Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn held a Q&A on Facebook recently on the topic of what to expect for the anticipated sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. One of the first of many surprises? Fewer characters to feature. Gunn elaborated further on that:
It’s a very moving script. Listen, one of the main things with Guardians of the Galaxy is not to add a bunch of characters, not to make it bigger in that way but to go deeper with the characters….what really matters to me is going deeper into the characters and getting to know them more emotionally. And I think we have a story that’s really, truly true for everyone and it just happens to be about aliens.
Of course, that’s not to say he didn’t listen to what fans wanted:
People ask for so many characters to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and they ask for so many actors who they want to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 but we actually have less characters in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 than we have in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 because everything is just getting too sprawling and too crazy for me in these superhero comic book movies. And also in superhero comics in general. There’s just too many characters so you can’t concentrate on one and really get to know that character, and I really want to get to know the characters that we know better…
Sound advice that seems to branch away from Marvel’s typical formula of introducing numerous characters on screen. So who’s confirmed for the chopping block? Nova Corps member Rhomann Dey has been called off, as John C. Reilly is not slated to return.
John C. Reilly is not back for Volume 2, unfortunately
Gunn continued with the second character not making it being the Collector, Gunn’s reason for it being:
[he] just didn’t fit into Volume 2.
However, knowing the character survived the events of the first film, Gunn does note an encouraged return:
I’m very excited to see him in the MCU in the future, I hope.
Lastly, Gunn spoke about wanting to use characters in his story that he simply doesn’t have access due to legal reasons with FOX:
FOX owns so many awesome cosmic villains and minor characters that I’d love to play around with, like Annihilus … and I think they own Kang … so there’s some great characters over there that we don’t own and that sucks.
But he did leave off one more hint of what to expect for the new film:
…yeah, we will be introducing a new character…
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 comes to theaters May 5th, 2017.
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