Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2–Meet the Cast!

By Erin

In Marvel Studios’ latest adventure, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” the Guardians must fight to keep their newfound family together as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage. Picking up right where 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” left off, Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” continues the action-packed, irreverent, epic space adventures of Peter Quill aka Star-Lord and his gang of eccentric characters as they patrol and protect the universe. We are introduced to Awesome Mixtape #2 where the story follows the team as they fight to stay together while traversing the outer reaches of the cosmos. Old foes become new allies and fan-favorite characters from the classic comics will come to our heroes’ aid as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand.

Before the movie blasts into theaters everywhere this Friday, May 5th, we had the chance to meet the cast at a press conference last month. Take a look at some of the hilarious moments that were captured and what the cast had to share with us about the new film.

Moderated by Kara Warner from People Magazine, it was just one laugh after another. Look at all those smiles!

Press Conference #1 with the below talent:

Chris Pratt (“Peter Quill / Star-Lord”)
Kurt Russell (“Ego”)
Michael Rooker (“Yondu”)
Elizabeth Debicki (“Ayesha”)
Director James Gunn
Producer Kevin Feige

Press Conference #2 with the below talent:

Zoe Saldana (“Gamora”)
Dave Bautista (“Drax”)
Karen Gillan (“Nebula”)
Sean Gunn (“Kraglin”)
Pom Klementieff (“Mantis”)
Sylvester Stallone (“Member of Nova Corps”)
Producer Kevin Feige

The first question was directed at Elizabeth regarding her new role as Ayesha. Being a new member of the cast, what kind of initiation process was there, and what exactly convinced her to join this ragtag bunch.

Elizabeth: James convinced me obviously. He’s extremely persuasive, not that I needed convincing. My first day on set was when we were shooting in the throne room, and I was obviously terrified of playing this extremely powerful creature. I remember sitting up on the throne for a long time and all the Guardians were in front of me. It was so intimidating, and it was about two hours before we spoke to each other, I think. They all came up in this line to sort of come and say hello. I was like, please come and say hello to me! Someone say hello. And then that was fine after that.

Also new to the cast is Kurt Russell as Ego.

Kurt: They do this weird thing. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. You have to do this thing, you have to go to Chris’s house… I don’t know how much I can say. You have to bring over some food. The truth is that when I read the script I wanted to make sure I was kind of understanding it correctly and I hadn’t seen the first movie. All of a sudden, one day I was doing Hateful Eight stuff like this, and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, boom, my phone and the people around me are saying, are you gonna do, oh that’s great, are you gonna be Star Lord’s dad? Are you gonna be Peter Quill’s father and are you gonna do Guardians of the Galaxy and I, I just was like, guys, I don’t really know what they’re talking about. And I saw the movie and when I saw the movie, I immediately started getting it. I also immediately started wanting to do it. That was immediately followed by, everybody loved the first movie. What you don’t want to do is do something that’s gonna make them not like the second one, right? I don’t know about you, but I said yeah. I told James that. I said, I don’t want to mess this thing up, so I need your help.

James Gunn was asked if there is one thing that he wanted to make sure not to mess up.

James: The movie? I don’t know. I just wanted to continue the film from the first movie. So many sequels are not good. The primary reason in studying them seemed to be that so many of them just kind of do the same thing the first movie did with different template, and so they say, oh people liked the dance-off in the first movie, so what’s our version of the dance-off? People liked “we are Groot” in the first movie, what’s our version of “we are Groot”? And instead of doing that, we really tried to let these characters grow and change. We want to watch them become new people and different people in every film that we come up with. I think allowing them to be themselves and do their thing, I know that sounds strange because I’m writing what they say, but sometimes I’m just letting it happen inside my own imagination and letting the characters go where they wanted to go. I think the thing that I didn’t want to mess up was just trying to be a rehash of the first movie. I think people were surprised by the first movie, people have been surprised by the second film, and to give people something new and something different from what they already had.

Meet the Cast of Doctor Strange!

By Erin

Marvel Studios has created more movie magic with “Doctor Strange!” Coming out in theaters this Friday, November 4. You won’t want to miss it! Doctor Stephen Strange, the Master of the Mystic Arts, made his first appearance in Marvel comics in 1963. Th Marvel Cinematic Universe opens up a host of new, electrifying stories and exciting, mystifying, never-before-seen action with this one. There has always been a very important supernatural side to the Marvel comics, and ‘Doctor Strange’ is the perfect entry point into that realm, with parallel dimensions, alternate dimensions and the multiverse, which unlocks an entirely new area of storytelling.

The story follows world-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange, whose life forever changes after he gets himself into a horrific car accident where he ends up losing the ability to be able to use his hands. Traditional medicine fails him miserably, and he is willing to do anything to heal his precious hands. He ends up in an unlikely place—a mysterious enclave known as Kamar-Taj. He soon finds out that this is not just a center for healing but also the front line of a battle against unseen dark forces bent on destroying reality. Strange finds out he has some magical powers of is own and is forced to choose to either return to his old life or to defend the world as the most powerful sorcerer in existence.

The other week I had the opportunity to meet the cast of this action-packed film. Here are a few fun and exciting things they had to share with us.

Talent in attendance

· Benedict Cumberbatch (“Dr. Stephen Strange”)

· Rachel McAdams (“Christine Palmer”)

· Tilda Swinton (“The Ancient One”)

· Benedict Wong (“Wong”)

· Mads Mikkelsen (“Kaecilius”)

· Director Scott Derrickson

· Producer Kevin Feige

Kevin Feige shared with us about the right time to bring Dr. Strange into the Marvel Cinematic Universe “Sometimes things just work out, timing often, particularly in the cinematic universe, works out well for us, and it’ll be our 14th film within the MCU and we always say we have to push the boundaries, we have to keep surprising people, we have to keep making them unique and different, and certainly this movie and this character fits all of that. Also tapping into other dimensions and tapping into sort of that supernatural realm of the Marvel Comic Universe is going to come in handy, as we move forward throughout the Cinematic Universe, so the timing was perfect.”

doctor-strange-producers-directors

Scott Derrickson added to that how Doctor Strange was a product of the Sixties and was a big breath of fresh air into the world of comics at that time, and as a fan watching movies felt ready for some new, daring, weird left turns in the world of comic books and the MCU. Guardians of the Galaxy was that and was such a bold that movie. When he came in to meet for Doctor Strange, his approach was, let’s make this as weird in the MCU as the comic was in the comic book world in the Sixties. I think they’ve done a good job accomplishing this!

One of the biggest challenges of the movie and to keep it fresh according to Scott, was to try to make a movie that is as visually progressive by movie standards as the Ditko art was in the Sixties. “The primary source of inspiration was the early Stan Lee, Steve Ditko comics, and that artwork is still progressive. That was the primary source of inspiration and visual effects have just caughten up to where we can do some of the things that we did in this movie. The trick of it was to not hold back and to push ourselves as far as possible to do original things with the set pieces.”