Wow, who would've guessed that Guardians of the Galaxy, a relatively unpopular
comic about C or D-List superheroes, would end up being such a huge movie.
Well, Marvel did, I guess, either way, we like it.
It's a good movie, a real good movie.
So let's get it into today's episode,
here are seven things you didn't know about Guardians of the Galaxy, probably.
(Music)
Music, along with 80s references to icons like Kevin Bacon and John Stamos,
both factor into Guardians in a pretty important way.
They're reminders of Peter Quill's connection to Earth and
that he's basically a regular guy on this crazy space adventure.
But one pop culture reference you may have missed is the name of his ship,
the Milano.
In the comics, Starlord's ship is just called Ship.
For the movie,
they named it the Milano after Alyssa Milano, Peter Quill's childhood crush.
Director James Gunn even confirmed it on Twitter.
So if you don't believe me for some reason,
like maybe you have trust issues, man.
I mean, there's your proof right there, on Twitter, next thing!
(Sound) You guys probably know that that's
Bradley Cooper playing Rocket, but you may not know how he came up with the voice.
I mean, it doesn't really sound like him at all, right?
>> That is the most real, authentic, hysterical laugh of my entire life.
>> Well, Cooper's main influence for
Rocket was Joe Pesci's performance as Tommy in Goodfellas.
After all both characters are height-challenged hotheads who have a way
with weapons, makes sense to me.
Yeah!
>> Anyway, here's another thing you probably didn't know about Rocket.
Rocket Raccoon isn't just modeled after stock photos of random raccoons,
he's modeled after a specific raccoon and it's this little guy, named Oreo.
Oreo's kind of a celebrity in the U.K., he's even got his own YouTube and
Twitter pages.
I guess when you've got a $170 million budget to make a movie,
you may as well shell out some of that dough on hiring famous vermin with their
own social networking accounts.
If you see him on Tinder, by the way, swipe right.
(Sound) We cover Bradley Cooper's work on Rocket's voice but
he wasn't the guy playing Rocket on set.
The on set acting double was Sean Gunn, Director James Gunn's brother.
Sean even came up with Rocket's line about being a bunch of
jackasses standing in a circle, improvising it during filming.
In fact, it wound up being James Gunn's favorite line in the whole movie,
which is why he kept it.
It also wound up being my favorite line in the whole movie, so go figure.
By the way, you get to see Sean Gunn as himself in the movie,
not just as a CG racoon double.
There he is playing Kraglin, one of the guys in Yondu's gang, and
speaking of Yondu, this is a segue!
(Sound) Unless you're king dork and
are one of the few people who actually read the Guardians of the Galaxy comics
before the movie.
You may not know that Yondu is actually a member of the Guardians, originally.
In the comics he's an archer, which explains where they got the idea for
his magic whistle arrow thingy in the movie.
Not only did they revise his weapon and his mohawk, but they also turned him into
the money grubbing, tchotchke loving outlaw mercenary we see in the film.
Merle, I mean Michael Rooker Totally pulls it off though.
(Sound) Groot is a fan favorite from the film,
there's no denying it.
Despite having, essentially, the same one line throughout the entire movie.
>> I am Groot.
>> Still, Vin Diesel's job voicing that talking tree wasn't as simple
as you think.
Sure, he could have said the line a dozen or so different ways,
been done in ten minutes and then gone back to doing, you know,
Vin Diesel stuff, whatever that is, working out probably.
But he actually said the line hundreds of times for
every instance we hear Groot say it in the film.
>> I am Groot.
I am Groot.
>> I appreciate his dedication to giving the filmmakers a lot of options to work
with, but I wouldn't want to be the guy sifting through a few thousand line reads
of I am Groot to pick the ten best ones.
Vin Diesel also did his lines in several other languages for
the overseas releases of Guardians.
(Foreign).
>> So if you're watching the movie in Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, or
Klingon, that's still Vin Diesel's voice you're hearing.
Okay, maybe not Klingon, but definitely those other more real ones.
(Sound) After the tease with
Thanos that we got at the very end of Avengers,
we got to see a bit more of him in Guardians of the Galaxy.
But since he's uncredited,
you may not know that that's Josh Brolin playing Thanos in Guardians.
He was the last person cast, and for Thanos, Brolin drew
inspiration from Marlon Brando's performance as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
Which makes me wish he had taken his inspiration from Marlon Brando in
The Godfather instead.
Sure, it would have been completely the wrong tone for the movie, but
it would be pretty funny.
(Sound) Let's wrap this up about a thing about
Chris Pratt, shall we?
Considering we were pretty used to him looking more like this,
it was a bit of a leap to imagine him playing a hero like Starlord.
What you may not know is when he was shooting Zero Dark Thirty,
Chris Pratt took this photo to show off his physique at the time.
And it was this selfie that made him a serious contender to win the role
of Peter Quill.
The filmmakers saw this photo and
asked him if he would be able to get into that kind of shape again for Guardians.
Chris Pratt ultimately did them one better and got into even better shape,
losing 60 pounds in 6 months, and he looks great.
Sure he's pretty much unrecognizable on this magazine cover, and honestly I'm
pretty sure that's a painting, but way to go Chris Pratt, way to go.
Well those are our seven things, but if you like this, let us know.
We have some more Guardians of the Galaxy fun facts that we've left out
this time around,
mostly because we didn't want you guys bitching about spoilers in the comments.
Anyway, thanks for watching and be sure to check out Cinefix.com and
subscribe for more trui-sh things about movies and sometimes mohawks,
right here on Things You Didn't Know.
(Music)