In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, the movie about the talking raccoon battling the cloak-slinging villain, the most comical part of it might actually be the brief introduction to Adam Warlock. This may sound strange to those who only know superheroes from the movies. After all, this kind of thing happens all the time in Marvel movies – Monica Rambeau/Spectrum was a supporting character WandaVisionbut she will receive the highest reckoning The wonders. Dane Whitman/Black Knight was a small player eternalbut is confirmed for a bigger role whenever blade finally happened.
But Gunn’s take on the old Marvel knock off is uniquely adept and insightful. GotG3 omits almost all of the fictional and factual details of Adam’s Marvel Comics character in order to create the emotional connection that has made him so beloved by readers: he is a human of indescribable power who finds where his own decisions fall into place responsibility of his fate. It’s a wise decision, and the right choice, and that Gunn made it, is a testament to his genuine concern for the source material – and more importantly, his understanding that comic book superhero universes are conversations.
In GotGGamora is Gunn’s conversation with Avengers: EndgameThe Russo brothers and Adam Warlock are Gunn’s conversation with the future MCU filmmaker who picks up on Adam’s story. But what’s really remarkable about the Guardians of the Galaxy movies is that they’re arguably the biggest conversation the MCU has ever had with Marvel Comics.
And when movies and comics engage in real dialogue, something good happens.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Origins
Did you know when James Gunn and Nicole Perlman wrote the screenplay for ” Protector of the GalaxyWere you literally the second creative team to work on the concept?
Many of the characters in the MCU version of the Guardians, set decades ago. Groot himself, created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, technically predates the Fantastic Four, albeit barely recognizable. The idea of a team called “The Guardians of the Galaxy” grew out of an idea by Roy Thomas in 1968, which was taken in a completely different direction by Stan Lee, writer Arnold Drake and artist Gene Colan, and it too bears little resemblance the Guardians we know today.
The comic that first set the Guardians of the Galaxy in the continuity of contemporary Marvel comics and not in the distant future, the comic about Peter Quill’s founding of the Guardians, the comic that featured Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Drax and Gamora (not to mention Mantis and Adam) Warlock and Cosmo, the talking Russian space dog, the team’s mainstays, hit shelves in 2008. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning co-wrote Protector of the Galaxy (featuring multiple artists) was only the second comic book series titled Guardians of the Galaxy that Marvel had ever published.
It only lasted 24 issues – a moderate but not breakthrough success – with a small sequel in the 2010s Thanos imperative Miniseries also written by Abnett and Lanning and starring the Guardians. It was a popular new title from a tight creative team; no Marvel Comics pillar indelibly engraved on the house that Spider-Man and the X-Men built.
The last edition of Thanos imperative hit shelves in November 2010. In July 2010, Kevin Feige had spoken vaguely about a Guardians of the Galaxy film. Two years later he revealed Protector of the Galaxy was in production, along with the initial character lineup and concept art of Marvel Studios’ take on the Abnett/Lanning team and look. Six months later, in early 2013, Marvel Comics released the first new product Protector of the Galaxy book in five years.
Written by Marvel Superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis, it featured a team consisting of Starlord (no hyphen in the comics), Gamora, Rocket, Groot, Drax and Iron Man, the face of the MCU, and a first issue of 29 speculator-market-friendly variant covers . There were no fewer than five new ones Protector of the Galaxy Since then No. 1 of four creative teams.
Comics have always spoken to films, but films don’t always speak back
Did you know that there is a clear moment shortly after the release of? Protector of the Galaxy to the cinema if the Marvel Comics version of Nebula looks the same as the movie version? It is not enormously That’s changing, though, but for a character who appeared in about two stories after her big performance The Infinity Sagathe change from “bald lady with a cyborg eye who doesn’t believe in pants” to being guided by the MCU design is very clear.
Gunn’s Guardians isn’t the only place you can find this phenomenon in modern superhero blockbusters (although nothing to the extent of Guardians’ transformation of a one-of-a-kind comic into one of Marvel’s enduring franchises). Ryan Cooglers Black Panther borrowed significant visual elements from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet
Comics have always incorporated the best bits of their adaptations into the main story, whether it’s from other media or just a non-canon comic book story. Always. Superman’s ability to fly, perhaps the most basic and iconic abbreviation for the superhero genre, was actually invented for the second episode of his 1940 radio series, two years after his first comic book appearance.
But even as comics love an idea that doesn’t go broke, eye-rolling often occurs when superhero characters quickly switch to reflect a modern day film adaptation. Nowadays it can be harder to do something like this without breaking the immersion. Minor cosmetic changes are the easiest, like the Batmobile’s sleek shape giving way to the chunky Nolan-era Tumbler. But visual presentation aside, the characters’ incarnations in the film are often so distant from their counterparts that a change to accommodate them is clear in timing and obvious in motivation.
Never say never in the never-ending timeline of a superhero universe, but one of the reasons you don’t see Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker in a Batman comic as something more serious than a cameo or a wink is because the character is actually not apt Enter a larger superhero universe led by multiple creators. A lot of superhero movies don’t mix well with each other, let alone comics.
2014s Protector of the GalaxyOn the other hand, it was an adaptation essentially based on a single comic book, rather than an amalgamation of decades of narrative. It’s not an overhaul or an attempt to “fix” the characters’ comic book championship. It’s a simple retrofit of Abnett and Lanning’s very contemporary Guardians team into the MCU’s conversation, jettisoning the character’s fictional factual details that conflicted with MCU logistics in favor of a compelling and familiar emotional core , overlaid with Gunn’s personal style and humor.
Did you know that in Marvel Comics, Drax was a…? human saxophonist called Arthur Douglas who was on a car trip with family where they happens to see a UFO and this UFO happens being controlled by Thanos who killed them all and then a cosmic guy captured Drax’s soul and embodied him in a Buff alien body for the purpose of kill Thanos? Now you do! But you didn’t do that need to it, and Gunn groked that.
Misfits, spaceships, strange monsters and cosmic megalomaniacs. Abnett and Lanning founded the Guardians, but Gunn’s Guardians ensured that they persisted, first out of pure commercial impulse and then, from 2014, through the same mechanism that all interconnected superhero universes function on: simply telling more stories, relating to the last rhyme
Gunn has so many projects that involve dark or outlandish inversions of the superhero formula that it can obscure the truth. When he sits down to tell a superhero ass story in a superhero ass universe, his work – all three Guardians films, peacemaker Season 1, The Suicide Squad – would make great in-continuity comics (though sometimes only for adults). It’s not just because Gunn loves comics; there are many by filmmakers who love comics. But there are far fewer whose work is as familiar with what actually happens in comics Today.
Gunn doesn’t just love “comics”. He loves Specific Comics, as any glance at his lineup for DC Films’ new roster will tell you. And watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, I had an extremely specific comic thought. When the film’s climax highlighted the primary emotional colors of Gunn’s version of these characters, and then in the closing scenes they were whisked away into a vast and wild universe with untold stories, I thought to myself: He does so like the end of a long-running comic series.
It takes someone who not only loves superhero comics, but also loves the way they talk to each other to understand that it’s not just a creative job, it’s also a managerial job. Part of the job is to maintain the concept you are working with (note: maintenance includes recovery as well as recovery). And renovation), not only for the audience, but also for the artists who come after you.
In the final of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Gunn does the narrative equivalent by wiping down the counters and putting all the chairs on the tables. It’s respectful, it’s professional, it’s modest. It shows a love not only for the genre, but for that shapewhat a conversation is.
Like a seasoned backpacker in a Pennsylvania campground, James Gunn left the Guardians better than he found them – for filmmakers and comic artists alike – just like the best comic artists do.