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- Oh my god, it was amazing.

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He's been like a,

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I guess in the old days
you'd call them a patron,

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someone who's really propelled me forward,

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you know, as an artist and, you know,

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practically and also artistically.

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So yeah, it was great
to work with him again.

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It was great to be given the opportunity.

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It was great to know that
I already had a shorthand

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with him having done "Peacemaker"

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that we could bring into "Guardians"

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and that he trusted me with
such an important role.

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And it was a gift to
just hear the direction

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and the laughter that comes when he's

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on the God mic and knowing
that he was gonna focus

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on character and truth
despite all the fun,

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'cause I think this character
needed to be really grounded

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for it to work and trusting that I was

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in the hands of a director
that could do that.

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The big difference between "Peacemaker"

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and "Guardians" was like,
you had "Peacemaker"

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which is a superhero movie that's sort of

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like "The Office" meets superhero movies

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and then you had "Guardians,"

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which is like one of the biggest,

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probably the biggest thing I will ever do,

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you know, scale-wise and size-wise.

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So it went from a very domestic sort of,

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definitely very dialogue-driven, bantery,

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wonderful subversive superhero
movie to a very subversive

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but gigantic, ginormous,
action-packed, you know,

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hilarious and also tragic
story that "Guardians" is.

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James and I made the
decision and he'd written it.

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That's how he wrote it that this guy

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is pretty despicable by
the time we meet him.

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Wherever his journey might have started

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and the altruistic aims he
might have had back then

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have completely been clouded and muddied

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by years of this, his narcissistic,

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and now by the time we meet him,

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borderline sociopathic behavior.

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So I really wanted to drive it home

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the fact that this guy is
a villain with a capital V.

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I wasn't interested in sympathy or empathy

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and if there was any
that was gonna be gotten,

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it had to be gotten from
a very truthful place.

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That is when the others,
that is the audience,

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people watching it, glean
something to understand him with.

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It wasn't my job to force feed it

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by being sympathetic or playing it gray.

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I had to play it the way it was written

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and the way it was written was,

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this is a very damaged individual.

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No, again, it's the imagination.

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You decide if this is
a role you want to play

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and if you're cool with
what it's gonna look like,

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and then you play it to the hilt.

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But I would say that it
would've been impossible

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to be in any way, to cause
any harm to any animals,

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which was never gonna be the case

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but it certainly made it easier

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that when the animals were put in,

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they were put in with
VFX and stuff like that,

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so that I didn't have to
ever even like contemplate

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holding a cute, furry
raccoon for real, you know?

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So I was able to like just shut that off

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and commit to the character
and understand also

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you have to sort of
understand the holistic nature

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of storytelling in the sense

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that I had to be this bad to
justify the Rocket we have now.

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It was there to tell this story,

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when we think of Rocket
when we first saw him

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in the first one and took the shirt off

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and you saw the markings

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or the Rocket in the
second one who screamed,

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"I didn't ask to be made like this."

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That tragedy, which is
making me very emotional,

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we had to have a story that justified that

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and it would've been a
shame to water it down.

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(air whooshing)

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(soft music)