One scene in the new “Guardians of the Galaxy” sequel looks a lot like a Hitchcock movie, but with more explosions and spaceships. The director James Gunn took a cue from the crop duster sequence in the thriller “North by Northwest” to stage a battle between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and her adopted sister Nebula (Karen Gillan). In an interview, Mr. Gunn spoke about why it’s one of the few moments in the film without music and how he was inspired to outdo a “Fast and Furious” movie. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

What were your goals for this scene?

In “Guardians of the Galaxy,” we often have these emotional character relationships between two people or more. And in this one, it really is the culmination of two movies’ worth of hatred between sisters who do not get along. This first manifests itself in a physical fight here and then leads to an emotional scene where Nebula breaks down. You thought she was the bad guy the whole time. But you realize that actually she was the one who was wronged by her sister when she was young and she’s the one who, in a lot of ways, is the victim in the relationship.

Why did you decide not to include music?

Simply because there is so much music throughout the movie. I wanted this scene to stand out. I think it’s special and very raw and visual. And I wanted a chance for our sound department, the guys at Skywalker Sound, to really shine and do something that was almost operatic with just sound alone. But I think mostly the reason was just for variety’s sake in the movie.

Was this how you always wanted the scene to play?

No. When I was writing the screenplay I originally wrote a different action sequence between Nebula and Gamora and I came upon the idea for this one, I think, through watching “North by Northwest.” I decided to rewrite the action sequence between the two of them. But instead of rewriting it, I simply drew it. As a writer-director I oftentimes draw the scenes first as opposed to writing them because that’s more more true to the form that they end up being in.