While the follow-up to this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy still may be undergoing the writing process, James Gunn, who’s returning to helm the sequel, can make one promise about the second installment: it won’t be more of the same.
“When you go forward with a group of characters, that means you have to go forward,” Gunn told Comic Book Resources about future movies in the series, defining that as “developing a new kind of story about their lives and who they are and where they’re going” instead of merely repeating what happened in earlier films.
“I mean, no knock against James Bond — I love James Bond movies, and [Skyfall] is slightly outside of this, and Casino Royale is slightly outside of this — but basically, James Bond is a James Bond movie over and over and over again,” he went on. “The character never learns anything, and the character never does anything new. And that’s not a knock. It’s a really fun series. But that’s not what the Guardians are. The Guardians are going to continuously change.”
That change, he explained, will be driven in part by the reaction to the first Guardians. “I would much rather create Guardians of the Galaxy 2 right now. People are excited about it. That excites me. And that fuels me,” Gunn said. “It’s really about listening to the audience, but then keeping myself as open to discovery as possible, because I think that there’s a lot of things that have gone unexplored and characters that have gone unexplored.”
The story for the second Guardians movie is complete, Gunn said. “I feel like it’s pretty strong,” he said. “It’s constantly shifting, but I feel like it’s pretty strong. I’m excited about it.”
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is scheduled for release in 2017.
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