Guardians of the Galaxy is the strangest Marvel movie to date.

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It’s a Space Epic…

The Guardians Are Not Superheroes. They're Anti-Heroes...

“ They’re all broken, a little bit. And then they find a reason to all come together and find something to live for within one another."

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It’s a James Gunn Film…

Meaning it Will Be Funny…

It Features a Raccoon. That Can Talk...

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Joss whedon And Marvel Have Been Involved Every Step of the Way

Launching the studio’s ‘Cosmic Universe’ the film tells the tale of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a cocksure adventurer who becomes the subject of a galactic bounty hunt when he steals a mysterious orb (see trailer below).Quill is half-human though, and the weirdness comes in the shape of the alien band of brothers with whom he teams to form the Guardians – enigmatic green beauty Gamora (Zoe Saldana), hulking Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), tree-like humanoid Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and gun-toting raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper).See? We told you it was strange.The tone will also be different to previous Marvel movies, thanks to the offbeat comic book property on which it’s based, and the fact that writer-director James Gunn is bringing his eccentric sensibilities to proceedings. Plus, it's going to have a pumping 1980s rock soundtrack.We visited the film’s set last year and spoke to Gunn and Pratt, as well as the film’s production designer Charles Wood and its special make-up effects designer David White. Here they explain why the Guardians of the Galaxy will rock your world this summer…I think of this as a space epic. It’s not really science fiction. It’s an adventure film. But I’m a huge fan of those types of films. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Alien and Blade Runner came in and they were amazingly well designed films that had a great look to them. But they also then became this linchpin of everything that everyone else after that based their movies on, this sort of dark and dreary world. What I wanted to do from the beginning was create this extremely colourful, big world of the pulp science fiction movies of the ‘50s and ‘60s, but at the same time, have the dirtiness and the grittiness and the griminess of Blade Runner, or Alien in particular, which is really to me the one that’s the masterpiece in terms of how it defined that look, the industrial-ness of the future. For me, it’s about taking those things and then whatever’s my own weird way of looking at the world.They’ve all been hurt pretty badly… I would say the characters start the farthest from heroism, of any Marvel movie so far.They’re definitely anti-heroes. It’s not a superhero movie… It’s an ensemble, and an amazing, magnificent, beautiful galaxy. What these folks have created is like… I have goosebumps. I don’t know if you can see my arms right now. It’s so damn cool, and so imaginative. There are so many artists at work right now, making this world, these worlds, this galaxy real, in a way that no one’s ever seen. This is a movie about a group of anti-heroes coming together in space and essentially all having... They’ve all lost something. They’re all broken, a little bit. And then they find a reason to all come together and find something to live for within one another, within the dynamics of this group. Each character… It’s not like a full-on origin story… but you do know where everyone comes from, and you know what they’ve lost. Everyone has a goal that is independent of what the group’s goal is, and then aligning those goals is what pushes the plot through. That’s really cool.You know a little bit about where Drax came from. You see where Gamora came from to some degree. You hear Rocket telling you where he came from. But the only one you really see the origin for is Quill.Every character, every one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, has a major arc in this movie, which is really astounding. No one’s just a piece of furniture in this movie. Everyone has something that they’re doing, learning, and gaining through the story. It’s truly a great ensemble story.I think it’s going to feel like a James Gunn film. It’s big. It’s funny. It really commits to every moment, whether it’s dramatic, romantic, adventure, silly, funny. It’s kind of all of those things. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it takes storytelling seriously. That’s what I would say about his films. It’s not just squinting into the sunset at the end and looking badass. It’s taking some distance out of yourself a little bit and having a bit of fun.When I turned in my first draft, they were really happy with the screenplay, which of course I was overjoyed by. The only comment they had, which was basically from Joss [Whedon], was they wanted it to be more James Gunn. And so that’s what I did. I said, ‘It’s your funeral.’ And I made it a lot more James Gunn.He just feels like the perfect director for this. Those two elements are really great, to have a director who’s a fanboy, and understands the rules that work in this universe. I don’t know if ‘fanboy’ is… he just knows every character from every Marvel comic book. He understands what it’s going to take to make this movie work, I think. He can explain to me certain rules that… Essentially the logic in this universe. Because it’s not just a regular universe, you know? It’s the Marvel Universe. There’s a logic that… You have to suspend some disbelief, and other times you have to really stick to what the logic is. He’ll say, ‘Well, that doesn’t make sense.’ And I’m like, ‘What the f**k am I doing?’ And he’ll say, ‘Trust me.’It’s not a straight-up action-adventure, you know? There’s a lot of comedy and levity. A lot of it has to do with what the audience’s expectations are in epic movies like this. Like, you know what’s coming, essentially. You always know what’s happening in these movies. You just want to see how it happens. I think our movie does a good job of taking those… Of creating epic movie moments and sort of flipping them on their head, to where… It’s easy to create irony and comedy when someone expects one thing and you give them something else. The audience expectations coming into this are really going to help with selling that comedy.This is a movie that has a talking raccoon in it. It’s very important that it’s not The Avengers with Bugs Bunny at the centre of it. It’s important that Rocket is a real creature. I love him. He is the heart of the movie. He’s most representative of the Guardians in the fact that he’s this little mangled beast that was taken and experimented on, torn apart and put back together. We have to feel that character’s soul. If we feel that character’s soul and we know him and we love him — he’s gotta be funny, which he is. But he’s gotta be somebody who we really love and care about and see why he’s such an angry little guy. Then the movie will work.[Peter Quill] feels a lot of things [towards Rocket]. He feels embarrassed by him. He feels empathetic toward him. He feels a kinship toward him. He feels like he discovers him in the movie. He feels like he maybe underestimated him. He feels like he’s annoyed by him. He feels like he loves him. All of those things. His character is great. His character is kind of the best. He has the best arc in the movie, I think.They’re a nice bunch of people. All they want to do is build a product which is their product. If you’re not familiar with it, then they guide you. Yes, they look at everything. They look at everything we do, and not just the art department. They look at costumes, props, everything we do. We do this once a week, and we produce thousands of pieces of art. This is just a tiny dot amid what we’ve actually done. They know what they want this to be, and they help you get there. It’s really expensive stuff, this stuff, so there’s no point in producing things they’re not happy with or that don’t work. There is a master plan for a film like this. This film is very different from what they’ve done before. It’s a very bold venture, this thing. It’s kind of bonkers. So again, they shepherd it, would be a good term, I think.Joss and I have been friends for a long time, so… I think he was very helpful in me getting this gig. I’ve been talking to him throughout the process, both about just what it’s like working with Marvel, what that situation is like, and then also just getting his help with the story, seeing what he thinks.