All language subtitles for Guardians.of.the.Galaxy2

JAMES GUNN: Hello, everybody,
this is James Gunn.

I am the writer and the director of
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Two.

A movie which I spent basically

the past nearly three years working on

and has just come out in theaters
as we record this, just a few days ago.

And I'm really, very proud of this film.

It's a continuation of the story
that we told

in Guardians of the Galaxy:
Volume One,

but it also goes a lot deeper
into the characters,

and we get to know the characters
a little bit better.

Last movie, we had the Marvel Studios'
logo a little later,

after the flashback at the beginning.

But the Marvel Studios' logo
has gotten much longer since then,

so it was a tittie strange
when we tried that this time.

Here we start off in Missouri.

St. Charles, Missouri, to be specific.

Um, this is right near
where I grew up in reality,

and I thought it was a great place
for Star-Lord,

a character, of course,
whom I relate to quite a bit.

We have a Ford Mustang Cobra, 1979.

And most obscure Easter egg
of all time,

the license plate was the license plate
of my Buick Electra

when I was in high school.

"Brandy, fetch another round"

GUNN: There we have Meredith Quill

and Kurt Russell,
playing the character of Ego.

He is made much younger
by a great company called Lola,

who has done wonderful visual effects
on his face.

The way we do that is
we shoot Kurt acting out the scene.

We have a great guy standing by,
who's watching,

and he watches him, and then
he mimics him in the same shot,

doing exactly what he did.

And then basically,
we merge his skin onto Kurt's face

to create young Kurt Russell,

who looks almost identical
to Used Cars-era Kurt Russell.

I actually think that Ego is a little bit
older than Meredith Quill here.

I didn't want to make him too young.

I think that she is very young.
She is probably 19, 20 years old.

We've actually made her
a little younger, as well as Kurt.

And she's very taken up
by this older, dashing gentleman

who she knows is a spaceman,

um, and he's stolen her heart.

And as we learn later,

she tells people that

the father of young Peter is an alien,

especially after she has brain cancer.

And people think that
she's gone insane, that she's crazy.

And it ends up being a difficult time

for young Peter Quill
and his time here on Earth.

(MUSIC FADING UP,
"BRANDY (YOU'RE A FINE GIRL")

We're traveling through the plant,
we're seeing the light.

And here we are, 34 years later.

Now a lot of people notice

that this movie takes place in 2014.

That's nearly three years before,

exactly three years before,
the movie actually was released.

That's because this movie takes place

only two months after
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume One.

Baby Groot, he's only
a couple of months old.

Now, when I was writing
the screenplay,

I really wanted to...

At first, I was going to actually have
Groot full grown in this movie,

but something seemed
repetitive about it.

Something seemed not exactly right.

And so I suddenly came upon the idea
to have Baby Groot still be a baby.

I know he was very popular
in a stick form

at the end of the first movie.

And I thought he would be
a fun character to have in the film,

and ends up being
one of the favorites of the movie,

along here with Dave Bautista as Drax,
of course, who people love.

Blame Quill. He's the one...

GUNN: We shot this scene on
the very first day of shooting the movie.

This was everybody
coming back together,

and I was really happy with how
everybody had upped their game.

They had all learned a lot
from the first movie coming out.

All of their performances were better.

They all took less direction
in many ways.

Although I was much harder
on all of the actors in this movie.

Really trying to get the performance
as great as I possibly could.

(G ROWLS)

G U N N: Here comes the
multi-dimensional beast

named the Abilisk,

who is wanting to eat the batteries.

(YELLING)

GUNN: So this shot here
is one long shot.

Um, that is,
Baby Groot is about to dance.

I was the motion reference
for Baby Groot dancing.

So somewhere in secret vaults

there is me doing all of these
dance moves for Baby Groot.

This shot was not finished
until about a week and a half

before the release of the film in Europe.

And it took a long, long time.

There were over 4,000 iterations
of this one long shot.

It was an incredibly difficult shot,

one of the biggest
visual effects shots of all time.

I think I need to give a shout out to

Chris Townsend,
our visual effects supervisor,

who was really, truly one of
my primary partners on this film,

and added, in every way,
to making this a great movie.

And just went out of his way to

not only make the visual effects
shots as perfect as possible,

but also would listen to me and
go through a lot of different versions.

And I had very specific ideas
about everything,

from the way the characters moved
to the eye movement to the colors.

In the background,
there is Matter Splatter.

That's what we call it.

It is definitely influenced
by my Work with Suda51

on the video game Lollipop Chainsaw.

This combination of incredibly
brilliant, bright, beautiful colors

and the darkness of
what's happening around them,

which is exemplified by
Baby Groot's dancing.

I think this scene is actually
really good for the Guardians

in terms of what they're about.

This is... Basically,
this is a movie that has

all the spectacle and dynamic
scenes of any big spectacle film,

but really, it is about the interaction
between the characters.

It is, in many ways, an independent film,

just with a lot of enormous,
enormous scenes and explosions.

But what we focus on
are the characters.

And we're focusing on
Baby Groot here,

even though there's this enormous
battle going on in the background

With this wonderful Abilisk,

who I tried to design
after a pinky mouse, his skin,

and he's got this little fur on him

that's incredibly disgusting
when you see it up close.

But I like the Abilisk a lot,
he's a poor guy.

We'd make a lot of jokes of him
while we were doing this scene.

That he really just wants to
come down and have friends

and is now being brutally attacked
by the Guardians for no reason.

But that's not real, that's just a joke.

You're gonna see a lot of me
during this movie

talking about my friends in the movie.

I know on the last commentary I did for
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume One

I got some criticism
because everybody is my friend.

And listen.

It's gonna be worse on this movie,
because I really did put

all of my very best friends in this film.

You'll see that throughout.

So this is the end of that one long shot.

So this whole entire time was one shot,

we put it together
through different elements.

Part of it is completely visual effects.

Part of it is elements that we shot.

Basically, you know, like I said,

that scene took almost the entire length
of shooting to put together.

I turned it over,
right a few days into shooting

because it was exactly what
we planned out from the beginning.

I drew those storyboards for that shot

probably in October
or November of 2014,

and it eventually came out

just a couple of weeks
before the movie was finished.

So it took a long, long time
to do that shot.

I realize that.

(YELLING)

GUNN: Dave Bautista, really,
I'm gonna mention it again,

just really, just killed it in this movie.

He's an amazing actor,
a tremendous talent.

He's incredibly funny, and
he's got such warmth and depth to him.

I really love him.

I love this shot here
of Rocket shooting at the Abilisk.

These shots took a long time.

This whole opening sequence
took a long time.

Framestore
is the visual effects company

that worked on this sequence.

They were the ones who basically
created the character of Rocket,

and how he moved and who he was.

And they came back into this movie.

They taught the other visual effects
companies how to create Rocket.

And Rocket, of course,
takes a lot of work.

He actually takes a lot more work
than Baby Groot does to create.

Uh, Zoe Saldana actually did that
stunt there of falling down the beast.

She's an incredibly athletic performer.

And she was a dancer, and she's able
to do so many of these stunts herself.

There you get the hair on the Abilisk.

It looks like inside the ear
of an old man.

...vanquished the beast! (LAUGHING)

What?

GU N N: I created a really complex
color pattern for the movie,

with different colors for every scene.

So the first thing I do is
I write the screenplay,

and the second thing I do is
I create a color story.

So I take color swatches

and, for every scene in the movie,

I create one or two or three different
colors for each scene

that talk about...

You know, that basically will be what
the production designer

and the costume designer
will base their colors on.

For instance, here
it's gold and this navy blue color.

So everything is really centered around
those two colors.

We keep things
much more simple in this movie.

We got a lot more shout outs
for how visually arresting

Guardians of the Galaxy:
Volume Two is.

But we actually have fewer colors.
They're just bolder choices.

And we have many
fewer of them per scene,

but they also get a little bit
more complex as the story goes on.

And they go in and out of
brighter colors and darker colors

that tell the story in and of themselves.

...repulsive.

I'm not into that kind of casual...

Oh, please.

G U N N: Elizabeth Debicki plays A yesha,

and she was an absolute joy
to work with.

I'm famous for auditioning
hundreds of actors

for each role that we cast.

For instance, the role of Mantis,
which is coming up later,

I auditioned probably a couple
hundred actresses for that role.

Elizabeth Debicki's character
was different.

We auditioned one actress
who I liked a lot,

and then we auditioned
Elizabeth Debicki.

And I was like,
"This role is tailor-made for her."

Um, she's a beautiful
and stunning woman.

Absolute incredible presence to her.

She's 6'3", I believe.

And was perfect for the role of Ayesha,
and so I cast her there on the spot.

And she's a dynamite person.
Australian woman.

And your father?

He ain't from Missouri.

GUNN: Here we have Peter Quill.

We set up the story of he and his father.

That is the center of this movie.

There is, I think, kind of,
three or four different stories

that are the center stories in
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Two.

More so than Volume One,
this is a multi-protagonist film.

We have Rocket's story,
which is very specific.

We have Gamora's story,
which is very specific.

And we have Peter Quill's story,
which is very specific.

Those are generally
the central stories of the movie

and each one of them
has something to overcome.

ROCKET:
You wanna buy some batteries?

G U N N: But with Peter Quill,
it's his search for a father

and what he needs to get out of that.

I think so much of this movie
was really influenced by

a time when, on the first film,

Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, and I

were backstage at an Apple iStore,

I don't know what they call them.

An Apple Store Event.
A podcast in England.

And the first movie was about
to come out.

Here's Lake Shore Drive
by Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah.

(ALIOTTA HAYNES JEREMIAH'S
"LAKE SHORE DRIVE" PLAYING)

This song is one of my favorites
in the movie.

This is a song that was
only a regional hit in...

And I'll get back to the other story
in a second.

But it was only a regional hit
in, like, St. Louis and Chicago,

so people only from the center
of the country know this song,

but it's a classic there.
It plays on classic rock radio.

And it's an incredibly catchy song,

and I think one of the most
exciting things

about putting the soundtrack together

is that we're bringing these songs

to people all over the world
that might be forgotten.

And I think this is one of those songs.

I think that Volume Two,
the soundtrack is a little bit different

in that it's a little bit more mature
than the soundtrack to Volume One.

The songs were for kind of
a younger child in Volume One.

A little bit of an older child
in Volume Two

because Meredith Quill knows
how old her son is obviously.

And, um, we have a mix here
of incredibly popular songs,

like Fleetwood Mac's The Chain

and Cheap Trick's Surrender and
George Harrison's My Sweet Lord.

And then songs
that hardly anyone knows, like

Lake Shore Drive, or at least anyone
outside of St. Louis and Chicago.

And then Wham Barn by Silver,
which I didn't know.

These are, you know...

It's a much different soundtrack
than the first movie.

But I think my promise to the fans
is really that

these Guardians of the Galaxy films
are going to keep changing.

And they're gonna be different.
They're going to evolve.

They're not going to remain the same.

One of the difficulties
of making a sequel,

and one of the challenges,
one of the pitfalls,

is that you can just try
to recreate the first film.

So, you think, "Oh, well,
we had a dance-off in the first film.

"What was our dance-off scene
gonna be?

"What's our 'We are Groot' scene
gonna be?"

And that's what I tried to avoid
in this film.

I think it goes in its own path.

It is a much more emotional film,

which is probably the thing
people talk about the most.

But I just allow the characters
to grow and to change.

I think the relationship here between
Gamora and Nebula is one of them,

where you see them
grow and change the most.

In the first movie, we think that

Nebula is absolutely evil
and Gamora's a hero.

And in this movie, I think we learn that

the story is
a little bit deeper than that.

And that their background
is not so cut and dried.

(CHUCKLES)
Anyway, I was talking about

Dave Bautista and Chris Pratt and I
at the Apple Store Event in London.

And we were backstage,
about to go out on stage,

and we put our arms around each other,
and we could all feel

that something really big was about to
happen with Guardians of the Galaxy.

That something was going to be
very different about this project,

something very special for all of us.

And it was gonna probably change us.

And we said to each other,

"You know, guys, let's just promise
that we will remain ourselves

"and remain down to earth,

"you know, put our relationships first
and put our integrity first."

And it was a moment, sort of,
without ego,

in a moment when I knew
that ego was about to attack all of us.

Chris Pratt was about to become
the biggest movie star in the world.

Dave Bautista was about to have
a kind of cinematic success

that I don't think he ever dreamed of.

And I was about to become a director

who went from doing $3 million movies
and $10 million movies

to making one of the biggest hits
of the year.

And I think that moment Of humility

and that moment of love
between the three of us

is really what drove this film,

and it's what drives me
with these movies.

I don't think I would keep
making Guardians movies.

And, as many of you probably know,

I'm already signed on to do
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Three.

And I'm hard at work at it already,
even though this movie just came out.

I don't think that I would ever do that

without the love
that I share with those guys

and with their help and helping me
remain down to earth.

And, you know, when you have
a guy like Chris Pratt,

who is a truly kind person,
a kind human being,

and he's number one on the call sheet,

you really create
a different atmosphere on set,

amongst the crew, amongst the cast,

and I think it's the important thing

about the Guardians, is that...

That kindness is a part of what we do,

and that humility
is a part of what we do.

But I won't say it hasn't been
without its challenges.

It hasn't been...

You know, having a successful
franchise has been difficult at times.

And you meet a lot of people who want
a lot of different things from you.

And you can easily
get sucked up in it all,

and I think that this movie
is really about

(CHUCKLES) my journey with Chris
and Dave and the rest of the cast

in terms of not letting ego destroy us

and, instead, destroying our own ego,
to some degree.

Ah! So this is a space chase!

This was one of the most
difficult scenes to take...

You know, to tell, in the movie.

We spent a lot of time...

Framestore, again, was the company
that did the visual effects for this.

And we spent a lot of time
shooting inside and outside.

One of the things I tried to do...

There's a lot more camera movement
inside the spacecraft.

One of the things that always
bothered me about space operas

is you have all this outside
moving camera,

and then inside is kind of like
one basic shot of whoever's driving.

And I wanted to avoid that in this scene.

I storyboard the entire movie
very early on.

Every single scene in the movie,

I draw the first pass of the,
sort of, stick figure versions

of what's happening in every shot.

And, to me,

the most creative,
the most fun part of making a movie,

in a lot of ways, is the initial part.

Because it's writing the story,
it's coming up with the visuals,

it's trying to create
what happens in the movie.

The rest of it gets to be, sometimes,
very difficult work

because it's just trying to
create on-screen

what I visualized in my head
from the very beginning.

And this movie in particular,

I felt like I had the ability to do that

because of the budget
and because of the freedom.

And like I was saying earlier,
I worked very hard

with both the camera people...

Henry Braham is our cinematographer,

and I had a very good relationship
with him.

And with the actors,

in terms of really taking my time
and pushing the actors

to make sure we get the
best performance out of each of them.

And really taking my time
and pushing the camera people

to make sure that every shot
is as beautiful as it can possibly be.

I think on the first film I was coming
from independent movies,

and I came from a place
where my previous film, Super,

was a film I did 52,
you know, 54 set-ups a day

with one camera, meaning, you know,

54 different shots a day at times

with a single camera.

And I was moving incredibly quickly.

And that's the only thing I could do
to finish that movie

because it was a complicated movie
shot in 20-something days.

Five clicks!

GUNN: On this movie,
on Guardians One,

I still had this sort of need
to move very quickly.

And I think it actually was something
I regretted on the first movie.

I think that there were, you know,
performance moments in there

that I didn't think were
as good as they could've been.

The thing that doesn't cost you
that much money

is to take a tittie bit more time
shooting on set

to create the movie
that you really want to create.

And never, never settling
for second best in anything.

And so that's what I did with all of this.

That's the jump point! Go!

It's a QUY-

(DRAX SCREAMING)

Oh, my God.

He's still out there?

(DRAX CONTINUES SCREAMING)

(GRUNTS)

(STRAINING)

-(YELPS)
-(SCREAMING)

(STRAINING)

GUNN". This is the crash onto Berhert.

There's Baby Groot eating candies.

I get a lot of messages on
social networking sites asking me,

"What kind of candy
is Baby Groot eating?

"Is that Skittles? Is that M&M's?"

And the answer is
no, it is space candy.

It is, in fact,
the space candy that we see

all over the ship
in the first movie from...

That Peter Quill likes to eat.
He's a big candy fan.

In fact, his shirt,
which many people ask me,

"What does his shirt say on it?
Is it 'Yehab beachy'?"

Um, no, it is a foreign language
that means "Gearshift,"

which is a type of candy
that Peter Quill particularly adores.

He's got a very big sweet tooth,
Peter Quill.

That last shot there...

I think that might have been
the last shot that was finished

making the movie from visual effects.

Those little guys...

I gave those guys a name,
I forget what they're called,

but I think we're gonna see
more of them in the future.

I like those little dudes.

Here is the crash landing site
on Berhert.

This entire forest was inside
of an incredibly huge soundstage.

We built an enormous forest,

and we shot there
for an awful long time

because we shot this scene,

we shot a bunch of other scenes
that you'll see.

All the stuff that takes place

with Rocket and Baby Groot
and Nebula on this planet.

answer to "Star-Munch."
- I did it because...

GUNN". I loved this day,
shooting this scene.

We had a great time
shooting the characters acting.

We were having a particularly fun time.

Sean Gunn plays Kraglin in this movie,
who's a great character,

but he also plays Rocket on set.

And we use a lot of
Sean's facial expressions for Rocket,

and this was a scene in which
he was particularly good.

That's all Sean right there.

That looking back and forth.
It's very much him.

Company called Method did Rocket,

and the visual effects in this scene,
and many others in the movie.

ROCKET: I've had it with you!
QUILL: No! Back up!

NEBULA: Someone followed you
through the jump point.

GUNN: And there we have
Ego's spaceship for the first time.

It took a long time to design it.

I very much wanted a very simple
egg shape that had a technology to it

that was different from the technology
that was in other spaceships

that we see within
the Guardians-iverse.

Um, so it's kind of
an unexplainable technology.

We don't quite understand
how it moves through space.

Certainly isn't the motorized

Ravager ships that Quill
and the Ravagers drive

that use jump points
through space to move around.

I think trying to set up a tittie bit
more how these characters

move through space was one of things
we wanted to do with this movie,

and so we created this idea of
jump points through outer space.

And who the hell are you?

GUNN: There we have Pom Klementieff
as Mantis and Kurt Russell as Ego.

Kurt Russell, of course,
is one of my heroes.

I spent a lot of time as a kid
running around in my backyard

pretending to be Snake Plissken
from Escape From New York.

Or, you know, Rocky Balboa
or John Rambo,

which are roles that
Sylvester Stallone played.

And I got to work with both of them
in this movie, which was fun.

There is Molly Quinn,
who you might recognize from Castle,

as Howard the Duck's friend.

Molly is a good friend of mine,
and her boyfriend, Elan Gale,

I actually introduced them,
who's a producer on The Bachelor.

You'll see him again as one of
Sylvester Stallone's henchmen.

I love this shot of Yondu.

I think we come to him on Contraxia.

He looks pretty darn miserable.

TULLK: Yondu!

Come on down!

GU N N: Tommy Flanagan plays Tullk,

the character that was
dancing down there.

He's a fantastic actor, really amazing.

Now, we're going to get into the part
where there's all my friends.

Because there on the left,
you have Jimmy Urine,

on the right, you have
Stevie Blackehart, who plays Brahl.

Jimmy Urine plays Half nut.

All of the Ravagers really truly
are my best friends.

You will not be able to come to a party
without seeing most of them.

Michael Rosenbaum as Martinex,
who's one of my best friends.

And Sylvester Stallone as Stakar,

who is also known as Starhawk
in the comics.

And we see now that,

in the same way we took the character
of Yondu from the comics

and we made him
a little bit of an older guy

played by Michael Rocker,

we also have taken the rest of
the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

The ones who were the original

Guardians of the Galaxy
in the comic books

and turned them all into heads
of the Ravager families.

The MCU is not the same
as the Marvel Comics universe,

which is the 616 universe.

It's different. It's a reflection of it,

and we take the same characters
and their archetypes

and build them in a different way
into a movie.

I told you before!
I didn't know what was going on!

You didn't know because you didn't
want to know because it made you rich.

I demand a seat at the table!
I wear these flames, same as you.

You may dress like us...

but you'll never hear the Horns
of Freedom when you die, Yondu.

And the Colors of Ogord...

will never flash over your grave.

If you think...

G U N N: Michael Rooker, in this movie,
is really perhaps

the stand out of all the performances.

Turns in an incredibly nuanced
and beautiful performance

as this lost pirate who has sort of
given up his humanity

and lost everything
that he's ever wanted.

We learn here that he has done

something wrong
with delivering children

and dealing in children,
which is the reason

that Stakar and the other Ravagers
kicked him out of the Ravagers.

They exiled him.

And all of the terrible Ravagers
followed Yondu into exile.

So he's got all of these bad people.

Like there's Gef the Ravager,
played by Steve Agee,

(CHUCKLES) and Joe Fria,
who plays the pink Ravager there,

and Tommy, and my friend
Evan Jones, who plays Retch.

They really, truly are all my friends.

Chris Sullivan, who you might
recognize from the...

Maybe you probably
don't recognize him.

He's on the TV show This ls Us,
plays Taserface.

And here are some of my favorite shots
of Elizabeth Debicki as Ayesha.

Judianna, our costume designer,
did an amazing job on these costumes.

And there's Hannah,
who plays the chambermaid.

We see a bit more of her in this movie.

And this nice moment of the blue skin
against the white snow

falling down over Yondu's face.

And he's confronted with
some sort of choice here

by these wonderful golden people.

Or terrible golden people,
depending on which way you look at it.

I have a proposition for you.

EGO". I hired Yondu to pick you up...

when your mother passed away.

But instead of returning you...

GUNN: Here's the campfire scene.

It was one of the first days
I got to work with Kurt Russell.

It was a lot of fun. Kurt and Chris and I

spent time working on the scenes
beforehand in rehearsal.

I like to rehearse with all of the actors
before we shoot,

so we have a couple of weeks
of rehearsal.

People ask me all the time,
"ls there ever improv in the movies?"

And really, there's very little improv.

I like to have things
pretty tightly scripted, you know.

My experience in the past is
when you start to get too improv-y,

you start to do things
that people find very funny on set,

and then are not as funny as
what was originally written,

which took, you know, years to write
and put into place.

Usually, you have
the best possible thing.

Every once in a while,
you find little moments of improv

that are great, but, for the most part,
things are very tightly scripted.

However, if there ever is any improv,

it usually comes
while we are doing rehearsals,

where I'm kind of making sure
that the dialogue I've written works,

that it fits the actors
who are saying the words,

and wondering if there's places
where I can improve

or make things funnier.

And you find little moments
that you can use while you're shooting.

You know exactly what to focus on.

I change my storyboards at that time
because I see

what works in terms of
movement or not.

Then I draw pretty complex maps

for the sequences
with camera angles and so forth.

Here we have... He's whistling Brandy,

the song that is pretty important
to this film.

-(WHISTLING)
-(URINATING)

GUNN: And here we have
Pom Klementieff as Mantis.

She's a really important,
new cast member,

and she's someone
I've come to truly love and appreciate

throughout this process.

I do not know if I've ever written

any character who
an actress has come in

and more completely
fulfilled that role perfectly.

I think the one
that's the closest, actually,

is sitting right next to her,
is Dave Bautista.

Because I can't imagine
anyone in the world playing Drax

except Dave Bautista,
and, in the same way,

I can't imagine anyone playing Mantis
but Pom Klementieff.

I'd say the only difference
is that Dave...

You know, I've actually changed Drax
a little bit more to suit Dave

over the past few years,
whereas, you know,

Pom just came in, and she slipped
into the role perfectly.

I liked it very much!

I just made it up!

(BOTH LAUGHING)

QUILL: Give me a break!

After all this time, you're gonna
show up, and all of a sudden...

-you wanna be my dad?
- GAMORA: I hear you.

QUILL: And by the way,
this could be a trap.

The Kree purists, the Ravagers...

-they all want us dead.
- I know, but...

But what?

What was that story you told me
about Zardu Hasselfrau?

Who?

He owned a magic boat?

David Hasselhoff?

Right.

Not a magic boat. A talking car.

Why did he talk again?

To help him fight crime,
and to be supportive.

As a child, you would carry his picture
in your pocket...

and you would tell
all the other children...

that he was your father,
but that he was out of town.

Shooting Knight Rider
or touring with his band in Germany.

I told you that when I was drunk.
Why are you bringing that up now?

I love that story.

- I hate that story.
-(SIGHS)

It's so sad!

GUNN: This is kind of a combination
of taking a dramatic scene in the movie

along with a comedic scene,
talking about David Hasselhoff

and what he means to Peter Quill.

David Hasselhoff, of course,
was star of the show Knight Rider

and the show Baywatch.

You know, Peter Quill pretended
he was his father,

and this seems like a throwaway scene
about Hasselhoff.

But as the movie goes on,

Hasselhoff becomes
an incredibly important part of the film.

GAMORA: He's not a fox.

Shoot her if she does
anything suspicious.

(GRUMBLES)

- Or if you feel like it.
- ROCKET: Okay.

It'll be just a couple of days.

We'll be back before
Rocket's finished fixing the ship.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

GUNN: This is Fleetwood Mac's
The Chain.

Again, a very important song
in the movie.

A beautiful song, a wonderful,
amazing song,

and we get to hear it here.

You know, I've been very lucky in that

every single song I've ever asked
to be cleared by our music supervisor

Dave Jordan, on both Volumes One
and Two, has been cleared.

I've never asked for a song that
hasn't been cleared, which is great.

Because I can really tell the story
I wanna tell.

To get everybody to hate you?

Because it's working.

(FLEETWOOD MAC'S
"THE CHAIN" PLAYING)

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again

I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain

GU N N: People ask about how I put
the soundtrack together a lot,

and, the truth is,
I have a list of about 500 songs

that I think of as Meredith Quill songs,

songs she would really love.

And in that list, I keep that on a,
you know, files on my computer

and as I'm writing the screenplay,
actually as I'm writing the treatment

before the screenplay,

I'll go through it,
and I'll find songs that fit a moment

or a place that needs a song.

And I'll search out a song
that'll fit the moment.

Sometimes, I'll have to go outside
of that list of 500 songs

and go a tittie bit deeper
and find something that is

more appropriate, which I'll do at times.

But I write them all into the treatment,
and then when I give

everyone that original story,
I'll give that story to Marvel.

And I'll give them a compact disc,

an old-school compact disc
with the songs on it,

so that they can listen to all the music
along with the treatment,

and they know exactly
what we're getting into.

And we really...
We do that from the beginning.

We play into...

When we're playing the music on set,
we play it on set.

We'll put earbuds in the actors' ears

so that they can
hear the music that's playing.

We'll put earbuds
in the camera people's ears,

so that they can move to the songs.

And we don't only do this
with the soundtrack songs,

we do this with the score as well.

Um, we have...

Well, here we have Pom as Mantis

using her superpower for the first time,
which is she can touch someone

and she can feel their feelings.

Not their thoughts, but their feelings.
She's an empath.

And then she can also touch people
and mildly change their feelings.

She can make them do what she wants
or make them feel the way she wants.

Maybe not do,
but make them feel the way she wants.

Anyway, I was talking about the score
with Tyler Bates.

I'll give Tyler Bates the screenplay
very early on,

and he will write songs or write,
you know, score to the scenes.

And then we will play that music
during those scenes on set.

I find that music and sound in general
is an undervalued part

of the cinematic experience.

People concentrate on the visuals a lot,
and so do I, obviously.

But I also think that sound is
often underutilized,

and when I first came into Hollywood
and started making movies,

I was astounded that

people were not choosing songs
for the movie

until after the movie,
you know, was finished.

And sometimes not even,

you know, already edited
and putting songs in.

Not even editing to the songs,
which I thought was just ridiculous.

Songs are so important.
The music is so important,

such an important emotional element
of the filmgoing experience,

you'd think people
would take more care with it,

and so that's why the score
and the soundtrack

is so incredibly important to me.

He lies awake at night
thinking about his progeny.

Do one of those on me.

Sleep.

(SNORING)

GUNN: We are now back on Berhert
with Rocket and Groot, and Nebula,

and we get to see
the Ravagers approaching.

(GLEN CAMPBELL'S
"SOUTHERN NIGHTS" PLAYING)

This song is Southern Nights
by Glen Campbell.

This was my favorite song
when I was a very, very young child.

I was very lucky, a couple of years ago,
to go to a Fourth of July party

at Jane Seymour's house of all places,
and Glen Campbell was there.

And he sat down around a campfire
with maybe eight of us,

and he played his songs,
you know, for one of the...

You know, one of the last concerts.
I guess "concerts."

(DISTANT SINGING)

(GRUNTS)

- ROCKET: I love this song.
-(BEEPING)

(ALL GASP)

GUNN: That is Jimmy Urine from
the band Mindless Self Indulgence,

who also happens to be
one of my best buddies in the world.

We hang out a lot. We travel together.
We've been friends for a long time.

Baby Groot and Rocket
in this sequence

were done by a company called Trixter.

They did marvelous work.
They really, really nailed it.

-(BRANCH SNAPS)
- Huh?

- There!
-(ALL YELLING)

GU N N: We'll see some interesting
shots here in a second.

It's something that
I did a lot in this movie.

This shot was incredibly intense.

That's all real...

Not all real explosions,
but almost all real explosions.

It's a real camera move
through real trees.

And then we put Rocket into it,
and we had all these explosions.

This shot here is multiple layers

of different actors
moving at different speeds.

So at the very top layer, we have a guy
by the name of Jae, who's a stuntman.

And we have him moving
in incredibly slow, phantom speeds,

you know, a thousand frames
or so a second.

And then, right below him,
the next layer is a little bit faster,

a little bit less frames per second.

And below him,
those guys are a little bit faster,

so that there's this weird sort of

accordion feel
of them coming towards us,

but they're all moving
at different speeds.

These variated speeds are something
that I do throughout the movie.

In particular later,
and I'll talk about it more then,

when we get to the arrow sequence.

We do it, like, I don't think
anyone's ever done it before.

These were all difficult shots
for us to do

because we have a lot of
really interactive shots

with Rocket interacting
and jumping along these guys' heads

and hitting them
and knocking them around.

Here we have Rocket about to face

my best friend in the world
Stevie Blackhart.

He's one of the few people

that's acted in two different roles
in two different Marvel movies

because he played
the Dispatcher in Knowhere

in the first Guardians of the Galaxy,

and now he's back again
as a character in makeup, Brahl,

who doesn't last that long. Spoiler.

And here we have this...
That's also a practical shot

moving through the forest,
and then the arrow was put into it.

So, that isn't CG! background,
CG! arrow.

It's a CG! arrow
with practical background.

I always like to use practical
when it works,

just like I like to use CG! when it works.

I don't buy into this belief
that practical is always best.

It isn't.

I don't believe that there's any way that
we could create the type of emotion

that we're about to see in Baby Groot,
for instance, right there,

uh, through practical effects.

You can't create a puppet like that.

He's just got too much movement,

and the same thing,
even more so with Rocket,

a more complicated character.

A much more complicated character
with his eye moves,

and, you know,
the meniscus in his eyes,

which we spent a lot of time
talking about,

the spotlights in his eyes.
The way he looks.

You couldn't create that
through a puppet.

But when something
can be created practically,

I think it's best to go that route.

Sc if you can create a set practically,
you should.

So, again, the forest,

it's almost all practical
here behind them.

We had a difficult time
lighting this scene because it was...

It came out a little bright,

and so we did a lot of dealing with

Steve Scott, who does our DI,
our color timing,

to try to make it look like it's morning.

It's just starting to be morning.

So this is the scene where
the Ravagers start to break up.

A mutiny starts to occur.

That's my brother, Sean Gunn,
who also plays Rocket on set.

He plays Kraglin in this movie,
and he actually

turns in an incredible performance.

I find his performance deeply touching,

and he's great in the movie.

And Chris Sullivan as Taserface,
a real S.O.B.

And then so many of these Ravagers
are friends of mine.

There must be some kind of
peaceful resolution to this.

GUNN: This is really
the beginning of the end.

We see the really bad Ravagers

against the merely bad Ravagers,
and then we have

the moment here with Nebula.

Sort of a Sergio Leone face-off there
with the close-ups of the eyes,

and she strikes him down.

This was a big controversy
around the editing offices,

whether we should keep in that moment
when she spits out the yaro root.

This is one of my favorite shots
in the movie, by the way.

Beautiful, beautiful shot.

(GEORGE HARRISON'S
"MY SWEET LORD" PLAYING)

Yeah, people thought that
maybe we shouldn't have

that joke moment for Nebula,

that we should make her more cool
in that moment,

but I was a big proponent
of leaving the laugh in.

And actually during
our first couple test screenings...

We do test screenings, in which
we show the movie to audiences,

and, you know, they give us scores on,
you know, whether they like the movie

or don't like the movie
and all this stuff.

And that's somewhat helpful,

but what's really helpful
about test screenings is,

you see what people understand,
what they don't understand.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

Here we have George Harrison's
My Sweet Lord playing

during the revelation of Ego's planet,

which we're about to learn
is Ego himself.

He is a living planet,

and this Kurt Russell form
is merely an avatar of that planet.

I feel very lucky that
George Harrison's estate

allowed us to have this song.

He is a Beatie, and this is
one of my favorite albums of all time.

So I think it's... We're really lucky.
It's a beautiful song.

It also speaks to sort of,
you know, Hindu mythology a bit,

and I think that there's a lot of
Hindu mythology, creation myth,

in the story of Ego's coming into being.

It used to be a little bit more
on the nose in earlier drafts,

but this sequence coming up

was one of the most difficult sequences
in the movie.

We didn't cut too much from this film
in terms of entire sequences.

One of the things we cut was
a fountain scene here where they're...

You can see in the deleted scenes.

And this shot, I think here was

one of the last shots
we turned in to the movie.

I'm what's called a Celestial, sweetheart.

GUNN: This is where Peter Quill learns
that he is part god.

And I think this is sort of the change.

This is where Peter Quill
is in the very first stages

of starting to buy into his own ego,

in that there's something important
or better about him than other people.

This is really a story of the seduction
of Peter Quill.

Ego, you know, as we find out,
is a really terrible, terrible guy,

and he is seducing his son

for the purpose of
destroying the universe

and taking over everything
with his own ego.

And, uh...

And he is able to be
seemingly very warm and loving,

but it's questionable about
how warm and loving he really is.

EGO: ...layer by layer...

the very planet you walk on now.

Whoa.

But I wanted more.

GUNN: We spent a lot of time
working on these shots, which are...

I think of them as giant, sort of,
Hummel figurines,

Jeff Koons-inspired artwork,
porcelain statues.

I described it to Chris Townsend,
our visual effects supervisor,

as stations of the cross. Sort of.

We went through a bunch of different
visual versions of what this could be,

and we weren't happy with them.

We did a moving oil painting,
and that didn't work.

We did these shifting sand sculptures,
and that didn't work.

And, you know, it was difficult

because we just didn't know
what would be the best.

Here we have one of my favorite Dave
Bautista moments in the whole movie,

which is him talking about Ego's penis.

And, in a moment, he gives
a nice little look to Ego's penis,

which I laughed hysterically
when he did it.

Which is coming up, right there.

(CHUCKLES) I think that's one of
my favorite little moments.

...and all the accompanying junk.

I wanted to experience
what it truly meant to be human...

GUNN: This moment here is
the ship taking off of Ego's planet.

You know, basically we learn
that Ego is a brain

that was left out in space,
and he sought...

That's my niece, Grace,
as a statue, which is pretty cool.

He started out
as this brain floating in space,

and we learn that he was able,
over billions of years,

to learn how to control
the molecules around him,

where he built a body
which was the planet.

And the planet existed
and was completely alone,

so, through that,
he built another type of life,

this form that we see now
as Kurt Russell.

And he went off
in search of meaning and life,

and when he went and he found life,
we find it didn't soothe him at all.

It wasn't what he wanted.

He found out in many ways
that he was a predator,

that he was not who he says he is now,

which is a loving father
towards Peter Quill.

In earlier versions of
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Two

I had Star-Lord

much more willing to buy into
Ego's line of thinking.

For instance, the David Hasselhoff
scene in the forest,

I had Gamora going,
"I don't believe any of this."

And Quill saying,
"No, you have to believe me."

I found a great jump forward
in storytelling

came when I shifted that story,

so that instead of having it be
that Gamora was the cynical one,

Quill was the cynical one.

And she was the one
that had to talk him into going.

And I thought that served
a couple of purposes.

Number one, it served the purpose
that we see this deepening relationship

between Gamora and Peter Quill,

that she really cares about him,
and they've developed a friendship,

which is deeper than
just a love relationship.

Although there's
some romance within it as well

she's definitely not comfortable with,

and he is, you know, very desirous of.

So it showed that she had come
a certain amount of ways with that.

But also, I think it does the opposite
of what you think it would do.

Because Peter Quill
is very cynical about his father,

and, you know,
to an audience member,

I think they see that
he's cynical about his father.

And so that is the typical
father-son story that you see in movies

where they would come together,

and you would think that Ego ends up
being a good father.

And that's what a lot of people think

when they're watching the movie
early on.

When it used to be
that Peter Quill thought

that his father was great
from the beginning,

then you expect the opposite
to happen because it's a story,

and it's going to have
pivots and switches.

And you're not going to know
what's going to happen.

So I thought that was
a big move forward for us.

Because you're weak.

-(GRUNTS)
-(ALL CHEERING)

GUNN: Here we have the Ravagers
absolutely, brutally beating up

Yondu and Rocket.

And we end up having
a very comedic scene,

one of the more comedic scenes
in the movie,

where there's a play
on Taserface's name.

Taserface is, of course,
a pretty important character

in the Guardians of the Galaxy
universe in the Marvel comics.

He's actually a bad guy
who's taken rather seriously.

And when I first got the job for
Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume One,

I kidded around on Facebook

that I was going to make
Taserface the bad guy,

and it was a joke
because I thought he was goofy.

So that's sort of a nod to the real
Guardians fans of taking Taserface

and actually making him an important
character in the Guardians comics.

But no one thinks his name
is a good name.

I think probably the Ravagers

have been talking behind his back
for many years

about what a stupid name
"Taserface" is.

They all think it's ridiculous.

But he doesn't realize it

because he is, at the end of the day,
an oaf, a sort of fool.

And Rocket plays him
like a fiddle here.

His whole thing
is to not get Yondu killed.

And here we see
a sort of heroism of Rocket

as he saves Yondu's life,
who's about to get killed

by all of this nonsense of appealing

to the crowd of making jokes.

And then we see here
another side of Rocket

where we realize all along
that he really just is drawing him in,

and he doesn't care about him,

and I don't even know if Rocket cares

that much about dying
at a certain point.

He is a sad and lonely character.

I think in this movie we get to see
that a little more deeply,

that he's a deeply injured,
damaged soul

who has never known tenderness,
he's never known love,

and he's never known affection.

And so when he starts to become
friends with the Guardians,

as he did in Volume One
and going into this movie,

he becomes a real jerk.
He becomes an ass.

He's not able to deal with the intimacy
or the tenderness of friendship,

and so he pushes them away
in a very harsh way.

And that truly is, in many ways,
the heart of this story,

even as much as the father-son story,

or as much as
the Nebula-Gamora story,

which we're about to hear here
in a second.

This is a scene that ends up being

a funny scene between
Kraglin and Nebula.

But really what it is, is giving us
some background on Nebula,

and who she is
and where she comes from.

And I think for the first time
we start to say,

"Oh, wow. She is not...

"Maybe there's a little bit more
to her than we thought."

And we discover that

she was forced to battle her sister

throughout her entire life
as a young child,

and Gamora always won.

She was the younger sister.
She was the weaker sister.

And every time she lost,

Thanos would replace a piece of her

with some types of bionics
or machinery,

so that she became less and less
and less human as time went on.

And the reason
she became less human

is because her sister
was brutally beating her,

basically, seemingly without caring.

So that's what's caused

this incredible anger in her
towards Gamora,

and towards Thanos, of course,
who she also hates,

more so than Gamora does even.

ANYWAYS, happy trails.

GUNN: Here we have the Meredith Quill
statue, looking quite pretty and simple.

And we have probably
the most dramatic scene

that we've ever shot in a Guardians film.

It's pretty much straight drama
between Peter Quill and his father

where he confronts him
on what a terrible father he is,

who left him and, uh,

you know, left his mother,
who had brain cancer,

and sent a pirate to come pick him up
and deliver him to him for money.

And that's the heart of the story.

Now, one of the things
I think in retrospect

watching this scene is that

Kurt Russell's playing Ego,
and he's lying.

I don't think that most of this is true.

He has done this to countless children.

And I do think that Ego, perhaps,
had a special love for Meredith Quill.

But I also think that
he has done this many, many times.

And he is absolutely full of it
when he talks about this,

and he's seducing his son.

He's bringing him in because he wants
to use his power for his own purposes,

and what he's doing is pretty evil.

This is Animal Logic,
who did the effects in this scene.

This is Maxfield Parrish-inspired.

I wanted to create this incredibly lush,

beautiful world that was also very alien.

And Maxfieid Parrish is definitely
the key influence on this scene

as well as many
of the exterior Ego scenes.

Here's where Peter Quill learns
that he has some power.

He's been basically the weakling
in the Guardians of the Galaxy,

who's just a human being

who's kind of good with guns
and good with his charm,

but he doesn't have
any special powers.

He's not strong like Drax or Gamora.

He doesn't have
the incredible intelligence of Rocket.

He can't stretch like Baby Groot.

He discovers here
something about himself

that he thinks he's special.

And even more special
than the other characters.

And then he receives here the moment
between he and his father,

in a somewhat outlandish way,
of space catch. (CHUCKLES)

Which he talked about
earlier in the movie

that he wanted to be off,
like the other kids,

playing catch with their dads,
and he never got that.

And again, I think Ego's
feeding right into

what Peter Quill most wants
in his heart, and this is it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Great score by Tyler Bates.
You know, wonderful father-son theme.

I think that one of the interesting things
we did with the score here

is we created this father-son theme
that we hear playing throughout

when Peter Quill is
touched by his father.

And yet it plays out
at the end with Yondu.

That's when the father-son theme
really comes into play

because he is the true father,
and Ego is the fake father.

Pom Klementieff.

We shot this on her first day
of shooting, I believe,

and she's incredible in this scene.

And there was a difficult cut
in this scene.

This is many people's favorite scene in
the movie because of the emotion in it.

And when Pom touches Drax...

And again, we have a character here
who we're getting to know better.

He's a doofus.

And he obviously has a difficult time

relating to other people
and talking to other people.

He's calling Mantis "ugly."

We later learn the reason
he doesn't like Mantis

is because she's too skinny.

Something we talk about a lot is that

Drax likes
incredibly overweight women,

and that's what he's attracted to.

But here in this moment,
we have this guy

who's a goofy character.
He's awful silly.

And we see at the heart of him
is something really, horrifyingly sad.

He's lost the woman he loved.
He's lost his daughter. They're dead.

And now, Mantis is experiencing
all the emotion.

Pom Klementieff, in that moment,
had a speech that she had given

that was basically saying,

"I have never experienced love

"like the love between
you and your friends.

"It, you know, both hurts
and soothes the soul."

And it was a beautiful speech.

But when I cut it out of the moment,

I found that the moment
was more potent,

that we felt everything she was saying

just by seeing her face
and seeing the two of them.

Him sitting there stoically

and her sitting there
completely emotionally,

it was more powerful.

What are you talking about?

GAMORA: Mantis...

can you show us where we'll be staying?

Why are there no other beings
on this planet?

GUNN: This scene was
a reshoot actually.

We shot it later,

to, sort of, give us
a little forward momentum

to explain Gamora's shift
between the earlier scene,

where she is telling Peter Quill
that he should go see his father,

and in the scene
that's coming up pretty soon,

where she is telling Peter Quill

that there's something
not right about this place,

that she doesn't believe it.

So we shot that later in post-production

to sort of fill in the blanks
of what was happening there.

Because, to me,
Gamora looked a little bit crazy.

Which she is, but not that crazy.

Hey, tell the other guys we said...

"Hi," Taserface!

(SIGHS)

GU N N: Particularly funny line here of
Steve Agee, as Gef the Ravager,

saying he's going to
smash it with a rock.

'Cause I was saying earlier,
Steve Agee is one of my best friends.

He's part of this little group
of guys I have.

And if you come
to any party at my house,

and you're all invited, of course,

you'll see Steve Agee there,

Jimmy Urine,
Michael Rocker, Sean Gunn.

You know... (CHUCKLES)

These are all the guys that are
my buddies that are in the movie.

...all I needed to do
was adhere to the code.

GUNN: We learn a little bit more
about Rocker through this scene.

This scene was tough
because it is a talking scene

among a lot of other
talking scenes in the movie.

And again, this movie
is a character-based film.

And in many ways,
it is an independent film

with the spectacle all around it,
and there's talking in it.

And we're getting to know
these characters better.

We're getting to learn who they are,

but there's a center to the movie
where it's a lot of talking.

And I feel like that's something
that adds to the film,

that makes it different,
and makes it beautiful.

We have to pay attention
for it really to fully come together,

and it all makes everything else pay off.

But this moment between
Rocket and Yondu is important, I think.

We see a moment earlier,
where Rocket looks at Yondu

and we see Rocket
has a moment of compassion for him.

It actually reminds me
a little bit, in the first movie,

when we see Peter Quill
looking at Rocket's back,

and he has a moment
of compassion for him.

And Rocket's back is all scarred
and filled with, you know, electronics,

(STAMMERS) and he feels
for the little creature.

And I think that's true here with Rocket,

but the difference is that the minute
Rocket feels that compassion,

he calls him a "drama queen."
He starts to be snarky.

ALL: (CHANTING)
Mascot, mascot, mascot...

GUNN: This shot was difficult

because we actually had to
build up the entire stage,

so that we could get inside of the stage

to shoot this shot
revolving around Baby Groot.

And, of course, when we're shooting it,
there is no Baby Groot there.

That's my friend Evan Jones,

pouring nothing onto nothing

that we turn into Baby Groot
by Framestore.

This entire scene was a question about

how rough they should get
with Baby Groot,

because they kick him here,
which was definitely gonna happen.

And then there was some talk about

whether we should keep in
this curb stomp

because it is particularly harsh.

But Baby Groot is about to
brutally murder that guy,

so we figured we'd leave it in.

Come here.

GUNN: This is one of the more
well-known sequences in the movie.

It was one of the scenes that we cut
and finished very early on

because we showed part of it
at San Diego Comic-Con in 2016.

Baby Groot is probably at his
very best here in the whole movie.

They did a remarkable job, Framestore,
with his animation in this sequence,

and Rocket as well.
He looks incredibly real.

But this is one of the more straight-up
comedic scenes in the movie,

but the little details of It
are really what worked so well to me.

This smile by Rocket,
where he's not really smiling.

There's an Easter egg.
That's a character named...

I don't know what the stuffed animal is,

but he's a character
that I have on my Snapchat.

A lot of stories about him.

And he's making his appearance,
that little stuffed animal thing.

And people were excited.

My Snapchat followers
were very excited

about his appearance
in the movie.

(RAVAGERS SNORING)

GUNN". It was hard to make
space underpants actually.

We didn't want to make them look
too much like Earth underpants,

so they had to take the fly out,

but yet still look like underpants.

So what are space underpants?

And I guess that
they just don't have a fly.

There's an orloni. That's the name
of that animal, and we use them a lot.

Those are the things that
Peter Quill is kicking

at the beginning of the first movie.

They are sort of like...

They're very much like interstellar rats.

They show up everywhere.
They breed incredibly easy.

And they're even on planets
like the Sovereign,

which are pretty clean planets.

So they're everywhere,

and they're definitely on Ravager ships
in droves, most likely.

(LAUGHING)

That's a desk.

GUNN: This scene was
pretty easy to shoot.

We shot most of the movie...
Most of these shots aren't moving,

but if you see, there's a lot more
moving shots in this film

than there were in the first film.

And part of that is because

I allowed myself to take a little bit
more time to shoot the movie,

and part of it is because
we used a rig called Stable Eye,

which is like a combination between
a dolly and a Steadicam.

And it's a fun rig to move around.

I'm talking about this rig in a scene
where it doesn't exist.

What? No!

He thinks you want him
to wear it as a hat.

GU N N: This little moment between
Rocket and Groot

talking about the hats
and why he hates hats

is one of my favorites
because (CHUCKLES)

he doesn't like hats because,

you know, if you look at someone
from a distance with a hat,

you don't know if it's a hat
or a part of his head.

I don't know why that makes
Baby Groot so furious,

but for some reason that angers him.

And there's a lot of things that,
you know, make Baby Groot furious.

(BURPS)

KRAGLINI That ain't it.

GUNN: Here we have a nice little bit
with Sean Gunn,

proving that maybe he's not
as bad as he came out to be,

and he's always been noncommittal
about the mutiny,

so I don't think it's too big
of a surprise that he's made a turn.

Get the third quadrant ready for release.

GU N N: My direction for Baby Groot
in this scene was,

"You know when you see a baby
in a movie who's looking around,

"and he obviously doesn't know
he's being filmed?"

I wanted him to be like that.

He's looking around
as if he's just a baby being held

and not really aware of acting.

Here we have Jay and The Americans'
Come a Little Bit Closer.

I believe it's the oldest song, maybe.

It's one of the two or three
oldest songs that we've ever...

One of the two oldest songs
that we've ever used

in a Guardians movie, from the '60s.

But I think it fits the scene really well.

It was one of the earlier scenes
I had music for.

(JAY & THE AMERICANS' "COME
A LITTLE BIT CLOSER" PLAYING)

The arrow. This sequence
took a long time to finish,

but also was something that was

very carefully planned out
and storyboarded,

and it's remained
almost exactly the same

from the moment I first drew
those shots.

There are a couple scenes in the movie
that were drawn more than written,

and this is one of them.

The other one is the battle
between Gamora and Nebula,

which was drawn before it was written.

Here we have the callback
to the first movie

with the guys walking
down the hallway

and a little gangster

Baby Groot.

These are all incredibly
complex shots.

These took a long time to shoot.

This is all shot mostly
with the Phantom camera,

so that we can slow down
to incredibly slow speeds,

and then ramp up and kind of move
between those different speeds.

That overhead shot there
was difficult to get.

It's also difficult to get...

Here's a variated speed shot where

people are falling
at a much slower speed

than Yondu is walking.

That's Richard Christy
from The Howard Stem Show

who says, "Down there."
He's been a friend of mine for a while.

This is probably the second-most
complicated shot in the movie,

after the opening dance sequence.

And again, variated speeds,
many, many, many different layers

that we shot of these guys falling
and put on top of each other.

They're walking
at a much more quick rate,

but still in slow motion than
the people are falling around them.

It's incredibly complex shots,
the "It's Raining Men" shots.

One of the crowd-pleasing moments
here where Baby Groot kills Retch.

(GROANS)

-(YELLING)
-(SCREAMING)

GUNN: And also, I think,
is a little bit, you know...

Some people,
when they first saw Baby Groot,

they thought we were going to
over-cute-ize him,

and, you know, it's hard for him
not to be over-cute-ized.

"He's a living emoji" is one of the ways
I first described him

when we were designing him,
and I think that...

(STAMMERS)
You know, he's not just cute.

There's a sort of harsher side
to Baby Groot.

My friend Steve Agee.

We shot a post-credits scene, actually,

with Steve Agee there,
who gets killed, as Gef the Ravager.

We actually shot a post-credits scene

where Mantis and Gamora are talking

on the quadrant
at the end of the movie,

and they hear a screaming
somewhere in the distance,

and then we cut to where we push in

and Steve Agee
is still down there alive,

very wounded but screaming.

You know, and it just ended up
not making much sense.

The callback
was too small of a moment.

But I would say, in the future,
there's always a possibility

that Gef the Ravager
has survived all of this

and is still somewhere on
the Guardians' ship, hiding from them.

(WHISTLES)

(WHISTLES)

-(GAsPs)
"(LAUGHS)

GUNN". I like that moment
where Rocket says,

"You blew up the whole ship,"
and Baby Groot smiles.

Now, as you see, Yondu has
a huge fin in these sequences now,

which is a callback to the comics.
It's funny.

I never know what comics fans
are gonna get upset about,

and I took a lot of leeway
with these characters

when I started doing Guardians
of the Galaxy: Volume One.

Drax's personality became completely
different than it was in the comics.

Groot became an innocent,
which he wasn't in the comics.

Rocket is somewhat similar,

but he's a lot nastier in the movies
than he was originally in the comics.

And all of these different elements
of these characters

I took and changed.

I changed Nebula.
I changed, of course, Yondu.

Yondu became a space-pirate

and not a sort of
a Native American-inspired

spiritual warrior that he is
in the comics.

But people very rarely get upset
about any of that stuff.

It seemed like the one thing
that people got upset about

was Y0ndu's small fin.

That they somehow thought it was
important that Yondu had a big fin.

I don't understand
what comics fans get upset about

over something else
that they don't get upset about.

That something so sort of
just physical and small

would be the thing
they'd get upset about, but they did,

and so, in a nod to the fans,
who I'm appreciative towards,

we gave them the big fin.

And now we're going to
the jump scene

where Rocket
is making them go to Ego.

Now, Ego is incredibly far away,

so he's gotta go through way more
jump points than is healthy,

but he was trying to sneak it in

before Kraglin and Yondu
could do anything about it.

But now he's screwed because
they're gonna go through this

incredibly torturous thing

where their faces are distorted,
and they become really goofy.

It's sort of a Large Marge moment.

That shot in particular,
of Yondu with his big, open mouth,

makes me laugh so hard
every time I see it.

I love that sequence, it's funny,

and it's a lot of fun.

I think there were two scenes
that were the hardest to shoot,

when people ask me, "What scenes
were the hardest to shoot?"

One of them was this scene,

and the other one is the one
coming up with Yondu and Rocket.

And the reason is, is because
they're very intimate scenes

between two characters,

and I had to really
keep shooting and shooting,

and pushing and pushing.

I think one of the roles of a director

is really to push people further
than they think they can go.

And on this day, I really,
especially on the inside stuff,

I incredibly exhausted Chris and Zoe.

I kept pushing them and
making them do it again and again

until I got the performance I wanted.

You know, it's like when you have
a physical trainer in the gym,

and they push you to do one final rep
beyond what you think you can do,

and then they keep doing that
and doing that and doing that.

That's one of the things I see
as my role as a director.

Here we have the Steadicam
moving around the two,

and you see it's a little bit
of a different movement than...

I'm sorry, not the Steadicam,
the Stabileye moving around them,

and it's a tittie bit
of a different movement

than a Steadicam or a dolly.

But that's, I think, my job as a director,

is to push people beyond
where they think they can go.

So when someone's
working on a costume design

and they keep bringing it back,

I'll keep making them do it
again and again and again

until it's the best
it can possibly be, you know.

I think that's
what Kevin Feige does with me

when I'm making this movie.

People ask, "What's your collaboration
with Kevin Feige like?"

And I think that he is someone
who pushes me

beyond where I wanna be pushed,

and we finish a cut of the movie,
and it's great,

and the audiences love it
that watch it in the screen test,

and Kevin says to me,

"Well, maybe there's somethin' more
you can do here in the middle."

And I think, "Oh, God, I don't want to.

"It's perfect and I'm tired,
and I don't wanna make any changes."

And yet, I go, and I look,
and I see what I can do differently,

and then I make some changes

because, at the end of the day,
I'll do whatever I can

to make these movies
as good as they can possibly be.

I'm only half human, remember?

That's the half I'm worried about.

Oh, I get it. You're jealous...

because I'm part-god...

GUNN". I love this scene, and I love
the way the camera moves in it.

I love the way the two actors are in it.

I love the fact that it, again, combines

humor with real dramatic stakes
between the two of them.

And you see that
how Gamora is closed off to him,

but also how he's getting overtaken
with this sort of ego

and pushing her away.

This moment from Zoe is fantastic,
you know, where he says...

I finally found my family.
Don't you understand that?

I thought you already had.

GU N N: Yeah,
"I thought you already had."

I love that moment.

This next sequence
is one of my favorites in the movie.

You'll notice it has no music,

which is unusual for
a Guardians of the Galaxy scene

because we really chock it full of
both soundtrack and score.

But, in this one, I really wanted
the sound to be a big part of it.

This is what we called
the North by Northwest scene

because it's definitely inspired
by the North by Northwest movie

directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in which
the crop duster attacks Cary Grant,

and, in this case, the crop duster
is an M-ship driven by Nebula

and Cary Grant is Zoe Saldana.

And after this it becomes
something much more extreme

than is in North by Northwest.

The chase keeps going on,

and Cary Grant really didn't have
a chance against the crop duster,

but Gamora,
well, she's a different story.

She has a little bit more of a chance
against an M-ship than Cary Grant did,

although it's still not really
a fair fight.

Psychopath!

GUNN: The other thing that inspired me
in this sequence was

Spy vs. Spy, the comic strip

where the two spies are fighting
and one gets one-up,

and then the other one gets one-up,
and the other one gets one-up,

and you see that
the power position shifts

a couple of times throughout this fight.

I also thought one of the main
relationships in this movie,

in both movies, is the relationship
between Gamora and Nebula,

and their sisterhood,
and how that manifests itself.

And this physically combative scene,

I think, is pretty accurate representation
of what exists internally

in many siblings' lives
and in their relationships.

This need to one-up one another,

this unspoken need
to vanquish the other.

And, uh, I've seen a lot of siblings
who don't get along

as well as my siblings and I get along.

And this is that relationship.

Luckily, Sean and I don't shoot
giant guns at each other

or try to mow each other down
with spaceships

because that would be really terrible.

And I definitely would never have cast
him as Kraglin, if that ever happened,

if he ever chased me with a spaceship.

I also think this scene is very important,
as I talked about a little bit earlier,

because we learn that this relationship
is not what we thought it was.

We thought of Nebula as the villain
and Gamora as the hero.

And in this scene,
when Nebula opens up,

we learn that, I think, historically,

Gamora is the villain
and Nebula was the innocent.

I think that they came together
as little children.

They were both adopted by Thanos.

Gamora was older and tougher,

and Nebula looked up to her,
and she loved her,

and she wanted the love of her sister.

And that's really all she wanted,

and instead Gamora just
beat the crap out of her regularly.

And Gamora was into being a warrior,
and Gamora was into being strong.

And she didn't have much feeling
for anyone else.

And the more sensitive
of the two sisters is not Gamora.

The more naturally sensitive
of the two sisters is Nebula,

and it is that sensitivity

which has caused her to become
so incredibly mean.

Because she needs to,
because otherwise,

life is just too harsh, and too tender,
and hurts too bad.

I think Karen Gillan
is just marvelous in this scene.

It was incredibly moving to see on set.

I really loved her, and she was great
in the fight sequence, as well.

She's a marvelous person.

And I'm glad to see

how much attention she has gotten
for this role because she really is great,

and I think in the first movie
her role was slight.

Karen came in for the first time
to meet with me

about Guardians of the Galaxy,
on the first movie,

and I showed her
the designs of Nebula, and I said,

"Listen, you know,
it's not that big of a role.

"She only has a few lines
and a fight scene in this movie.

"It's not a huge role.

"But my plan is that Nebula becomes
a Guardian of the Galaxy,

"and that's where this is going.

"She isn't that big now, but she's going
to become a Guardian of the Galaxy."

And a lot of times people tell you this,
and it's not true.

Or I'll tell people things like that,
or I hope that's where things are going,

and things don't work out exactly
like you hope they do

because the story is always
the master of itself,

and when you're writing a story,
you have to really listen to the truth

of what the story is and where it goes.

And sometimes it doesn't go
where you expect.

It goes in some place new and
more magical, and more interesting.

But in this case, I was very happy

that Nebula ended up being

such an important part
of Guardians of the Galaxy.

And I think now is as important a part

of the Guardians of the Galaxy
as Gamora is.

...you listening to this song.

- You know...
- Brandy?

By Looking Glass?

(CHUCKLES) A favorite of your mom's.

GUNN: Brandy,
by the band Looking Glass,

has been one of my favorite songs
for a long time.

And it's embarrassing and maybe not
regular for a director's commentary,

but it's very true
that when I was a young man,

I was in love with this woman,

and there was something about it
that maybe wasn't working out right.

I was still living in St. Louis.
I was going to Saint Louis University,

and I spent part of the night
with this woman,

and then I went to drive home,
and when I got into my car,

oldies radio was on.

I liked to listen to oldies radio

because radio in St. Louis
at the time was not so great.

And the song Brandy came on,
and I heard the lyrics for the first time.

I heard what it was about.

And I was struck
with this incredible sadness

because I related to the song,
I related to the story of the sailor.

And, yes, I don't know
if it's sappy or not,

but I absolutely related to the song.

And it spoke to my own life

that I was not going to stay in St. Louis.

I was not going to
stay with this woman.

My love was the sea,
and I needed to go out,

and I needed to follow my dreams
and do what I needed to do

within the world of entertainment.

And I always related to that song,

and it's always sort of haunted me
in the same way

that I, for some reason,

am not allowed the pleasures
that other people have

because I've committed my life
to a life of filmmaking.

And I'm trying to combat
some of that in my life.

I'm trying to be a person
who allows love into my life,

that allows friendship,

and that I'm able to
have fun sometimes

and not everything
about my life is work.

And not everything about my life
is just making movies.

It's a personal struggle for me.

So I relate to that song,
and I relate to that conversation

between Peter Quill and his father.

Not in terms of being a god,

(CHUCKLES) but just in terms of
being someone who has a calling.

And I do believe I have a calling.

I believe that very much,

and it's important to me,
and it's important to why I do what I do.

I'm sorry.

But I like a woman
with some meat on her bones.

What?

I tried to let you down easily
by telling you I found you disgusting.

No, that's not what I...

(RETCHING)

What are you doing?

I'm imagining being with you physically.

Drax...

I don't like you like that.

GUNN: I love this scene between
Dave and Mantis. (CHUCKLES)

That moment where Dave says,
"No need to get personal."

That was not in the script.

That was something I thought of

while Dave was doing
his vomiting thing,

and you know, he, uh...

And, you know, he turned to her...

(CHUCKLES) And I thought of it
when I was sitting at the monitor,

and I went in and told him to say that,

and it made me laugh pretty hard
when he did.

I think that that was a scene that we
had that we deleted from the last movie

where Bautista was looking at
this incredibly beautiful actress

and talking about
how she made him want to vomit.

I thought it was funny,
but it didn't belong in the movie,

and so we cut it.

But I always liked the joke,

and I liked the through line
of Bautista, or Drax.

Sorry, I call them often
by their actor names.

Of Drax being disgusted
by beautiful women,

and that's something
that he doesn't find appealing.

...disappointing.

And that is when I came...

GUNN: You know, this is probably
one of the darker moments

in any Marvel movie ever.

It's a moment in which we really see

this whole sequence,
how incredibly dark Ego is.

And we learn that
what Ego has been doing

is that he has been looking for a way
to take over the universe,

and that is his meaning,
that is his purpose.

His purpose is to take over everything

in the same way
our egos can take over

everything around us
and destroy everything.

That's what the story is about.
It's very simply about ego.

It's not that complicated.

And here we have Peter Quill
looking into that moment,

in a wonderful acting moment
by Chris Pratt.

I just think he's great in that shot.

And the women discover the skulls.

And these are all the skulls
of Ego's children,

and if you look closely in those skulls,

you'll see some pretty,
pretty cool Easter eggs.

(ALL SCREAMING)

G U N N: (CH UCKLES) Another great
moment with Michael Rocker as Yondu.

You know, I was talking earlier...

Here we have the Stan Lee cameo.

Um, Stan Lee is with the Watchers.

A great deal has been made
of this moment, because...

Does it mean that
Stan Lee is a Watcher?

You know, doesn't look like a Watcher.

It looks like he's reporting
to the Watchers,

so who knows what Stan Lee is?

And there's a great vomit moment
by Baby Groot.

I know my roots in B-movies,

and I'm still not unwilling to resort to
the lowest common denominator,

which is a baby tree vomiting.

I talked earlier about the hardest
scenes in the movie to shoot,

and this was the other one, I think,

where I really had to
push Michael Rocker,

who's a close friend of mine,
a very, very close friend of mine.

And I had to push him hard
to do this scene.

I made him go further,
and further, and further.

And I think it ends up being
one of the best scenes in the movie.

This scene was also difficult because,
as you see in some of these shots,

we have Kraglin in the background
and Rocket in the foreground.

As you know, Sean Gunn plays
both of those roles on set,

so I had to shoot the scene first
with Sean acting it out,

and then go put him as Kraglin
in the background.

But because we don't have time...

Normally, when Sean comes on set,
he's wearing this gray suit,

and that's his Rocket uniform
when he's playing Rocket.

Then he's dressed as Kraglin
when he's playing Kraglin.

But, on this day, we didn't have time
to change between those two outfits,

so he would have to crouch
as Rocket on the floor,

and then go play Kraglin
in the background.

So during the first cut of this sequence,

it's changing back and forth between
close-up of Kraglin acting like Rocket

to Kraglin watching acting like Kraglin.

And it was incredibly confusing.

Who are you people?

GUNN: Here we see
Pom Klementieff as Mantis

putting the power of fear
into Zoe Saldana,

who is taken aback by this
and screwed up.

And here, we learn of Ego's plan

and basically of his ego, of him,
Ego, taking over everything.

And Peter Quill is enamored
of this moment.

This is sort of
a Cronenbergian moment

where he pulls out a chunk of himself
and shoves it into the ground

and watches it spread through
the planet like a disease.

EGO: To grow and spread,
covering all...

GUNN: I love this piece of score
by Tyler Bates.

I think it's really amazing.

It harkens back a little bit to
some of the post-rock stuff we did

with the movie Super
that we worked on.

She already told me everything.

I only had one problem.

GUNN: And here we learn the truth
about the children, that it is,

indeed, that he has
simply been procreating

with women all over the universe,

or characters all over the universe,

and putting his progeny into them.

EGO: Out of all my labors...

GUNN: Again, I think the statues here
that we see (CHUCKLES)

are some of my favorite statues

of Kurt Russell sitting
in that woman's arms,

with the horns for eyes.

All those different monsters,

and there's something that looks
almost exactly like a turtle up there.

So it means Kurt Russell
made love to a turtle

and created a turtle baby,

and there's a couple of other
little Easter eggs in there.

But I think that those statues
are there for the purpose of Quill.

Everything he does
is for the purpose of Quill,

and I think in reality, probably,

Ego has different forms he takes
besides Kurt Russell.

When he goes to the turtle planet,
he's actually a turtle.

When he goes to the woman
with horns for eyes' planet,

he's actually a man
with horns for eyes,

that he changes his shape
according to what planet he is.

He changes his physiology,

so that he's able to procreate
with each of those different species.

You are not friends.

You're right.

We're family.

We leave no one behind.

GUNN: Here we have what I think of
as the Vin Diesel moment.

"We're not friends, we're family."

But, of course, we undercut it with

what he says to Nebula about,
"Except maybe her."

I am truly not alone!

GUNN: I think that there is a sort of...

(SIGHS)

Something in Ego
where he himself, even, is...

Has some...

Part of him wants a friend,

which is what he wants
out of Peter Quill.

But part of him just wants a tool,
so that he can take over the universe.

I don't think the guy
is without wanting company.

He wants company,

and that's what happens
in these following sequences,

is he's hoping
that he will both help him

to take over the universe,
and he will have company.

And here we have the most...

This is the moment, in theaters at least,
when people "Ah!" out loud.

Where Ego admits that he is the one

who put the brain tumor
into Peter's mother.

And the reason for doing this, I think,
is because he did care about her,

and he didn't want the distraction.

And he was committed to his plan.

I think he also did it
to cover his tracks.

I think that's the thing
that breaks through.

It's always interesting, you know,

because we talk about all these
other things that Ego is going to do.

He's going to kill everyone
in the universe.

He's going to kill all of his friends.

And, you know, Quill is not...

He's torn by it,

but he doesn't totally go against it
until the mother thing comes up.

And here we have
one of my favorite moments, of course,

and one of the audience's
favorite moments,

where Zardu Hasselfrau,
AKA David Hasselhoff,

makes an appearance.

And we discover here
that what Ego has been doing is...

Everything he has done,
everything he has crafted,

has been simply to pull in Peter Quill.

He tried to take on the right form.

He liked to try to do what he could do
to take in Peter Quill.

He is simply a being of light.
He is a giant brain.

And he doesn't have any sort of real

compassion, I don't think.

I think that Ego,

and there used to be more of this
early on in the scripts,

but you cut out too much explanation.

I think Ego experiences emotions.

He experiences love.
He experiences compassion.

He experiences sadness.

And all sorts of things.

But he doesn't ever let those things

affect his primary purpose,
his primary choice.

And, I think, in me thinking about that,

I actually have
some admiration for Ego

because he doesn't let his emotions

stop him from doing
what he thinks of as,

I don't know, the right thing.

And I think that that makes him
an interesting character.

He has these emotions,
but he makes another choice.

And he does it here.

We see it in that moment
where he's holding the Walkman.

He's hearing Brandy.

Brandy is bringing back to him
the memories of the love

that he had for Meredith Quill,

that he actually had,
that he actually felt,

but yet he overcame it
and pushed it aside

for the sake of
taking over the universe.

His noble calling, in his own mind.

Here we have DQ.
You know, I got some messages.

You know,
"Oh, I don't know if I, you know,

"want, like, the product placement
with Dairy Queen."

And I'm like,
"It's not product placement!"

That was incredibly important to me.

Dairy Queen was a place
from my childhood

where I loved to go
and eat ice cream cones.

And having something that brought up
those childhood memories for me

at the beginning of the movie,

that so perfectly spoke
to the 1980s for me.

And, at the same time,
had had a change,

but still retained that iconic shape
of the "DQ" over time,

so that we could go back to it today
and see that it was many years later,

in one moment, was what was so
important about Dairy Queen for me,

and why it was in the script
from the beginning,

and why it was a part of the script,

and not something
that we went out and sought

whoever was the highest bidder
as a product placement.

It was about the story,

and that's always true
about these movies.

I will never make product placement

more important
than the story I'm telling. Ever.

That is only an extension...

of his true self.
He will be back soon.

What's Smurfette doing here?

Whatever I need to do to get
a damn ride home.

She tried to murder me!

I saved you, you stupid fox!

He's not a fox.

- I am Groot.
- I'm not...

GUNN: (CHUCKLES)
Here, Baby Groot...

"Raccoon." Whatever.

GUNN: We'd learn that somehow
he's able to correct Rocket

on his pronunciation

of "rabb00n" versus "raccoon"

by simply saying, "I am Groot."

How he does that, I don't know.
I believe that there's some sort of...

Over time, I think that you
start to understand "I am Groot."

I think there's some sort of
psychic connection.

Something in which you understand
what he's saying over time.

And something that
not too many people

have talked about in the movies.

Now, it's getting
way ahead of myself here,

but in the post-credits scene,
we have

Peter Quill talking to a tween Groot,
Adolescent Groot,

and he's understanding
everything he's saying.

So, obviously, over the past five years,
he now understands.

Because that was,

I think that's four or five years
in the future from now

that he understands
what Groot is saying.

That's my freakin' father!

GUNN: There we have, uh...

I love this freaky father,
Kurt Russell, CG],

and I also love this next shot
of the sunlight coming down.

(ALL GRUNT)

GUNN: The thing coming down
over the sunset.

- We should be going up!
- QUILL: We can't!

GUNN: And here we see
the Guardians of the Galaxy

come back together again,

starting to work together,
overcoming their differences,

and doing what they do best,

which is Quill driving,
Rocket manning the guns...

QUILL: Whoo-hoo!

GUNN: (CHUCKLES) Michael Rocker
doing whatever he's doing as Yondu,

working on wires.

Rooker... The two people
who are very, very good on set

of being in a situation

and just pretending like
they're doing something

are Zoe Saldana and Michael Rocker.

When they're sitting at a console,
they're constantly just working on this

whatever stuff they're doing,
and they're really good at it.

I care about the planets,
and the buildings...

and all the animals on the planets.

And the people.

Meh.

The crabby puppy is so cute.
He makes me wanna die!

(SILVER'S "WHAM BAM
SHANG-A-LANG" PLAYING)

(some CONTINUES)

(SINGING ALONG)

GUNN: Here we have Sean singing,
"Soup, soup," to Wham Barn.

Wham Bam is an interesting song
because I had never heard it

before I put it in the movie.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

AYES HA: Pilots...

release envoy units.

Our sensors detect the batteries
are below the surface of the planet.

Dive!

(some CONTINUES)

Um... Captain?

Captain?

(TRANSMISSION BREAKING UP)

GUNN". I love this stuff,
with them working together,

and going through that thing,

and using those lasers to
pinpoint every moment.

And it shows you how good they are
at what they're doing.

So, could you?

A little.

GUNN". Here we have Rocker
sort of laughing at

his ability to make a ball.

This great super power he has,
which is to make a ball.

And he's about to tell him
that he doesn't use the arrow,

you know, he doesn't, you know...

He doesn't think it. He doesn't think it.

He feels it with his heart.
It's something...

He goes from his gut
when he flies that arrow.

He's not thinking.

In fact, I think it's about
clearing his head of space

when he flies that arrow,
in the same way a baseball player

doesn't think about hitting the ball
as it comes towards him.

MANTIS: There.

GUNN: This world is based a lot
on the Mandelbrot an'

of a guy by the name of Hal Tenny.

When we were trying to design what
the interior of Ego's planet looked like,

we brought up
a lot of different references.

We tried a lot of different things

with Scott Chambliss,
our wonderful production designer.

And one of the main things I wanted

in Guardians of the Galaxy:
Volume Two

was a very pulp fiction feel.

I harken back a lot to Flash Gordon,

from the 1980s version especially,

but also the Williamson art
from the comics.

I harken back a lot to
the old Amazing Stories

pulp magazine covers.

I brought up a lot of these references
for our whole team to look at

to create what
the look of this movie was.

I wanted something brashly colorful.

It's '50s and '60s
science-fiction inspired.

But for the interior of the planet,

we needed something
completely unique,

something that we hadn't seen before.

And so we came up with this sort of...

We found this Mandelbrot art online,

which is, you know, an organic,
mathematical way of things growing.

And the best person,
the one who I found the most art by,

is this guy Hal Tenny.
And his stuff is truly beautiful.

And so we hired Hal Tenny

to come in and help us design
the interior of this planet,

and he did a great job for us,
and we're very grateful to him.

We'll have to get out of here fast.

GUNN: In the same way,
on the first movie,

we used an artist
by the name of Chris Foss

who was a famous science-fiction artist

who came to prominence
in the 1970s

and did work on Blade Runner
and Alien

and Jodorowsky's unmade Dune.

And also a lot of novel covers
and things like that,

and he really helped
to strike the center of

what the visual look of
Guardians of the Galaxy is.

One of the first things I do
before I ever write the screenplay

is I write a treatment.

My treatment is just the story
of Guardians of the Galaxy,

but intermingled in that
is what the look is like

of Guardians of the Galaxy.

And I have a lot of photographs in that.

So that treatment's
about 70 pages long,

about 10 or 15 pages
of that are photographs,

or paintings, or pieces of art,
or movie references,

or other things that show us
where we're going as a movie.

Not only in terms of the words
and the story,

but in terms of the visuals
and what that's going to be like.

It's an incredibly important part
of these movies.

And I think one of the reasons people
have loved rewatching these movies,

and this movie in particular,
again and again,

is because the visuals are
something that can carry you so far,

and there's so many little things
you can see in there.

I also think people like to watch them

because you can watch this movie
for Baby Groot.

And you just watch what Baby Groot
does throughout the movie

because he's doing so many
crazy things in the background.

I didn't point it out,
but much earlier in the movie,

when Gamora is
walking by a spaceship,

when they're talking
about trash pandas,

Baby Groot looks up at Gamora,
and he waves at her,

and he's very small in the background.

And it isn't something that I noticed

until I was working on the color timing
of the movie.

I didn't even know because
the point of the shot was Rocket.

Rocket was saying
something in that shot,

and I was always looking at Rocket.

Does Rocket look good?
Is he great?

Is he working?
Is he moving right?

And I didn't even notice
that they had a little Baby Groot

just sort of casually waving at Gamora
as she goes by.

I love the relationships Baby Groot has

with the different characters
in the Guardians.

And I think it's important as well.
I think that you see that

Baby Groot has
a father-son relationship with Rocket,

and Rocket is his father in many ways,

but he also is not always
the most understanding.

But he is pretty loving actually, and
he takes care of him, and he's nice.

But, in this situation, he's upset.

I think a lot of his anger
is more geared towards Peter Quill

for even coming up
with this idea of Baby Groot

saving all of them
by pressing the bomb.

It's probably the most famous scene
in the movie,

is this classic comedic moment
of trying to pick the right button,

and Baby Groot
being a baby, basically,

who can't tell at all
what the right button is.

And then the Scotch tape moment
with Drax.

QUILL: Why did you ask me
if Scotch tape would work,

if you don't have any?

Nobody has any tape!

GUNN: You know, but back to

Baby Groot's relationship
with the different characters,

I think we see that
he has his best relationship

is probably with Gamora.

That's who he really loves,
and he waves at her all the time.

And she's very sweet to him,
and she's kind.

You know, she gets all of the kindness
that the other characters don't get.

And she's very loving
and maternal towards him.

So, his best relationship is with her
and with Rocket.

And then you have Drax,
who he obviously has some sort of,

seemingly, some sort of hatred for,
that he's constantly punching Drax,

and getting angry at Drax,
and beating up Drax.

He beats him up numerous times
throughout the movie

for seemingly no reason whatsoever,
and Drax is mean to him.

He calls him a, you know,
dumber, smaller Groot,

and he gets mad when he dances.
And he doesn't like him.

Yet, at the end of the movie,
what we see is...

We see that the first person he goes to
when he wants to sleep

and when he needs comfort is Drax.

AYESHA: ...that your deaths
are not without purpose.

They will serve as a warning...

to all of those tempted
with betraying us.

Don't screw with...

GUNN: Here we have
the end of Ayesha, basically.

Although it is not the last
we will see of her most likely.

But they do this thing
between the two of them.

You know, one of the sad things
about this movie is, I really think

that Nebula and Yondu
would become pretty close friends.

And it's a shame that...
I think we see the hints of it here.

And then I think of this stuff
as very '70s album cover-type art

with those rays coming out.
There's something very iconic about it.

The colors here and the darks and
the brights in this scene are very cool.

And then we have the relationship
between Peter Quill and Baby Groot,

and Peter Quill ignores Baby Groot
throughout almost the entire movie.

There's almost no relationship
between Peter Quill and Baby Groot.

Until the end.

Now there's one moment in the movie
that's probably been more...

One quote in the movie that's been
more quoted than any other,

and it is basically this moment

where Michael Rocker says,
"I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!"

And it's a great moment. (CHUCKLES)

I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!

GU N N: I think it's a funny moment.

I actually went back and forth a lot

about putting the moment
in the script or not,

but, in the end,
decided to put it in there,

and I'm really happy I did.

Because it was the biggest quote
from the movie.

This shot was incredibly hard.

We used a thing called a Spidercam,
which goes around.

You select all the points ahead of time

of where it goes on these wires,
and it goes in all these crazy places.

And it's a beautiful rig.

And these are some just gigantic shots.

Overall, on Ego's planet
there are over half a trillion polygons.

And it's incredibly complicated sets,

you know, virtual sets, and a lot of this.
You know, this stuff...

I was talking earlier about how

any time you can shoot something
practically, you should,

but a lot of this stuff can't...

You can't shoot that stuff practically
because it's so far away and so huge.

Now, this ground is all practical,
you know.

There's a lot of practical ground,

a lot of practical
set pieces behind them,

but most of it, of course, is CGI.

It's done by the company Weta.

Peter Jackson, you know, company.
And it's, uh...

They did marvelous, marvelous,

incredible, groundbreaking work
for this movie.

And I hope they really
get the acknowledgment for it

that they deserve
because it's completely unique.

And it's lovely, and I just think
they did an amazing job.

-(ALL YELP)
-(SCREAMING)

Gamers“.!

GUNN: And here, we start to really
experience Ego as a living planet.

I think one of the difficult things about
selling this movie to the public

was that we had so many surprises in it,

starting at the, you know,
a third of the way through the film

that we didn't want to give away
the surprises.

So, at the end of the day,
we were selling a film

where we weren't telling them

who the central protagonist was,
which was Ego.

We didn't want to spoil the fact
that Ego was the bad guy.

And not only that,
we weren't able to tell them that,

"Hey, the Guardians fight
a living planet in this movie!"

Which is a pretty big deal.

It's a pretty cool thing to be able to do,

and some of this stuff
with Yondu's just the best.

I just love these shots,
incredibly pulp fiction,

amazing and overwhelming

and really like an Amazing Stories
cover come to life.

And here we see Rocket
using his technology.

He's got little bombs and a shield,

and he's always got something
he pulls out of his utility belt there.

But it goes wrong,
as it often does for Guardians.

So, yeah, I think that
that was, you know,

one of the difficult things
with this movie,

was we couldn't tell people
about the coolest part of it,

which is fighting a planet.

And it has a bit of a slower pace
at the beginning,

and then gets more and more
amped up as we go on,

and I think that, you know,
one of the cool things about it is,

this is a protagonist that
isn't just a guy who's, you know,

trying to take over the universe that
we have no emotional connection to.

This is Peter Quill's father,

and the fact that he's trying to
take over the universe

is really secondary to the fact
that he's killed Peter Quill's mother,

that he's going to kill his friends,
and that he doesn't, you know...

He's betrayed him in a big way.

So the central part of the story
is an emotional one

even with all of the action.

The action is all, you know, in service

of that central emotional story
between the characters.

And that is Why I think that

Marvel Studios has been
so great for me

in allowing me to tell a story like this.

And taking a chance

and really being happy with it
through the whole process.

I have to say, this was by far the most
fluid movie I have ever worked on

because it stayed basically the same
from that first treatment I wrote

all the way through the end.

All of the difficult stuff
was just this gigantic part of it

in getting it right,
and making it look right,

and making it look cool,

and getting the shots
that we wanted to get,

and getting the performances
that we wanted to get.

But the actual creative process
was so easy, really.

(BOTH YELP)

(ROCKET GRUNTING)

G U N N: I like that Kraglin moment
we just saw too,

where Kraglin sort of becomes a hero
and saves Drax.

It's pretty cool.

And a little hint of
I think what's to come

for the character of Kraglin.

(GROANS)

(YELLING IN PAIN)

(ROCKET GROANING)

(GROANING)

(GRUNTS)

GUNN: These shots were very hard.
Those shots were also

incredibly ridiculous-looking
because basically what we...

Oh, I love that shot
with Baby Groot crying. It's so sad.

(STAMMERS) We have...

Nebula and Gamora were holding
on to the sides of this cliff

that we actually built
that had a glow inside of it,

so that we could
reflect the light off of them.

And as they are holding on,
Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan

are holding on to the side of the cliff,

we have two guys in blue outfits
who are rubbing their hands

over their faces and hairs
and backs and sides.

That's my mom and my dad,
Jim and Lee.

There's my brother Patrick,
my sister-in-law Laura...

Basically, I kill my entire family
in this sequence,

and I'll talk more about that
in a second.

Here we go back to Xandar.
We see that we...

This is where we cut most of the stuff
out of the movie that we cut.

We cut some different players in there.

Why are you destroying...

GUNN: Anyway, like I was saying,
we have,

we had these two guys in blue suits

rubbing their hands over Zoe
and Karen as they're kind of moaning,

and it looked incredibly strange,
incredibly strange.

That's my nephew Griffin,
my brother-in-law Alec.

(CHUCKLES) These are all the cameos
of all my people in my family.

My niece Jaden, my nephews
Declan and Mason.

And I murder them all.
I murder every single one of them.

This moment here
was originally going to be

a huge moment
where the walls fall down

and we reveal statues
of these moments from Quill's life.

Now, I don't know if that would've
worked or not, but the truth is,

is I wanted things to get very quiet
for just a moment

because I think he's going internal.

And I think it's important, and I said,

"God, maybe not everything
needs to be huge all time,

"maybe we can just shoot
these small moments from his life

"and have those be what drives him."

That little bit of love.

Kurt Russell asks him,

"What other meaning
does life have to offer?"

And Peter Quill's answer
is resounding.

It's the love he has
for the people in his life.

And that includes Yondu,

who we thought of as a bad guy
for the first movie.

And I think that's important.

And then we have
this incredibly triumphant moment

where he has superpowers!

I mean, he is, you know,
an incredibly powerful being,

and it's driven by something other than
the ego and the smallness

that drives Ego with his powers.

Here we have Grandpa Quill.

There we go,
little Grandpa Quill cameo.

Gregg Henry as Grandpa Quill,
who's driving a van.

We actually shot a scene where
Grandpa Quill saves that woman

from the oncoming wave,
and they get into a car.

But it just was...

We found that audiences were much
more interested in what's going on

with the characters and the threat
to the characters than anything else.

What a beautiful shot there of...
So incredibly pulp science-fiction

with Baby Groot and this giant brain
that's pulsing different colors.

It's just incredible work by the guys.

You know, we had
a lot of different versions of

what Ego looked like at his core.

He was this sort of zygote,
sperm-looking thing for a long time

and eventually I woke up one day,
and I said,

"I think we should just
make him a brain.

"I think it's the most cool,
crazy science-fiction idea."

And it also explains what he is.

That that's his brain. That's his center.

(BOTH GRUNTING)

Incredibly dramatic moments here
with Zoe and Karen

climbing up the side of the cliff...

This is a 100%-digital shot.

We shot those guys flying around a lot,

but this shot
is 100% Weta Digital creating it.

And here we have
one of my favorite scenes.

In this scene is
two of my favorite characters.

And of course, Michael Rocker is,
as I said, a close friend of mine.

We've done, I think,
five movies together,

a web series, a video game,
two reality shows,

and he stops by my house
and eats my food all the time.

And this was him saying goodbye.

And I had a hard time
shooting this scene.

And I had a hard time dealing with
this plot point in particular.

I'm being very honest with you,

I didn't want to kill Yondu in this movie.

I just didn't wanna do it.

And the reason was because

I've had Michael Rooker
in every movie I've ever made,

and I didn't want to
make a movie without him.

I love him. I've come to rely upon him.

I think he's one of the best actors
I've ever known,

and he's an amazing guy,
and a kindred soul and a brother.

And I did not want to
have to make a movie without him.

So as I'm writing the plot and the story,

I think originally there was a moment
in which Yondu sacrificed himself,

but then was saved.

But it created something
that felt to me very false,

very not true,

and, at the end of the day,

my ultimate commitment is to the story.

It's always to the story,

and having the story be
as true as it possibly can be.

And this was a story about a father

and his ultimate love for his son.

And that father is Yondu,
and that son is Peter Quill.

And he doesn't look like a father, and
he certainly wasn't a perfect father.

But he was a father,
and that's what this movie is about.

When I attended the premiere,

I spoke to the audience,
and my parents were in the crowd.

And I made them stand up.

And I said,
"I want everybody here to know that

"these two movies are dedicated
to my mother and my father."

The first movie was really about
a mother and her love for her son.

And it ends with a tape
that she gives him

and speaks to him from beyond.

And this story is about a father,
and his love for his son.

And it's not about
Meredith Quill and Ego.

It's about Meredith Quill
and Yondu Udonta,

and those are the mother and father.
And those are the true fathers.

And I think that that's something,

and one of the reasons why so
many people who have been adopted

or come from different types of families

that aren't considered
your normal family

have written to me about this movie
and how much it means to them.

And I'm glad that could be the case

because it really is something that
is about those people who love us.

But it is also about biological fathers
who we have, who are imperfect.

My own father is imperfect,
but he loved me.

And I always knew that, and that's
the most important thing for me.

And the same thing
is true of my mother.

AnyW8y---

Now we're about to see everything
go really wrong for Ego.

And Baby Groot did his job.

Stop.

GUNN: He destroyed this wonderful
Hal Tenn y artwork.

If you kill me...

you'll be just like everybody else.

GUNN: And we see what it's about
for Peter Quill,

and he says to him, "What's so wrong
with just being a normal person?"

And this is a sacrifice
for Peter Quill as well.

He's sacrificing this power that he has.

And he's giving it up.

And he's giving up immortality
for the sake of those that he loves.

And so there's
a big sacrificial theme here,

both in this movie and the last movie.

Groot sacrificed himself
for his friends.

Peter Quill sacrifices immortality
for his friends.

Yondu Udonta
sacrifices his life for his son.

And it's all about
the deepest kind of love

that can possibly exist.

And, uh, you know...

(STUTTERS) People call this
a comedy, but to me...

It is very funny,
and I know that it's funny,

but it really is mostly about that.

He may have been your father, boy...

GUNN: This scene was
one of the hardest scenes

I've ever had to shoot.

They're hanging from wires
this whole time,

and having to turn in these
incredibly intense performances.

Yondu's smile in this next shot
is just one of my favorite things.

That smile, Yondu's smile,

that's one of my favorite things

Michael Rocker
has ever done on film.

There's something
so incredibly sweet about it.

You don't see him
smile very much in film

unless he's laughing at someone
for something terrible.

And they really gave their all,

Chris Pratt and Michael Rocker,
in this moment.

You'll see some acting from Chris Pratt

that I think is the finest acting
he's ever done on film.

And it's very intense,

and then to think
that he's doing this acting

while he's hanging from wires
in the middle of the soundstage.

And we did have earbuds in,

and we did listen to
this wonderful score by Tyler Bates

that was playing
during this whole time.

So that score really is
what drives this scene.

This scene is completely
intertwined with that score.

And here we have
this wonderful moment

where he touches his son,
and he gives him the love.

I'm getting, uh, sad.

And then Chris really just losing it.

His arms outstretched
and surrendered.

And that's tough for me
because I love the character of Yondu,

but more importantly
I love Michael Rocker in real life,

and it was a very, very, very
hard choice to make.

I just did it because I believe in
the truth of these movies.

Here we have

what I think of as
the Hasselhoff funeral speech,

which is one of those
great moments as a writer

where I didn't know what

Chris Pratt was gonna say
during this speech,

but I woke up one night,
in the middle of the night.

And I rolled over, and I had
this Hasselhoff speech in my head.

I never thought about it
whatsoever beforehand,

and I wrote it down in my phone.

And that's what this speech is.

That exact same speech,

not a word has changed since
that night I wrote it down in my phone.

And that is, uh...

That's what the scene is,

and I'm gonna be honest about this too

because we have this wonderful...

This wonderful, wonderful performance
by Chris Pratt in this scene.

Again, one of the best performances
he's ever done.

But let me tell you,
we shot this scene twice.

I shot Chris's speech twice.

The first time I shot it
I had him give the speech

in a little bit more of a guy
giving the speech at a funeral.

And that night I went home,
and I was like, "I don't think

"Quill is as ravaged as
he would've been by losing his father.

"I think he needs to be
more messed up."

And I went back to Chris, and I said,
"I think we have to reshoot the scene."

And we reshot him giving the speech,

and I'm really, really glad we did that.

I am Groot.

GUNN". I think it's also nice to see

how all of this seems to be
about Peter Quill.

But it's not. It's about Gamora.

And, at the end,
she hears what he says about

"that thing you wanted
is right by your side all along."

And she thinks of her sister,
and what her sister said to her,

and she goes out,
and she gives this speech.

And if you ask me,

what's my very, very,
very favorite thing in the entire movie?

It might just be this moment
coming up in a second,

which was something
that Karen Gillan did

when we were rehearsing,
that I did not ask her to do,

and that I wrote into the script
after we rehearsed it.

And when she did it,

I started crying
in the middle of rehearsal.

And it's this little moment
where they hug,

and we have this wide shot

that was always planned to be that
way, it was already storyboarded.

And then she reaches her hand over,
and just a moment...

You will always be my sister.

GUNN: ...after Gamora
says that to her...

And Nebula reaches her hand,
and she hugs her sister back

for just a moment. (CHUCKLES)

I still get choked up over this stuff.

(CHUCKUNG)

I just love that moment.

That's maybe my favorite thing
in the entire movie.

I think in the first movie

my favorite thing was
Drax petting Rocket,

and I think that's
a very similar moment.

This is this character
who's completely damaged,

probably even more damaged
than Rocket if that's possible,

and she hugs her sister back

for just that split second
of sisterhood, of siblinghood.

KRAGLINI Pete!

Captain found this for you
in a junker shop.

Said you'd come back
to the fold someday.

What is it?

It's called a Zune.

It's what everybody's listening
to on Earth nowadays.

GUNN: People have asked me again,
"Hey, is the Zune product placement?"

And I have to tell them, "No,
it's absolutely not product placement."

We simply have the Zune in there
because I think it's funny...

I think an iPod
would just be too easy to guess.

Having somehow Kraglin. ..

Through a game of interstellar
telephone, Kraglin thinks the Zune

is the most popular device
for listening to music on the Earth,

is a wonderful little moment.

And there's the fact that
Peter Quill thinks 300 songs

is just an amazing amount of songs
that a device can have on it.

I also don't think that Peter Quill
planned on giving that arrow to Kraglin.

I think he felt like he had to give it
to him because he gave him the Zune.

He was gonna keep that arrow
for himself, and he's, like, "Oh."

I wanted to come back to this moment
'cause we talked about it earlier,

that Peter Quill has never paid

any attention
to Groot this whole movie.

He really has
barely ever paid any attention to him.

He's a terrible, terrible father.
He brings him into the battle.

He does all this stuff, and I think
that's what this moment is about.

I think that this moment
is really about...

In the first movie,

we see Peter Quill
listening to the tape from his mom,

and he has
this private moment about him,

about his mother's love for him,
and how she loves him.

And he experiences that.

In this movie,

he thinks he's going to have
that same moment with Yondu,

but, instead, what he has is a moment
where he feels love for his son,

who is Baby Groot.

And that's what the moment is about.
It's not about a selfish moment.

It's a moment about passing it on,
about his love for someone else.

And that's the first time
he's tender with him.

(CHUCKLES) And he's as bad
of a father as Yondu was.

I sent word to Yondu's old Ravager
buddies, and told them what he did.

It's a Ravager funeral.

GUNN: And of course, the fireworks
ending, and the Viking funeral.

The Ravagers giving their respect
to a fallen comrade.

This is another one of
my favorite moments in the movie,

is Sean Gunn's reaction to this.

And in some ways,
this is inspired by Christopher Lloyd

at the end
of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

and their reaction to this.

It's always one of my favorite endings.

The ending to
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

This line by Sylvester Stallone, my...

(CHUCKLES) He said, "How do you
want that delivered, James?"

I said--. I said,
"Did you see the movie Babe?"

And he said, "Yeah!"

We all know
Sylvester Stallone saw Babe.

And I said, "You know where
he says, 'That'll do, pig,' at the end?"

And he's like, "Yeah?"

And I'm like, "This is you saying,
'That'll do, pig.'

"That's what you're saying to Yondu.
You're accepting him."

And he's like, "Got it!"

And he went out there and he killed it.
He just nailed it.

And he's a great guy to work with.

And he stole batteries he didn't need.

GUNN: I love this moment with Rocket
talking about the batteries.

And again talking about this moment,
as I talked about earlier.

At the end of the day, who's the one
that Baby Groot goes to for comfort?

And it's Drax.

And you see that
their, sort of, feisty relationship

throughout the whole movie

is really, you know,
just much different than that.

It's not that at all.

The reason they fight is because
they love each other the most.

(CHUCKLES) Drax loves Baby Groot.
Baby Groot loves Drax.

And then Gamora
admitting her love for Peter Quill.

And we could've done this with a kiss.
We almost did.

But I thought, at the end,
their love is based on friendship.

It's based on something much deeper

than just the romantic
and lustful moment of a kiss.

And it deserves
something different than that,

and that's what that moment is.

On the inside.

GU N N: And a beautiful shot.

Now there's a way

GUNN: And I was very happy that, uh...

This is a moment where Rocket
sees the hints of something beyond.

He's a character who doesn't believe
in any purpose for himself,

or that he was made for any reason
other than the cruelty of other beings.

And I think, in that moment there,

Rocket sees the hints
of something beyond.

Something more than
what he expects out of this life,

and that's why we end on that shot.

Except for this, of course,

which is Kragiin
gaining his superpowers.

He's very bad at the arrow.

I don't think he's learned how to whistle
with either his brain or his heart.

And, of course, goes terribly awry.

People ask you,

"Do you write the post-credit
scenes into the script,

"or do you do them afterwards?"

The answer is
I wrote this one into the script.

I wrote the Elizabeth Debicki,
Adam Warlock one into the script.

And I wrote the Adolescent Groot one
into the script.

The one with Sylvester Stallone
and the other Ravagers

is something I came up with
after shooting.

And I was sitting around one day
and I go, "Oh, my God!

"That would be awesome to be able
to see this other crazier,

"even darker, weirder Expendables
version of the Guardians of the Galaxy."

And have them have their moment.

And perhaps, have that lead
to something else in the MCU,

which we'll see in just a moment.

If you look closely, my father
is credited as "Weird Old Man,"

and my mother is credited
as "Weird Old Man's Mistress."

Which she loves being referred to
as "mistress."

They didn't know that those were
the credits they were gonna get.

You know, it's a shame...

that it took the tragedy of losing Yondu
to bring us all together again.

But I think he'd be proud knowing
that we are back as a team.

I'm in.

Dope.

I miss you guys...

GUNN: That's Kruger, Charlie-27,
Martinex, Mainframe.

And Michelle Yeoh, Ving Rhames...

Ving Rhames, who I worked with
on Dawn of the Dead,

the screenplay I wrote.

Michelle Yeoh is, of course,
a famous Hong Kong movie star.

I'm a huge fan of hers.

And she just happens to be
one of the greatest people I've met.

And she is played in a movie that
was a big inspiration to me early on,

The Heroic Trio.

In fact, Hong Kong movies in general
are a huge influence to me.

They were able to meld genres
in a way that wasn't done before them.

They had the best action
that had ever been done on screen,

especially in the 1990s, during the
golden period of Hong Kong movies.

And they influence me incredibly,
as well as many of those directors.

(PARLIAMENT'S
"FLASHLIGHT" PLAYING)

It's always great
to be at a Marvel movie

because more people
stay for the end credits than any other.

And I think we let it out there that
we had five post-credit scenes.

Why so many post-credit scenes?

I thought it was funny,
and I know people like them.

I just wanted to cram as many in
as I could and keep people around.

We also did a lot with these end credits
by Sarofsky.

We made something much more
visually arresting with the end credits

than are normally done
in the regular crawl

at the end of a Marvel movie.

We wanted to make it something.

There was stuff to watch
throughout the whole thing.

We got
this old album covers inspiration,

the Guardians are
on those old album covers,

and made it look as cool as possible.

I really love it.

Lots of tittie Easter egg moments
with these hidden things

and "I am Groots."

There's Weta.

The guys who did
all the end of the movie stuff.

The interior of Ego's planet.

Rocket in many scenes.

When you see all the people

that have worked countless hours
on this movie,

it's really incredible.

And I'm so grateful
to all of these people

that put their time and their lives
into making this movie.

High Priestess, the Council is waiting.

GUNN: This is actually
my favorite Elizabeth Debicki scene.

I love seeing Ayesha
just start to come unhinged.

There's something going
very wrong with her in this moment.

And we see it happening.

And we see her thirst for revenge,

which leads to her creation

of a very popular Marvel character,

which we're about to see in a second,
the cocoon of Adam Warlock.

One of my favorite characters.

In my original treatment for the movie,

I actually had Adam Warlock
as one of the characters.

She made him early in the film.

But it was one character too many.

There's a lot of characters
already in the movie,

so I needed to lose one,
and I couldn't lose Mantis.

She was incredibly important
to the central story of Ego,

and I kept Mantis and saved
Adam Warlock for a different day.

But he is a character I love.

I love what we did with him
in the treatment.

And I can't wait
to unleash him upon the MCU.

It was also important,
because in the comics...

Here we have the characters dancing,
which is ridiculous.

In the comics, Adam Warlock is
a big part of Infinity Wars.

And as you know, that movie is going
to come out, Avengers: Infinity War.

It's gonna have the Guardians. I'm
an Executive Producer on the movie.

But Adam Warlock was
not gonna be in that movie.

He was never gonna be in that movie.

I didn't want people
to get too excited about

Adam Warlock being a part of that film,

because he's a part
of that storyline in the comics.

But it's gonna change
for the cinematic universe.

It was also a reason I almost
didn't put that post-credit scene in,

but I'm really glad I did,
because I think it's important.

That's Grandpa Quill dancing,
Gregg Henry,

in case you didn't know who that was.

And we have Rocker dancing.

He's a horrible dancer.
Great actor, horrible dancer.

And then we have
Jeff Goldblum dancing,

who will be seen in Thor: Ragnarok.

(CHUCKLES) It's a little weird,
me doing my Baby Groot move.

(THE SNEEPERS
FT. DAVID HASSELHOFF'S

"GUARDIANS INFERNO" PLAYING)

Coming up now,
we have the next post-credit scene,

which is Adolescent Groot.

I think it's important that
people know it's Adolescent Groot.

It's not Teen Groot,
it's more Tween Groot.

And he's a little jerk.

And we get to see him
in his adolescent form.

And we learn one very important thing,

which is that Peter Quill
can now understand Adolescent Groot.

He's been around him.

Also, he's obviously taken on
the role as a father pretty well.

I also think
it's a strangely important moment,

because he says at the end,
"Now I know how Yondu felt."

Which means that
some of Quill's negative view of Yondu

probably came from Quill,
and not from Yondu.

That he wasn't quite as bad
as Quill made him out to be.

Part of him
was just being an adolescent jerk,

and we all know that Quill is stunted.

There's Howard the Duck.

This song is written by me

and Tyler Bates.

It is our first pop song
by our band The Sneepers.

And it is David Hasselhoff here

talking about the Procyon lotor,
which is a raccoon.

It was a lot of fun to make,

and it was a lot of fun to shoot with
David Hasselhoff, who's a great guy.

I just want to thank everybody
who's involved with this movie.

Man, there's so many people
I didn't mention during this process,

but I also didn't mention all of you,
the fans

who actually
sat through me saying this

unless you skip forward,
which is also acceptable.

I love all you guys!

We definitely are Groot.

And I'm so appreciative

to what you guys have given me
over the past few years,

and our band of misfit malcontents,
the Guardians of the Galaxy.

And we'll bring
more to you guys very soon.

Much love,
from here at Burbank, California.