James Gunn Was 'Very Afraid' Of That One-Take Action Scene In Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

This post contains spoilers for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3."

During the prolonged climax of James Gunn's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," the titular superhero team has to break into a high-security spaceship being flown by the villainous High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). In order to make their way inside, however, they have to fight down a hallway populated by the High Evolutionary's goons, each of them instructed to kill the heroes. In an exhilarating one-take sequence, the Guardians lay waste to the security guards, killing every one of them with aggression and panache.

/Film has written about the dark ambivalence of that scene, pointing out that the Guardians had just learned an important lesson about protecting all life and respecting the strange animal monsters in the High Evolutionary's thrall. In other words, the Guardians has only just learned to be gentler and kinder, and yet they were totally fine with committing mass murder in that instance. The film, it seems, merely wanted a badass fight sequence and the hallway scene would do nicely. It's certainly badass, but it's not very in keeping with the theme of the movie. In a more thoughtful version of this scene, perhaps the Guardians would have avoided violence altogether or even talked to their attackers in an attempt to get them over to the side of "good."

Gunn, however, was more concerned with the technical aspects of this scene when he made it, like the camera angles, pacing, and visual clarity, as well as the violence. The filmmaker talked about the scene in a video interview with i09, revealing he was afraid it might have been too long and too brutal.

When constructing the scene, James Gunn was practical, recalling all the hard work it required. He explained:

"It just took a lot of planning. Wayne Dalglish and I, who is an incredibly talented stunt coordinator — he was co-coordinator with Heidi Moneymaker on this — it was basically his baby. And we started putting that together months and months before. At the very beginning of shooting, and we shot that near the end of shooting. The very end of shooting. And that whole time, we just did different iterations of it, shooting it with the stunt people, putting some post-viz in, but mostly with stunt people. And we just did it again and again and again." 

In spending so much time working on the one sequence, it seems there was a lot of experimentation going on. Gunn spent plenty of time rehearsing the scene, allowing him to figure out the pacing and how much visual thrill he'd be able to practically insert into it. He was also a little wary of retaining the film's PG-13 rating, as the violence was pretty extreme (as these sorts of action sequences tend to go). But in the end, it all worked out. In Gunn's words:

"At one point, it was longer, and it was a little shorter, and it just kept going on and on and on and on. I was very afraid of it because I was afraid of the MPAA because it's pretty brutal. But it ended up being fine, and yeah, we put a lot of work in."

James Gunn also recalled the sequence with Chris Pratt, who plays the role of Star-Lord in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films and whose character was one of the central perpetrators of the hallway fight scene. Their conversation about the sequences focused on the two different kinds of difficulties such fight scenes tend to encounter. One is born of frustration, the other of exhaustion. Here's how Gunn broke it down:

"I was talking to Chris Pratt, and he heard me say 'It's not that difficult because [...] some things are difficult because of the amount of hours you put in, and some things are difficult because they aren't working and you get frustrated.' This was not that [second thing]. It was just a lot of hours. He said 'Yeah, but we're doing things like 30, 40 times.' I said 'Yeah, that's repetition, man. That's Jackie Chan!'"

Gunn explained to Pratt that the reason why Jackie Chan's famed stunts look so impressive is because he would rehearse and shoot take after take until getting it exactly right. Gunn was merely trying to replicate that with his "Guardians" cast and clearly didn't meant to suggest that his film was as impressive as the works of Jackie Chan. Still, he did know an expert when he saw one.

Ultimately, Gunn said that he didn't remember the exact number of takes he ended up requiring for the hallway sequence, but suspected it likely took somewhere in the neighborhood of five days to get it down right. The tone of the scene may be debated, but the actual action acumen is peerless.

"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is currently playing in theaters.