James Gunn explains his and Chris Pratt’s idea for a solo Star-Lord movie

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 completes a Marvel trilogy nearly a decade in the making. Where does this rag-tag band of intergalactic misfits go from here? We’re not sure, although based on the title card at the very end of the film, we know that at least one of them will return: Star-Lord, aka Peter Quill, played by Chris Pratt.

Does that he’ll come back in some future Avengers movie? Or maybe he’ll get a solo film all this own? Pratt has considered the latter with director James Gunn, who talked about the possibility on a commentary track for Vol. 3, per ComicBook.com.

“Chris and I, forever, have talked about how great it would be to do a Legendary Star-Lord movie, a story with Star-Lord on Earth trying to adapt to the environment of Earth in the same way that somebody else might try to adapt to the alien environment of outer space,” Gunn said. “He’s a fish out of water in just kind of…regular water. So I can’t wait to see it.”

Gunn is now overseeing development of a new DC cinematic universe over at Warner Bros., so his days making Guardians of the Galaxy movies are over. But he’d “can’t wait to see” whatever Pratt and Disney come up with.

James Gunn explains how people can understand Groot

As long as we’re mining the commentary track for insights into the world of Guardians of the Galaxy, ever wonder why everyone in the movies is able to understand Groot (Vin Diesel) even though all we ever hear is “I Am Groot”? Gunn explained that too:

"So the way Groot’s voice works is that there is some sort of telepathic component to him, so that when he says ‘I am Groot,’ you need to bond with him, and at a certain point when you bond with him, start to understand what he’s saying. In the first movie, Rocket obviously understood. In these movies, now, the rest of the characters have started to understand it as time has gone on and they’ve gotten closer."

That also explains why Groot’s final line is, “I love you guys.” After three Guardians movies, the audience can finally understand him too. Aw.

Stan Lee was original going to play a character in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

One last tidbit for the road: for years, it was standard practice for iconic Marvel writer Stan Lee to appear in each new Marvel movie, although this became harder and harder as he got older; Lee passed in 2022.

Gunn originally planned for Lee to appear in Guardians 3 in the role of Lambshank, one of the creatures that the High Evolutionary experimented on. Unfortunately, Lee died before that idea could come to fruition, so Gunn played the role himself.

“I originally wrote Lambshank, the character that I played, for Stan Lee because I wrote the movie before Stan passed on,” Gunn said on his commentary track, per The Direct. “I knew he was also getting much older and it’d be harder to bring him to Atlanta to shoot. So, I did a character that I could just animate and then have him do the voice and have a little Stan Lee-like face on that character.”

"Unfortunately, Stan passed, who I really enjoyed working with and directing so many times through these movies."

You can download the digital version of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, complete with Gunn’s director’s commentary, right now.

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h/t ComicBook.com