The Toughest Scene I Wrote: James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”)

Once again, Vulture does screenwriters a solid:

Over the next few weeks, Vulture will speak to the screenwriters behind 2014’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. Which pivotal sequences underwent the biggest transformations on their way from script to screen?

In this article, James Gunn, director and co-writer (along with Nicole Perlman) of Guardians of the Galaxy, discusses a problem all screenwriters confront in each script: character introductions.

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.

The hardest scenes to crack were all the character introductions. Those were really difficult, whether it was the introduction to Ronan, the introduction to Thanos, the introduction to Rocket and Groot … those scenes changed a lot throughout the writing process, the shooting process, and even the post-production process. I wrote those scenes again and again and again in different ways. The Groot/Rocket introduction, I’m okay with that one now, but the first thing that comes to mind as the hardest thing to write is the Thanos scene. That was really difficult.

For the rest of the article, go here. Kudos to Vulture for this annual series which puts the spotlight on screenwriters.