Dave Bautista: Marvel “dropped the ball” on Drax’s backstory

Dave Bautista made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Drax in James Gunn’s 2014 movie Guardians of the Galaxy. Despite now playing Drax for almost seven years, Bautista has revealed that he’s still not completely satisfied with the character’s development and thinks Marvel “dropped the ball” with his backstory. There are no hard feelings, though.

Bautista recently said that he thinks the third Guardians movie will be his last, which might be why he’s being so honest about his time as the character. “That role changed the trajectory of my life,” he told Collider. “It’s always going to be special to me. Now that I’m four films in…I really wished they would have invested more in Drax, personally. Because I think Drax has more of a story to tell.”

"I think Drax has a really interesting backstory which they dropped the ball on. That’s no dig on Marvel. They had their slate, I know what they’re focused on, that’s what they have slated out. But man, I think they really missed the ball on Drax. He has such a great backstory."

Getting specific, Bautista thinks the writers failed to explore the different sides of Drax’s personality as seen in the wider Marvel universe, which includes comics and animated TV series. Instead, they honed in on his comic qualities. “The whole ‘Destroyer’ thing they just threw that out the window,” Bautista said. “People just fell so in love with the comedic side of Drax they tapped into that, then they tapped into it more, then they really dug a hole into it.”

Bautista is hopeful the Guardians movies will have a wonderful legacy

Sure, Bautista has his reservations about how Drax has been handled in the franchise. But at the same time, when people are so passionate about something, they’re bound to critique it to death. It’s abundantly clear that he has a lot of love for the character and no regrets about his time in the MCU. He hopes the movies will be remembered in a similar way to how everyone has nostalgia for Star Wars.

"It’s yet to be seen, but if I can have somebody feeling that way about Guardians the way I feel and look back on Star Wars, that’s a life worth living. That’s a legacy, man. I’m really excited to wrap up this whole journey with these guys. I love them. I love the Guardians cast like family. They know it. I think everybody knows that I’m pretty vocal about it."

The way things are going, it seems like his hopes may be borne out!

Bautista isn’t just working on more Marvel movies. He’s got a ton of major projects in the pipeline. You can soon see him in Zack Snyder’s zombie flick Army of the Dead on Netflix. And later this year we’ll finally see him as Glossu Rabban in Dune!

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