It takes a lot more than accurately re-creating a comic book character's outfit on the big
screen to make a superhero movie worth seeing.
And anyone who's seen the terrible film version of Captain America from 1990 knows it.
In terms of comic book costume accuracy, it's a ten out of ten!
For having literally everything else be absolutely terrible, it's a negative twelve-and-a-half.
Needless to say, when former Marvel Studios head of visual development Charlie Wen sat
down to adapt the classic Marvel Comics cosmic super team the Guardians of the Galaxy, he
had a lot more on his mind than comic book accuracy.
To get the right look for the right character, Wen and his team tried beginning with the
right words before anything else, which informed the design process.
"Oftentimes if I'm designing, or if I'm working with other designers that are in my department
at the time, it's starting with those descriptors, and more in that, what do those descriptors
remind you of?
And so there's just a lot of adjectives, actions, verbs, anything that define who those characters
are, that I wanna make sure that we always go back to that."
So what process did Wen take with these relatively obscure Marvel D-listers to bring them into
the mainstream?
Here's what the Guardians of the Galaxy almost looked like.
Because the Guardians of the Galaxy were relatively unknown characters before the movie broke
out big in 2014, Wen had a lot of freedom to explore different designs for the film's
characters and settings.
Part of that freedom, said Wen, came from Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige :
"Kevin is a true Star Wars fan."
“I think it was something like 20 something times or in the theater, maybe 40.
I don't remember, but he loves Star Wars.”
That, and the fact that the Guardians themselves were pretty obscure in the public consciousness,
meant that Wen was free to create Marvel's very own Star Wars.
"This one also had a special place in my heart..."
"If you go with Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk.
All these characters are pretty defined.
People know what they are and Guardians, nobody knew what Guardians was.
It's very niche.
What was great was it also left it so that we could do a lot with it.
If you upset some of the hardcore fans, maybe it's okay because there's not as many of them.
But what it did do is it allowed for a lot of exploration to create a Marvel Space Odyssey."
In 1976, writer Bill Mantlo wrote a spacefaring comic book story called "The Sword in the
Star," introducing a new character drawn by Keith Giffen: Rocky Raccoon - like the Beatles
song - not Rocket Raccoon - because they didn’t think they’d get sued for that?
Anyway...
. Armed with a gun, a cigar, and a bunch of attitude, Rocky came back six years later
with a new design as Rocket Raccoon when Mantlo was writing The Incredible Hulk.
The character would come back again and again over the years, never really straying from
the core characteristics Mantlo had given him at the start.
These attributes played a huge role in Wen's design work for Rocket.
He explained the important details he wanted to capture when designing Rocket:
"He's impatient, he's got the little guy syndrome, the Napoleon syndrome.
Definitely a big man in a little body, big character in a little body, bursting out at
the seams.
He's always up to eleven."
When you look at the concept art Wen created during Guardians of the Galaxy's pre-production,
Rocket's huge personality comes through clearly.
Even the way he's standing — battle-ready, with a snarl on his face is perfectly contrasted
with Groot's presence in the background.
And while we're on the subject of Groot…
Unlike Rocket, Groot evolved significantly from his comics debut.
In 1960, on the cover of Tales to Astonish #13, a giant tree monster named "Groot from
Planet X" shows up on a busy city street on Earth, daring someone to fight him.
He returned as a monster 11 years later to fight the Hulk, and finally started resembling
our peaceful, heroic Groot when he appeared in 2006's Nick Fury's Howling Commandos and
2007's Annihilation Conquest.
In the latter series, he seemed to develop the friendship with Rocket Raccoon that became
so central to the 2014 film.
In fact, according to Wen, Groot and Rocket were two of the biggest question marks going
into the film's pre-production period.
"Nobody knew if this was gonna work, and everybody was very nervous about Groot and Rocket, because
the whole movie was contingent upon those two characters, a tree and a raccoon, especially
being an integral part of that five character team."
Meanwhile, Wen contrasted this moss-topped Groot with Rocket's fiery personality.
When asked about the words he'd use to describe the ideas he was trying to get across with
his early designs, Wen said:
"The background tree, when he needs to be, but he's a nice, quiet, empathetic, sympathetic
addition to that group.
The quiet stream that keeps a peace between all of them."
Star-Lord has had plenty of looks over the years, though a lot of them have kept one
constant.
From his first appearance way back in 1976 and up through his more modern adventures
in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy team in 2007, Star-Lord seems to like wearing some
pretty weird headgear.
Wen tried to capture this element in his concept art.
But the design presented some headaches.
"A very German World War 2 military, the shape of the helmet.
Even the way the pants are.
A lot of those, we certainly can't really go for something that ... Even the color,
the blues, we can't go for something that's gonna hearken back to World War II Nazi uniforms.
It works with Hydra, for Captain America, Hydra, Red Skull, that makes sense, and they're
villains."
The design work took a positive turn once writer-director James Gunn came on board.
Once James came in, the retro kick-back with the music, with all that, was very specific
to James.
He knew really the tone and feel he wanted them to feel like, and so that was really
important.
Oftentimes, we don't always get that, and so James was much more specific with saying,
'Peter Quill's gonna have a tape deck that's important to him.'
So I'm like, 'Great, that makes our job so much easier already.'
Because that is a visual cue.”
That's what led to the cinematic look — the facemask and exposed hair.
But the design communicated more about the character than you might have realized.
"Having his hair be exposed, in a way it's ... Some people were thinking, 'How much does
that actually do to the character?
You're only showing the hair.'
I'm like, 'Well, but hair actually shows character.'
If it's unkempt and all over, you already see a part of that character."
Nova was another important character from Marvel Comics' batch of cosmic stories in
the 1970s, though the version we got in Guardians of the Galaxy didn't quite resemble the Earth-based
superhero Rich Ryder who went by that name.
We didn't have the super hero Nova, as opposed to the Nova Corps."
But just because Nova as a lone superhero wasn't written into the script at the time
didn't mean he wouldn't make an appearance in some fashion.
As part of his explorations of Marvel's characters and designs, Wen created some Nova concept
art that was inspired by Ryder's superheroic alter ego to make sure the filmmakers had
as many options as possible.
"I knew at the time, I was like, 'Okay, well, we're probably not gonna be having Nova as
the lone character.'
At least, it wasn't written in.
I was playing on that line, just in case.
So I did some takes where it's more heroic, it stands out more, right?
As, 'I'm a significant character that needs to stand out.'"
But while Wen's superheroic version Nova didn't make it into the film, it's still pretty exciting
to know that his loss was John C. Reilly's gain.
"Hey!
If it isn't Star-Prince!"
"It's Star-Lord."
"Oh, sorry, Lord."
We did tons of takes, and I ended up doing this one that's more like the military space
police, because that's what he serves.
So really, ultimately, it just needs to serve the story."
“He's got a codename!”
“It’s an outlaw name.”
“Relax pal.
It’s cool to have a codename.
It’s not weird."
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