Impossible, nostalgia and emotion at virtual or phone meetings with James Gunn, Chris Pratt, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn and Kevin Feige to celebrate the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
You stood in front of the camera on the 31st, broadcast the press conference live from Los Angeles or afterwards in telephone interviews with the QMI agency. Because this third volume in the adventures of Starlord (Chris Pratt) and his team of space misfits is, in the words of director James Gunn, the last of a good time.
Production on the feature film has been an arduous one, James Gunn – now the big boss of the DC Universe at Warner Studios – had been fired over former provocative tweets… then reinstated under pressure from fans, a public banter that left both the filmmaker and Kevin Triggered Feige, head of Marvel Studios, has forgotten the time to praise the merits of this disproportionate space opera and almost contagious madness.
The first Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 was a UFO in Planet Marvel. The 122 minutes of thunderous music, insane humor, a dense script, weird and outlandish characters – including a tree who spends his time declaiming “I am Groot” or a raccoon pro of the trigger – still had fans enticed and the Marvel box office saved up to $773.3 million. And among superheroes, a new era had dawned, marked by self-mockery and the escalation of screenplay ease.
“This movie was supposed to be the finale of the story because Guardians of the Galaxy was always planned as a trilogy,” commented Kevin Feige. Our goal has always been to cater to longtime fans of these characters as well as moviegoers who have never heard of them or have only met them through posters and trailers.”
James Gunn didn’t hide the fact that he would miss the happy band. “I’m sad. I really like all the characters. Obviously, I have a special affection for some of them, including Rocket,” he said.
Rocket, the famous talking raccoon and lover of firearms, is the main subject of this feature film with a pharaonic budget of about $ 250 million, about which we will remain silent about any information that is likely to reveal exact elements of the plot. The character, created thanks to the capture of the movements of Sean Gunn – the director’s brother and this time also the voice of young Rocket – and the dubbing of Bradley Cooper, is the result of demonic experiments carried out by the master of evolution , masterfully embodied by the British Chukwudi Iwuji.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MARVEL STUDIOS
Like many superhero film craftsmen – think Kenneth Branagh or Anthony Hopkins at Marvel and Christopher Nolan or Helen Mirren at DC – Chukwudi Iwuji has a classical training.
“Consciously and unconsciously I am the product of my life and my professional experience, especially in the theatre. When I read the script, I was also struck by the musicality of his dialogues, the lyricism of his lyrics and the way he speaks, all of which immediately enriched my education,” emphasized this member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company in the QMI agency .
“The Master of Evolution is a great character. Even if the audience doesn’t realize it, certain scenes forced me to excel physically and vocally, and it is my theatrical training that enabled me to interpret them.
“My first inspiration for working on the character came from the script. Then, as with all my roles, I used my imagination. All of my favorite actors have played villains at some point in their careers, whether we think of Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman or Peter O’Toole. And all those performances are stored somewhere in my brain.”
But Chukwudi Iwuji insisted that “James Gunn had told me from the beginning of the project that even if he was a space villain, I had to ground the master of evolution into reality. For me, that meant I would focus on the fact that he’s scary, that he’s possessed [par son projet], that he is power hungry, that he despises humanity. It is this reasoning that allowed me to say phrases like “We must cremate them all” without any emotion. The master of evolution is doing the right thing, and that scares him.”
If the film is overtly Manichaean – like almost all feature films in the genre – Chukwudi Iwuji is far more nuanced, a tone transcribed in his interpretation.
“I definitely don’t want to pit the heroes against the villains. Consider Tony Stark, for example… What an extraordinary journey for Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron-Man! In general, the boundaries for a villain character are much more elastic than those for a superhero. We can push them back all we want. The Master’s evolutionary vision that James wrote into the script allowed me to go deeper into emotion, into stillness, into despair. From the first page I told myself I was going to have fun.
bye or not…
As we know, nobody really disappears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (UCM), no more Starlord than the other emblematic characters.
In this Volume 3, Peter Quill is “lost, truly lost. The film has a wonderful monologue by Dave Bautista, who borrowed his words from Mantis. He explains that Peter Quill is a guy who needs to learn to swim. He jumped from lily pad to lily pad, woman to woman and relationship to relationship. I think it’s a very human condition,” explained Chris Pratt.
And after three feature films with James Gunn, the actor will “flip[t] “On Opportunity,” to make three more. “Making movies is really fun. When you do it with people you love, it’s even more fun. That’s the essence of a journey, even if the destination isn’t always great “With James the journey and destination has been extraordinary. His films are amazing I don’t know how he does it. And so I would selfishly be willing to face a horrific journey to get to that destination. But it is too an incredible journey.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hit provincial screens on May 5th.