Dave BautistaPhoto: Jeff Spicer (Getty Images)
Another Marvel expresses happiness at being released from the machine. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 marks Dave Bautista’s departure from the MCU, and like his co-star Zoë Saldana, he’s quite happy to wrap up this chapter. After the critically acclaimed Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, Bautista looks forward to making more of what the MCU’s critics would call real cinema.
“I am so grateful to Drax. I love him. But there is a relief [that it’s over]’ the former WWE star tells GQ in a new profile. “It wasn’t all pleasant. It was hard to play that role. The makeup process knocked me out. And I just don’t know if I want Drax to be my legacy – it’s a silly achievement and I want to do more dramatic stuff.”
This is far from the only time Bautista has declared his desire to stretch his acting muscles. “What I really want to do, I like drama. Just regular old drama … Those roles are hard for me to get, but I’m always looking for them,” he said on Michael Rosenbaum’s 2020 Inside Of You podcast. “But I’m limited sometimes . Sometimes it’s really difficult to get people to think outside the box and see someone like me in those roles.”
He’s also shared his disappointment at how skinny the character of Drax was getting, noting in this podcast interview, “The stuff in the first movie that I was looking forward to was the dramatic stuff with Drax talking about his Family right before him was murdered him. Things like that scene, the really hard scene, got cut out. It was cut from the film because it was just kind of slow and dark. But that was the kind of stuff I was really looking forward to.”
Bautista tells GQ he wants to be “a hell of an actor”. A respected actor.” (Not, he says, like his WWE alum Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.) Luckily for him, more directors are giving him a chance to go dark. Speaking about his upcoming role in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock At The Cabin, he told GQ, “This is by far the most I’ve ever spoken in a movie. Just huge pages of monologues. We shot on film, which is very expensive. And we shot on camera, so you don’t have the luxury of editing. It’s your only chance – you need a perfect shot. It’s a lot of pressure. I want to remember my dialogue, but not at the expense of the emotionality of the scene.”
He also says he would work “for damn for free” to become the number one call list for his Dune and Blade Runner 2049 director, Denis Villeneuve. Not just because of the quality of Villeneuve’s projects, but because “I think it allowed me to find out how good I could be,” he says. “He brings out the best in me. He sees me in a different light, sees the performer I want to be. So maybe I can solve the riddle.”