James Gunn had plans for the Guardians of the Galaxy that didn’t quite pan out, and we are very thankful for it. When it comes to writing stories, changes are always being made, sometimes right up to the wire, and in a franchise like Marvel, which works across short and long-form storytelling, compromises have to be made.
In a previous version of the Guardian’s story, Gunn admits that he almost killed off one of the main characters. Gamora was originally set to bite the bucket in Vol. 2 but wound up not coming to pass after Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige convinced him to hold off. The Guardians then went on to play a key role in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, with the Gamora that we had come to know dying at the hands of Thanos.
This worked very well in upping the stakes in those movies, with one of the universe’s strongest warriors cruelly tossed to her death all to further Thanos’ goal. Her inclusion in these films meant that Gunn could not kill her off in Vol. 2, with the director telling ComicBook,
“I knew from the beginning that Zoe only wanted to play the character for so many years, and she’s been very honest saying that she’s done [after this]. And so I was going to have her die. I thought she was the one that was going to sacrifice herself, and Quill was going to learn about himself as opposed to in the second movie, and I thought differently of it. I was kind of talked out of it by Kevin and Lou [D’Esposito], and then it just didn’t work that well. It didn’t feel right, it felt much more right to go where we go in that movie. That seemed what was correct for the story. I think at the time I was afraid of killing Michael Rooker because he’s my friend.”
Instead, it is Yondu (Rooker) who sacrifices himself to save Quill from his Celestial father, in a truly poetic and sad moment. Also, we got the line, “I’m Mary Poppins y’all!” Despite saying goodbye to his friend’s character, Gunn knew it was the right move,
“So I felt bad about killing Rooker and I didn’t want to do that. But that was where the story naturally progressed to. So a lot of the things that I was planning on dealing with, I dealt with through what the Russos did, which they called me up and said, ‘We’re thinking about this, does this work? Can you work with this?’ And I went, ‘Got, yeah. I really can.’ And I think it works really well for the third movie.”
We will see Gamora back again in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, though this is a different version of the character, one who has not spent the last decade hanging out with the other Guardians, saving the universe.
We can all see how this plays out when the film hits cinemas on May 5.