James Gunn on Ending Guardians of the Galaxy

When a film is billed as the last installment of a trilogy, fans can’t help but speculate: Who’s going to die? A blockbuster franchise rarely wraps without a few significant casualties, each noble sacrifice underscoring the definitive end to come.

But with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the writer-director James Gunn wanted to finish the trilogy on his own terms, even if that meant circumventing fan expectations. (Major spoilers follow.)

The most surprising thing about the conclusion of this long-running Marvel series is that all of the main characters survive and even thrive. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) returns to Earth, the home planet he had avoided since childhood, and passes leadership of the Guardians to Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who forms a new team featuring Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and their reformed antagonist Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Drax (Dave Bautista) stay behind to help the citizen settlers who’ve moved into the bustling space-base Knowhere, while Mantis (Pom Klementieff) departs on a solo journey to better understand herself.

And Gamora (Zoe Saldaña)? Well, her path through the Marvel universe has been complicated: The Gamora we originally knew was murdered by her father, Thanos, back in “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018), then supplanted by a time-traveling variant who had no history with the Guardians. That new version gets roped into assisting the Guardians in “Vol. 3,” and though she comes to understand what the other Gamora might have felt for a still lovestruck Quill, she can’t get there herself and bids the group a bittersweet goodbye.

The endings all feel more like new beginnings, and that’s a reflection of the deep affection Gunn feels for his ensemble: He wants the best for these characters, particularly Rocket, whom he admits to a “strange connection” with. He’s even had many of these outcomes in mind since he wrote the first “Guardians” (2014), though there was a time when he wondered if he’d get to see them through: As preproduction began on “Vol. 3,” he was briefly fired over a controversy involving his old tweets.

Though Disney eventually rehired Gunn, making the movie had to wait. He had already been poached by Warner Bros. and DC Comics to direct “The Suicide Squad,” and that budding relationship proved so fruitful that Gunn will now oversee a total rehaul of DC’s slate, which will begin with a new take on Superman that he will direct. That means “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” is not just the end of a trilogy but the culmination of Gunn’s decade at Marvel.

How does he feel now that it’s all come to a close? “Sad and proud,” he said by phone earlier this week, as he prepared to discuss the ending of “Vol. 3” in depth. “But I feel like we did what we set out to do and I don’t think we could have done it much better than how we did it.”

All of the Guardians of the Galaxy survive the film and head out on new paths. Were you ever tempted to bring any of these characters to a more final end?

Gamora was going to die originally in “Vol. 2” [2017], and then we talked about it happening in “Infinity War” and that worked better for the story. But the rest of them, I always knew where they were going. I knew that the whole trilogy is about Rocket, who we think of as a supporting character, becoming the captain of the Guardians.

The arc with Peter Quill, in some ways, you can look at as that of many people who have experienced childhood trauma. He was by his mother’s bedside when she died, and he ran away and went into outer space — which, for other people, could be shutting off from the world — and stayed there for a long time until he came to the realization as an adult that he needed to go back to Earth. That, for me, was always his journey.

Nebula becomes a leader, but a different sort of leader from where she was. Mantis goes off on her own and takes care of herself because she lived by others’ rules her entire life. Drax realizes that he’s a father and that’s what he’s really good at — he’s not a destroyer. All those things, some more clearly than others, were in my mind from the first movie.

Few Marvel series were as affected by the events of “Infinity War” and “Endgame” as “Guardians of the Galaxy.” How did you feel about having a lot of major plot points happen outside the films of your own trilogy?

A lot? I think there was only one.

Well, Gamora’s death is the big one, but even her first kiss with Quill comes in “Infinity War” after the first two “Guardians” movies appear to be building to it.

I begged them to have that kiss in the movie, because it was necessary to really cement their relationship. I had a kiss in “Vol. 2” that I cut — it was awesome, but it came in a weird time. At the end of “Vol. 2,” you establish the fact that they have feelings for each other pretty distinctly, but in “Infinity War,” we needed to establish that they were now boyfriend-girlfriend and this was a normal thing for them. It wasn’t really about the kiss, it was about showing that they were now a couple.

Was there ever an idea that Gamora would not come back in any form in “Vol. 3,” and Quill would have to deal with her absence?

That was a possibility, yes. He would be dealing with her loss, but she wouldn’t come back and confront him in this different way. I toyed with it a lot as I was writing the script.

In another sort of movie, the new Gamora would have fallen in love with Quill, too. Instead, Quill gets to know her and eventually realizes he has to let his love go.

It’s something we do a lot in relationships anyway: We expect someone who reminds us of somebody from the past to be that somebody from the past. Especially with women, Peter Quill defines people around him to suit his own needs as opposed to really looking and seeing who they actually are as human beings. And Gamora is just not the same Gamora. She’s a different person.

There are a few moments where it feels like you’re testing the chemistry between Quill and Nebula, which is intriguingly spiky. Did you ever think of going there with them?

I never thought about fully going there, but do I think that Nebula, emotionally, is sort of that mean schoolgirl who’s not going to show her feelings to anybody. Karen thinks that Nebula has a little bit of a crush on Quill that she doesn’t quite know how to put together, and it makes sense because as we come to them in “Vol. 3,” we realize that they are the two leaders of the Guardians. I think it’s very normal in any close friendship to have some sort of occasional romantic or crush-like feelings.

When you’re crafting all these character endings, how much do you have to factor in the actor’s willingness to continue in the role? For instance, Dave Bautista has been pretty vocal about saying he’s finished. Does that affect the way you wrap up Drax’s story as opposed to Quill’s, since Chris Pratt is open to continuing?

Yeah, a little bit. Both Zoe and Dave have been very clear they’re not going to continue — likewise, me, actually. Chris is open to doing more stuff, although I think he has to be convinced. It does change some things: Like, I wouldn’t have had Dave in the post-credits scene. But I’m not sure if much would have changed beyond that.

At what point in conceiving all of this did you know that you wanted to end this trilogy with a dance sequence set to “Dog Days Are Over” from Florence + the Machine? It’s a lot of responsibility to be the last music cue of such a song-laden franchise.

I’ve known it for a few years. I’ve known it far before I started writing the script, since I was writing “Vol. 2.” I’ve been a fan of that album and that song since it came out, and it’s pretty cool because I just got an email from Florence Welch, who posted herself watching the movie and crying on TikTok yesterday. I think it’s probably the greatest pop song of the 21st century.

In previous movies, you did the motion-capture dancing for Groot yourself. Did you also do it in the “Dog Days Are Over” scene?

Yeah, and it was a high point in my life, really. My brother Sean is dancing for Rocket, and in the moment we were shooting the wide shot and dancing toward each other, it was surreal and beautiful and wonderful. We’ve been goofing around and playing with Fisher-Price characters since we were kids in our parents’ basement, and now we’re on the biggest set I’ve ever been on with gigantic Tinker Toys instead of smaller ones, but with that same purity and imagination we had as kids. Everybody was crying as it was happening. It was a really powerful moment.

You directed all three films of this trilogy, which is a rarity at Marvel. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to be at the helm throughout?

Yes. Everyone knows I was gone for a while, then I came back, and the reason I came back — because, frankly, I might not have otherwise — is I needed to tell Rocket’s story. I couldn’t have that stuff inside of me and not express it. I have a strange connection to that character where I feel like he deserves everything. This is a story about a character who goes from being a little smuggling thief to becoming the leader of the greatest team the universe has ever known. And his back story, the pain of where he came from, all the seeds that I dropped from “Vol. 1” when Peter Quill sees the injuries on his back, all of those things were leading to something, and it just felt stunted to cut it off there. It felt like I was setting all of that up and not finishing it. That was a hard pill for me to swallow.

Most of these characters started the trilogy in a more selfish place, but few of them had further to go than Rocket.

I was very, very careful through all the movies, including the “Avengers” movies and “Thor” and everything, that Rocket never does one single action that is for anyone other than himself or his friends. He’s not a hero like the rest of them. Morally, he’s much more stunted than Nebula is by the end of the “Avengers” series. He has just cut himself off completely from feeling for people, and at the end of “Vol. 3,” in that moment where he accepts himself by taking those raccoons and then starts looking around the cages, that’s the moment to me where he sees, “Oh my God, everything is me. We’re all a part of this universe, and every life has purpose, meaning, and is worthy of respect.” That’s who he is now: He’s not a bad guy, he’s strictly a good guy.

So what does it mean to you that Rocket is the one in charge when this film ends, just as you’re coming into your own as the one in charge at DC? Did you have to go through your own journey to get to a place where you’d feel comfortable with that kind of responsibility?

Oh, there’s no doubt that my journey is similar to Rocket’s. When it comes to those things I used to push other people away, accepting myself as I am, and accepting other people’s love, it’s been something that I’ve struggled with over the years and come to terms with much more than I have in the past.

Now that you’ve managed to tell that story, what’s the overriding feeling? Is it satisfaction? Is it relief?

Satisfaction, relief and just a real gentle pat on my back going, “OK, now we’ve got the next phase to work on, and I’m comfortable doing that.” Whatever Marvel does with those characters, I can’t wait. I hope they use them. I can’t wait to see another filmmaker take on the Guardians, and I hope that they do it in a way that they take ownership of the characters. But I feel good, I feel happy. Making the friendships that I made on this film series and having people in my life who are my closest allies — I mean, I’ve been to five weddings of the Guardians. I was at Chris’s wedding, Chris spoke at my wedding. Pom was one of Karen’s bridesmaids. It’s a great little group of people and I am really, really lucky.