It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since writer/director James Gunn delivered Guardians of the Galaxy and propelled the title Marvel superhero team to global popularity. In those days, Michael Rooker’s Yondu was still alive, and there’s an especially funny scene with him and Sean Gunn’s Kraglin that remains one of my favorite moments in the movie. That said, there’s also been a long-standing rumor about this GOTG scene that’s making the rounds again, and Gunn took some time to clarify it.
Though Gunn is keeping busy these days running DC Studios with Peter Safran, which includes directing Superman and the upcoming DC movie Man of Tomorrow, he’s still happy to talk about his time with the Guardians of the Galaxy in the MCU. Case in point, when he noticed a social media post claiming Michael Rooker improvised the Guardians of the Galaxy scene where Yondu started mocking the Broker, causing Sean Gunn to break character, Gunn wrote that both moments were scripted, then added on Threads:
But what is true is I shot the closeup of Sean in pickups because I didn't grab one on the day and I needed a cutaway. So he was actually in front of a blue screen for that shot and we comped in an empty plate of the background from the day. So, yeah, hardly ‘breaking character.’ When you hear about ‘reshoots’ these are usually the types of things my team is doing.
There’s no shortage of great improvised moments in movies, like Val Kilmer’s hilarious ad-lib in Top Gun. This, however, is not one of those instances. It was always intended for Yondu to start spouting off gibberish when the Broker started to explain the importance of privacy in the “high end community,” hence why he couldn’t reveal information about the Orb or its potential buyers. Kraglin was also supposed to suppress a smile, then snicker at Yondu’s antics, although as James Gunn shared, the close-up of Sean Gunn was filmed after principal photography concluded.
Reading about this makes me wish we could have had more moments of Yondu and Kraglin together in the MCU. Although they shared more screen time in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, that movie ended with Yondu sacrificing his life to save Peter Quill, his adopted son. Kraglin inherited his late captain’s Yaka arrow and head-mounted fin that controls it, and was finally able to master using the weapon in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after seeing a vision of his late captain during the High Evolutionary’s attack on Knowhere. Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn also voiced alternate versions of their characters in the Disney+ subscription-exclusive animated series What If… ?.
Though Michael Rooker’s time in the MCU is over and it’s unclear when or even if we’ll see Sean Gunn play Kraglin again, both these men have re-teamed with James Gunn over in the DC space. Rooker and Gunn both recently appeared in Peacemaker Season 2 as Red St. Wild and Maxwell Lord, respectively, although don’t count on seeing Wild again in the DCU, if you catch my drift. However, this is the fourth DC role Rooker has played since 2021, so maybe James Gunn will be able to find a fifth one for him.
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