James Gunn Discusses the Challenges of Cutting Trailers for the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Films
Director James Gunn has had some challenges when cutting together his trailers for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy movies. As he's getting ready to release the first full trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 later this month, he talks to THR about some of these challenges and reveals that he almost didn't release the teaser for his first Guardians of the Galaxy movie!
When comparing the trailer for his most recent film project The Belko Experiment with his upcoming Guardians trailer he explains:
"Guardians is the harder one. With Belko, the premise is what people have to buy into. With Guardians, people really go through every single little shot and try to figure out what the movie's about. And there's a lot of mysteries in Guardians 2."
One of the biggest things about making the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, is deciding what kind of story elements they want to give the fans.
"We were talking about how much to give away — and we're not going to give away very much."
Of course, the fans are still going to go through it frame-by-frame, pick it apart, and try to find something that we think is hidden in their. It's just our nature! He goes on to say:
"You can show all sorts of stuff happening and it doesn't really give away who lives, who dies, what the outcome is, what the mystery is. With Guardians, it's such an emotional and physical journey, going to all these different places. It's like, 'God, do I really want to show this planet we go to in the middle of the movie? … Those are always hard choices to make."
I'm sure the fans are going to love whatever the upcoming trailer has to offer. He went on to talk about the very first teaser trailer for the first Guardians film and how it almost never saw the light of day.
"That trailer tested not very well. We had another trailer that was very cheesy that sold the movie as something different than what it was — that tested a little better.
"And at the end of the day, the [marketing] guys were like, 'This is what the movie is. We are selling what the movie is. Not something else.' You've got to sell the movie for what it is, and that's what they did. They really bought my trust with that on the first movie."
It's good to know that the film had a smart marketing team that understood that. I loved that first trailer! I thought it was perfect. But now I'm curious to know what that cheesy trailer that got scrapped was like!