Chris Pratt on Guns, Goosebumps, and Goofing Around On the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' Set
This summer, Chris Pratt will be taking over the Galaxy. The actor, who’s best known for playing lovable doofus Andy Dwyer on TV’s Parks and Recreation, will be making a superhero star-turn as the leader of a motley crew of extraterrestrial misfits in Marvel’s latest movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, which opens Aug. 1.
The sci-fi space adventure follows a ragtag group of aliens — including Zoë Saldana as the green Gamora and Vin Diesel as the hulking Groot — as they’re pursued through space by a powerful supervillain (Lee Pace). Pratt plays the half-human/half-alien Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord.
Yahoo Movies traveled to London last September with a group of journalists to visit the production, where we talked to Pratt about what it’s like wielding the Star-Lord’s blaster and what might make Guardians better than Star Wars.
Yahoo Movies: Is the fact that most of the general public is going to meet these characters for the first time a benefit?
Chris Pratt: It probably is helpful that people don’t know who he is, because it would be my intention to make him my own anyway. That’s something that Robert Downey Jr. did with Iron Man. He came in and now he is Tony Stark — the guy could probably build his own suit now with all the money he’s making. I don’t know Robert Downey Jr., but I’m just assuming!
You think of when those Star Wars prequels that came out, there were a lot of expectations there. It makes it difficult if you spend the whole movie trying to satisfy what people think they know about a character. The first Star Wars didn’t have that problem because it was all brand new. So what I’m saying is that we will be better than Star Wars. [Laughs]
Is part of the kick of this role getting to play with all the space gadgets?
It’s definitely part of it. The props and toys and sets and costumes—all that stuff makes my job much easier, because it’s doing a lot of the work. The props, the costume, mask, and guns, everything that distracts the viewers’ attention from me, I invite. Just in case I f—- it up, please just look at the cool guns.
When we visited the guys in the props department, they said they sent you the Star-Lord’s blaster ahead of time. What was it like trying it out the first time?
They sent me the gun, and I think they wanted to see how it matched up against my hand, but at the time, all I was worried about was, “I’m going to send them pictures of me holding this gun, and they’re going to think I’m too fat and fire me.” I was still very much in the process of losing weight, so I was, like, sucking it in holding the gun. My wife was like, “You look uncomfortable in this photo.” I said, “I am! God.”
How important is comedy to telling the story of the Guardians of the Galaxy?
James [Gunn, the director] is really, really funny. We have similar senses of humor, and a great relationship, and banter on set [in a way] that could probably be seen as inappropriate, but it’s really keeping us both sane. You’ll definitely see that humor through the course of this movie. All the best big adventure movies have comedy, like all the Indiana Jones movies and Romancing the Stone.
Has there been a particularly surreal day on-set?
There was one day when we had a [second assistant director] called Michael doing crowd control on 160 extras, all of who had gone through extensive alien makeup. And we’re on a [prison] set that’s maybe as big as this warehouse that we’re in right now, and there are prison cells all the way around, a giant tower in the middle, and there’s this long — I’m getting goosebumps [talking about it] — there’s this long crane and I’m watching Michael directing these extras, saying “You are in a prison! You are not happy!” And then we’re walking through, and there’s this long crane shot that’s on our backs and then lifts up and circles around — you see a fight break out, and then it pans down to a second level and you see these ominous prisoners grab someone. And then it goes down even further and you’re seeing details that I don’t want to give [away.] It was so surreal, because the shot ends on my face, looking around taking it all in. It’s been five months of moments like that. It’s really, really crazy. I’m like, how much does this cost per second?
Photo credit: Marvel
