James Gunn stood his ground to protect his highly beloved “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise, even against the studio that produced it.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gunn said he fought back against the MCU’s connected timeline after he saw Thor join the Guardians in the “Avengers: Endgame” post-credit scene.
“I said in the script notes: ‘I’m not gonna put him in. I don’t want to have Thor in the Guardians. I don’t want to do a movie with Thor,’” Gunn explained. “I don’t understand the character that much. I love watching his movies and I love Chris Hemsworth as a guy. I don’t understand how to write that character.”
Gunn also discussed teasing Will Poulter as Adam Warlock in the post-credit scene of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Although it panned out with the character’s major role in “Guardians 3,” at the time, it felt like “fitting a square peg into a round hole.”
“I did not like what I did in ‘Guardians 2’ where we set up Adam Warlock and we set up the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and we set up all this shit that I didn’t necessarily plan on,” Gunn said. “Well, I guess I kind of planned on fulfilling that promise, but you want to be careful about that. The way a post-credits scene works is a punch to the face, like, ‘Oh my God! Look at this.’ At times when you’re using it just solely to set something up, sometimes you’re screwing yourself over. It was not easy to work Adam Warlock into ‘Guardians 3.’”
Things also panned out with Thor’s arc with the Guardians. In 2023, Gunn said “Thor: Love and Thunder” director Taika Waititi took on the burden of connecting Thor with the Guardians, leaving him with complete creative flexibility for “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.”
“They chose to have that ending in editing,” Gunn told Rolling Stone at the time. “And I didn’t think it was gonna be in there. Endgame came out right after I decided to do ‘Guardians’ again. So I didn’t have much say in what was in ‘Endgame,’ and then it came out and then I was like, ‘What the fuck am I gonna do?’ That’s when [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] told me Taika’s gonna do ‘Thor,’ and we’ll have the Guardians in it. I said ‘Thank God!’… To be completely honest, Thor was never going to be in this movie. Taika took a bullet for me. Because I was not going to have him in. I was just gonna start up and there’s no Thor.”
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From Variety US