2 Attachment(s)
James Gunn Didn't Write Guardians of the Galaxy 2 To Set Up Infinity War
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 writer/director James Gunn says that he wrote the movie's script without any instructions from Marvel Studios, and that Nebula's ending just happened to fit well for Avengers: Infinity War. At the end of Guardians 2, Nebula declines an offer to join the team, instead declaring her intention to hunt down and kill Thanos - which neatly dovetails with the start of her arc in Infinity War.
Gunn is currently at the center of a big controversy, after being abruptly ousted from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 following an internet campaign to get him fired for offensive jokes he posted on Twitter between 2008 and 2012. While some have applauded the decision, a petition from fans to reinstate him has so far garnered more than 350,000 signatures, and the Guardians cast recently released an open letter expressing their love and support for Gunn. Now, rumors point to Disney potentially looking to rehire him.
Before all of that happened, however, Gunn took part in a Director's Roundtable for the home video release of Avengers: Infinity War, which is now available on Digital HD. In the special feature, Gunn explains that he wrote the script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 without any instruction from Marvel, emphasizing the creative freedom he was given over the movie:
"I didn't ever have an ending for what Guardians 2 was supposed to be. I didn't have a single story point that was ever discussed with Marvel before I wrote the story. So where that movie ends up, with Nebula going off and doing her thing, that's what I mean by, people, we kind of do our own little thing. We write our own little story and then it goes off to [the Russos]. And I gave these guys a script very, very early on. And they were, like, 'That's perfect, because that works great for us with where Nebula is, what we want to do with the story.' And it goes off."
Following the events of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Nebula and Gamora (who were both raised by Thanos as his "daughters") were still very much at odds for most of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It was revealed that the two of them were forced to brutally fight one another when they were growing up, and that every time Gamora won, Thanos replaced one of Nebula's body parts with machinery. As you can tell from Nebula's character design, Gamora won most of these fights. By the end of the movie the two sisters had resolved their issues, but Nebula still carried a deep hatred for Thanos, and departed with the goal of killing him.
That plan didn't work out. When Gamora finds Nebula again in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos has thwarted the assassination attempt and is keeping Nebula in a state of potential agony, her body parts stretched apart to their breaking point. He uses Nebula as leverage to force Gamora to show him the location of the Soul Stone, and then sacrifices Gamora in exchange for the Stone. Nebula is distraught upon realizing that her sister has been killed, and she also survives Thanos' devastating finger-snap, so she may well be out for revenge again in Avengers 4.
Avengers: Infinity War is now available on Digital HD, and will release on Blu-ray and DVD on August 14th.
Release Date:
. The Avengers 4 / Untitled Avengers Movie (2019) release date: May 03, 2019
