Juggling dozens of characters across a massive franchise helmed by various directors takes a lot of work, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is no exception. Sometimes one movie will set up a character or event that needs to be paid off in a different film, such as when Thor (Chris Hemsworth) joined up with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Avengers: Endgame. While speaking with Rolling Stone (via Variety), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director James Gunn said that despite that setup, he never had any intention of including Thor in the most recent sequel.
“[Marvel] chose to have that ending in editing,” James Gunn said. “And I didn’t think it was gonna be in there. ‘Endgame’ came out right after I decided to do ‘Guardians’ again. So I didn’t have much say in what was in ‘Endgame,’ and then it came out and then I was like, ‘What the f**k am I gonna do?’” Thankfully, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige soon told James Gunn that Taika Waititi would handle Thor’s time with the Guardians in Thor: Love and Thunder. “When [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] told me, ‘Taika’s gonna do Thor, and we’ll have the Guardians in it’. I said, ‘Thank God!’” Gunn said. “To be completely honest, Thor was never going to be in this movie. Taika took a bullet for me. Because I was not going to have him in. I was just gonna start up and there’s no Thor.“
Without Thor: Love and Thunder taking care of that bit of housekeeping, it would certainly have been strange for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to just completely ignore Thor joining the crew or sweep it away with a piece of dialogue.
As the new head of DC Studios, James Gunn is set to launch the new DC Universe, bringing even more superhero movies and TV shows to our screens. Rolling Stone asked Gunn how he felt about the phenomenon of superhero fatigue. “I think there is such a thing as superhero fatigue,” Gunn said. “I think it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes. It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring.” Gunn continued: “I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether they’re superhero movies or not. If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bashing moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.“
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will hit theaters on May 5th. Do you wish that James Gunn had included Thor in the sequel?