Exclusive: James Gunn Describes An Alternate Ending To 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'

Spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy follow.

The ending of Guardians of the Galaxy is perfect. The day is won, Star Lord gets his ship back, he opens up that new Awesome Mix and we get to see a montage of a bunch of the main characters. However, at a press event for the upcoming Blu-ray release of the film, writer/director James Gunn revealed that final montage originally contained three extra characters: The Collector (Benicio Del Toro), Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Grandpa Quill (Gregg Henry). Each character shot an ending to their story that was going to be used in that scene, but was eventually cut out.

We spoke to Gunn after that revelation and asked for a few more details. He gave them up, and his explanation of what happened to Nebula, The Collector and Grandpa Quill describes an alternate ending to Guardians of the Galaxy. Read the Guardians of the Galaxy alternate ending quote below.

Here's Gunn describing how the original ending of Guardians of the Galaxy was going to have a bit more in there:

There are three characters that got cut out [of the "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" montage]: Nebula, the Collector and Grandpa Quill. Nebula and Collector we decided, at a certain point, they're kind of bad guys in the first movie. It was a real joyous experience with that finale so we thought we'd keep it to the characters that were part of "the good team." Which includes Yondu. He did fight on the good guys side. So we thought we would keep it to them.

Grandpa Quill we cut because he was in old age make up and we were a little afraid people wouldn't recognize that it was him from the beginning of the movie. And also, it was a pretty sad moment. It was Grandpa Quill and he has this photograph of Meredith and Peter as a little boy and he looks up at the stars and we go up to the stars and it was really sweet. It means that he must have seen Quill getting abducted at the end of that day and is still waiting for him to return but it was freaking sad so we took it out.

Nebula's was actually my favorite. Nebula's I really liked a lot because she's lost her arm and she's just pissed off and she's just walking through this field all pissed off with a busted Ravager vehicle behind her. And she's just pissed off and I loved it.

As for The Collector, his part of the montage actually is in the movie, just not where it was originally intended and with one addition. It's the Howard the Duck tag scene.

A few notes. One: the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy almost showed Earth again is pretty significant. Second, the way he said Nebula and Collector are "bad guys in the first movie" suggests that may not be the case in the second movie.

Unfortunately, none of these scenes are on the Blu-ray which hits stores December 9. But we'll have more on that disc release soon.