything past Marvel. “This film is very different from what they have done before. It’s a very bold venture – kind of bonkers,” he says, “so they… ‘shepherd it’ would be a good term.”
And "bonkers" is a good term for Guardians,
being as it is Marvel’s riskiest film to date. For a start, the story is centred on a group of characters that nobody has heard of. Even hard-core fan boys would cite the gang as one of Marvel’s more obscure properties. And when you do get to know them, they’re not exactly the blockbuster good guys you’re used to rooting for, but rather a ragtag bunch of ex-cons (including mastermind rodent Rocket Racoon and sentient tree Groot) who find themselves on the run together after stealing a coveted orb.
Marvel is used to taking risks on unknown characters, of course: few outside the comic book fan sphere had heard of Iron Man when the 2008 film was released. But they had heard of Robert Downey Jr.
He pulled in the crowds and the film made $585 million globally, with
Iron Man 3 going on to gross $1.2 billion five years later.
The Guardians cast, meanwhile, is a hotchpotch of Brits, character actors, and newcomers, and is headed by Chris Pratt (best known as rotund imbecile Andy Dwyer in NBC comedy
Parks and Recreation) in the unlikely role of Peter Quill, the Guardians’ obnoxious man-child of a leader. Add to all of this a director (James Gunn) who made his name leading low-budget, pitch black comedies (not a CGI battle sequence in sight) and
Marvel’s decision to plough an estimated $150 million or more into this project begins to look less "bonkers" and more "just plain suicidal".But Wood, like everyone else on set, has every confidence – particularly in Gunn. In fact, "James’s vision" is something I’ll hear extolled time and again during my visit.
For Wood, following this vision has meant bringing colour, humour and “groundedness” to the sets. He abandoned the “mid-grey, moody, greasy sort of look” of today’s science-fiction films in favour of the punchy colour schemes of Sixties and Seventies sci-fi illustrations, and photographed landscapes like Singapore and the Great Barrier Reef to give realistic foundations to the film’s new worlds.
As for the humour, look no further than the Milano – Quill’s muscle car of a spaceship, filled with Seventies memorabilia from when its owner left Earth as a boy. (When I climb into the ship later on, I find Rubik’s cubes, retro stickers and flight controls that look as if they belong in an arcade.) “It’s a little tongue-in-cheek note back to the Seventies with its joystick, bad bronze, and bad leatherette,” says Wood.
Later, in a huge hangar lined with towering shelves of cauldrons, television sets, skulls and more, property master Barry Gibbs allows himself a small grumble about the film’s vintage feel – specifically Quill’s prized possession: a Walkman, complete with a mixtape of songs that connect him with home. “We’ve been searching for about five months for late-Seventies, early-Eighties Sony Walkmans,” he sighs, but looking at the props on show, I’m pretty sure that Walkmans are the least of his worries.
There are acid-etched swords, a rifle for Rocket, intricate lock picks, the sacred orb itself, and an enormous weapon called a Hadron Enforcer, which creates nuclear explosions within confined spaces. Gibbs’s team of 132 must create multiple versions of most pieces so, to save time, some are made externally using 3D printing technology. “It is certainly the way we’ll be going forward,” says Gibbs but he’s not yet completely sold. “[The CAD draftsmen] can make things look useful but they don’t always work. This morning a gun failed on set so now we have to work out how it’s put together.”
Watching filming, I get the impression there’s little time for failures, especially when I meet director Gunn. A slight man, with a shock of spiky, gelled hair and a warm smile, he keeps one eye on the playback monitors while we speak and excuses himself three times during our conversation to pop back onto the set –
a huge stone and steel structure that looks like the inside of an Aztec cave, but which is actually the interior of The Dark Astor, chief baddie Ronan’s spaceship.Gunn isn’t the least bit overawed by the scale of the production. “It’s actually much easier than the other movies I’ve made because the people around me are so competent. And I am very controlling,” he laughs.
“I have very specific ideas about everything in the movie. I draw every single shot myself. I’m crazy about screen direction, about prosthetics, about everything. You can ask these guys – I’m a f------ maniac. But I’ve had more time to do this movie than any other movie so I feel really comfortable.”
Originally, Gunn was only in the running to direct the film,
which he describes as a “space epic” as opposed to a science-fiction film. But after his first meeting with Marvel he wrote a 20-page document detailing his vision, and was signed up to write the screenplay, too. Far from being worried about Gunn’s trademark twisted humour (his best known film
Super follows a cook turned vigilante superhero who becomes increasingly violent), Marvel encouraged him to let loose.
“When I turned in my first draft, they were really happy but wanted it to be more ‘James Gunn’. So I said ‘it’s your funeral’ and did it.” Which explains the climax of the film’s first trailer, where Peter Serafinowicz’s peace-keeper character takes one look at the posturing Guardians, rolls his eyes and utters a withering: “what a bunch of A-holes”.
Gunn has a more affectionate take on his rabble of miscreants.
“I think of the Avengers as The Beatles and the Guardians as the Rolling Stones,” he grins. “They’ve all been hurt pretty badly. And at the end of the movie some of them are heroes and some of them really aren’t, but it’s about a bunch of people that don’t have a family, who learn to love each other.”
The film’s soundtrack, which centres on Quill’s mixtape, is equally unexpected – a jangle of Seventies rock tunes to match the film’s pulpy aesthetic. (Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ features heavily in the film’s trailer). Again Gunn had full control. “I went through and picked all of the songs. I like to have the music ahead of time because I storyboard and stage all of the sequences to it,” he says breezily.
As for the rest of the cast, it’s hard to stop Gunn from gushing, particularly about
Doctor Who’s Karen Gillan, who plays Ronan’s sidekick Nebula and who gave the “very best reading at audition of anybody throughout this entire process.” But he will admit that he wasn’t expecting his leading man to be Chris Pratt.
“I didn’t want to see Chris because I didn’t think he was right for the role – I knew him as the chunky guy on Parks and Rec. But he came in and 20 seconds into it I knew he was the guy. I was looking for somebody who could inhabit the character and add something to what was already there, like Robert Downey Jr. did in Iron Man.”Ever since villain Thanos, who appeared in the end credits of The Avengers, was confirmed to appear in Guardians, rumours of a crossover film have been flying. And Gunn’s closing comment does little to dispel this.
“Everyone else I thought would get run over by Robert Downey Jr. if they were ever in a movie together. I think that Chris could completely hold his own with him. And then kick his ass.”
In a room above the set, Pratt explains his own reluctant journey to the part of Quill.
“I was like ‘I don’t want to go and audition for them – they’re gonna tell me I’m too fat. Maybe there’s like a fat buddy that I could play’,” he says with a wry smile.Today, dressed in a burgundy flight suit, and grey ‘thruster’ boots, Pratt looks every inch the muscled leading man.
“I lost 10 inches on my waist and 65 pounds or something,” he says. “I worked at it like it was my job, every day, probably four hours a day at least. And that’s not counting the hours I spent not drinking versus all the hours I used to be drinking.”
Being in Pratt’s wisecracking presence it’s easy to see why Gunn cast him as the charming but childish Quill. And the actor is suitably laid back about the risk Marvel is taking on him.
“There have been so many [comic book] incarnations of Quill that you’re going to be hard-pressed to find somebody who’s like ‘you didn’t nail him exactly the way it was supposed to be’. It’s harder to make a movie like Star Wars because people are like, ‘dude this is Star Wars! It’s like making the Bible!’”
And if all else fails, at least he got his own spaceship. “Oh my god - yesterday I was getting tossed around in there,” he babbles excitedly as he gets up to leave, “and I was like, ‘this is like a Universal Studios ride but instead of waiting in line I get to wait in a luxury trailer. This is awesome!”
Guardians of the Galaxy is released on July 31.
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