Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Has Less Characters and a Script That Made Chris Pratt Cry

If someone had told me before I saw Guardians of the Galaxy, “You will feel feelings about an angry CGI raccoon,” I would’ve responded with the warranted scoff. But now I know better, and I’m not surprised at all to hear that the sequel focuses more on the characters with a script that brought a tear to Chris Pratt’s eye.

You may have heard that James Gunn just finished the first draft of the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 script…

First draft of #GotG2. Right now I’m flopping around on the finish line retching, trying to get ready for the next stretch.

A photo posted by James Gunn (@jamesgunn) on Jun 2, 2015 at 4:28pm PDT

But he told fans watching on Periscope yesterday that the sequel won’t follow the traditional MORE STUFF! BIGGER EXPLOSIONS! TOO MANY VILLAINS TO MAKE A GOOD MOVIE! format and will instead include fewer characters in an effort to give the main cast more attention. He said (via GamesRadar),

Listen, one of the main things with Guardians of the Galaxy is not to add a bunch of characters, not to make it bigger in that way but to go deeper with the characters. And yeah, there’s going to be the big things we’ve come to expect from those big battles and action sequences and things like that, big colorful locations and beautiful set pieces, and wonderful designs by visual effects artists and all of us, but what really matters to me is going deeper into the characters and getting to know them more emotionally. And I think we have a story that’s really, truly true for everyone and it just happens to be about aliens.

…

There’s just too many characters, so you can’t concentrate on one and really get to know that character. I really want to get to know the characters that we know better, and yeah, we will be introducing a new character…

My biggest gripe with the original was that a lot of character traits and background were exposed just by characters talking about them rather than characters being revealed through action, so I’m pretty excited for a sequel that takes more time to make the characters feel emotionally real. As for that “new character,” Gunn has already alluded to finally revealing Star Lord’s father who was only hinted at in the first film, and Chris Pratt told Digital Spy that the story developments are tear-jerkers:

All I can tell you, because I obviously, I’m not allowed to tell anybody anything, nor would I want to, because it would be a little bit like telling a kid what’s under the tree before Christmas morning. I would encourage people not to poke holes in the paper and peek. Allow yourself the Christmas morning. Don’t ruin it. I will say that [Gunn’s story] pitch and his idea legitimately put tears in my eyes. It is so good, it’s so good. And I cannot wait to get started on it and I cannot wait for people to see what he’s going to pull off with the second movie. It’s so, so big and so good. From what I understand, they were like, heard it at Marvel and they said nothing. They’re like, ‘perfect.’ There was no micromanaging of the idea, they just love it so much they didn’t even have a note for it. It’s going to be remarkable.

I’ll take your word for it, Pratt, but with the movie still in the writing process with a release date of May 5ht, 2017, this is officially the longest Christmas Eve ever.

(via UPROXX, /Film)

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