‘Guardians of the Galaxy’: James Gunn Really Wanted These Characters

With Guardians of the Galaxy finishing the year as the top box office hit of 2014, most people would agree that it was perfect as is. But, director James Gunn had a number of different characters he wished he could have used. Those, like the characters in Guardians, might one day have their own blockbuster movie, if only Marvel could get back the rights.

James Gunn did a chat on The Movie Crypt to share movie making advice and stories about the industry. The conversation repeatedly focused on Guardians of the Galaxy, of course. It became interesting when the podcast got to their viewer mail segment, where someone asked what characters Gunn wanted to use in Guardians, but couldn’t, for legal or other reasons.

Gunn answered, and proved that he truly is an expert on obscure comic books.

“There was a really good chance Bug was going to show up in the first movie but we do not own him… Listen, I really love Rom: Spaceknight, as everyone at Marvel knows because they’ve given me Rom stuff… but we don’t own Rom. I would love for Rom: Spaceknight to show up because I love his story, I love the way he looks, I love everything about him…”

There’s also a really good chance that Bug would have been a little too close to Ant-Man, Marvel’s newest superhero movie. As for Rom: Spaceknight coming to Guardians of the Galaxy, with his backstory and potential, he might actually deserve his own movie. It just begs the question, who currently owns Rom?

James Gunn went on about potential Guardians of the Galaxy side-characters, including an entire race that would take the place of the marauding Sakaaran.

“There are other characters, but basically, some characters we can work around and we can use. Listen, I wanted to use the Badoon, but the Badoon we don’t own… they’re really interesting. They would be like the cannon fodder guys who were like the Sakaaran in my movie… I wrote them as Badoon but I just did a search-replace-Sakaaran when I found out we didn’t have Badoon. It was strangely late in the process when I found that out. They were designed as Badoon.”

You may remember the Sakaaran as the faceless insect-like men being killed in droves by Peter Quill and the other Guardians. If Gunn had had his way, those menacing henchmen would look something like this:

It’s hard to say if the Badoon would have actually added anything to the Guardians of the Galaxy, except lots of green and a bit of a fantasy feel – after all they look more like trolls than aliens.

The full podcast with Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn can be found here.

[Image Credit: wallpaperseries.com/WizArtist/IronMonger2001/Marvel Database]