Thanos Scene Was Hardest for James Gunn to Write in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
James Gunn did an incredible job with the script for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, but there was one scene in particular that was really hard for him to write. In an interview with Vulture, he explains that the scene featuring Thanos was a bitch for him to figure out. When asked which scenes were the hardest for him to write, he said,
“Oh, I hate this! This is terrible, terrible. What I don’t like is that if you ask me which scenes were the hardest, they’re also the ones that, frankly, I like the least. I really would love to talk about, say, the '12 percent' scene and say that was the most difficult, but no, I kinda sat down and wrote that dialogue and then it was done.”
He went on to explain why Thanos was difficult for him to write for:
“There’s pressure with Thanos because you’re setting up this gigantic character that, in one way, isn’t really a part of your movie. His presence doesn’t really serve being in Guardians, and having Thanos be in that scene was more helpful to the Marvel Universe than it was to Guardians of the Galaxy. I always wanted to have Thanos in there, but from a structural standpoint, you don’t need him. So that’s part of it, and then part of it is the fact that you’re setting up this incredibly powerful character, but you don’t want to belittle the actual antagonist of the film, which is Ronan. You don’t want him to seem like a big wussy. So how do you make that work?”
I think he made it work just fine, and I like how Thanos was presented to us in the film. Yeah, the villainous character didn't really need to be in it, but I can see why Marvel wanted him in there. The fans wanted to finally see him introduced into the MCU, as well. Gunn did admit, though, that it led to a satisfying payoff.