New Details on Nebula, Mantis, and Ego the Living Planet in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2
We have some new details about a few of the characters that we'll be seeing in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The info comes from CB, who had a chance to visit the set of the film where they learned all kinds of things.
They had the chance to talk to several people working on the film, and they learned some new information involving Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and what their characters are up to in the film. They also got some intel regarding the look of Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell). Not the human form of the planet, but the actual planet.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige opened up about Nebula's role in the sequel, saying:
"She cut her own hand off, jumped onto a ship, and flew away. She comes back into the story relatively early on. In fact, we realize that the payment for the mission that the Guardians have done on Sovereign is to get Nebula."
He then offered a little background of what happened to her after she ran off in the first film:
"The Sovereign has captured Nebula, and are doing sort of a prisoner, are exchanging her for the services of the Guardians helping them, and they want to take Nebula back to Xandar, to have her, to have her arrested. Things go awry on that journey, and she becomes a much bigger player in the film than she was in the first one."
Feige shared more about Nebula's relationship with her sister Gamora, explaining:
"You explore that dynamic between them as sisters, as adopted sisters who both clearly were raised in less than ideal circumstances by Thanos, and it’s sort of Nebula’s deciding does she want to kill Gamora or is she going to set aside this sort of internal rage within her. And she does spend some time teaming up with Taserface for much of the movie too."
Nebula is one of my favorite characters from this franchise, and I'm excited that Gunn is going to explore her character more. Then there's the new addition of Mantis, whom I'm looking forward to seeing. When talking about her character and the actress who plays her, Feige said:
"Pom Klementieff is really amazing and is really unique. She auditioned for the part many, many times, along with many, many other people, because James [Gunn] was doing something very unique with Mantis, who has never really encountered other people and other humans before, humanoids before, and makes Drax look like the most world-savvy person there is, and it’s a tough thing to do and to be endearing, and she’s pretty amazing at it. She comes into the story along with the Kurt Russell character, and doesn’t know the other characters and doesn’t know much of the world, and there is a, talking about the bondings between characters, she and Drax spend a lot of time together in this story as well."
It turns out that the Mantis in the film won't necessarily be the same Mantis from the comics, as Gunn is said to have started a clean slate with his version of the character. Feige saidys:
"Mantis in the comics is a highly complicated, weird character, whose history makes little sense. I’m assuming we’re sort of clean-slating it here with this version of Mantis, or is the celestial Madonna stuff in play? Those specifics are not in play, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less complicated and weird."
Everything that I've seen of the character so far has been playful and fun, so I'm looking forward to seeing where they take her. As for Ego the Living Planet, his involvement is definitely going to be one of the stranger elements of the film. He's Star-Lord's dad who is an actual planet that can take human form. Fans got to see his Kurt Russell human form at Comic-Con last year, but it hasn't been released to the public yet. Some press got to see what the actual planet would look like. It was pointed out to them that its design resembled the "dreamy, other-worldly imagery of the album covers that were created by artist Roger Dean created for Yes — the English rock band." Executive producer Jonathan Schwartz added:
"A hundred percent. The first Guardians has a really colorful, pulpy sensibility that I think we're pushing further, in a much cooler direction in this movie. I think for the designs for this planet play into that tradition in a really cool way. It is about establishing a big, beautiful sci-fi world that's not like anything you've ever seen before - which I'm sure something you guys here on every set visit that you do. But we really mean it."
I'm really curious to see for myself what Ego the Living Planet will look like, but I'll just have to wait and see when Marvel decides to make that reveal. Hell, with something like that we might just have to wait for the movie to come out.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is set to hit theater on May 5th. To watch the latest TV spots for the film or catch up on other news, all you gotta do is click here.