While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been indebted to the comic book back catalogue for inspiration, the franchise’s filmmakers are encouraged to put their own stamp on the material, something that’s served Guardians of the Galaxy architect James Gunn very well indeed.
It’s not as if he’s been making widespread changes from canon, though, but any alterations to established characters or backstories have turned out to be for the greater good. One of the most notable was the reinvention of Dave Bautista’s Drax the Destroyer, who once upon a time began life as a regular human duded Arthur Douglas.
As he’s wont to do on an almost daily basis, Gunn was quick to respond with a detailed explanation as to why he opted to introduce the instant fan favorite as an incarcerated extraterrestrial inmate right off the bat when it was put to him on Twitter, as you can see below.
Bautista may have been vocal in lamenting his beliefs that Marvel dropped the ball on his arc after largely reducing Drax to comic relief across the Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame double-header, but he’s never had an issue with the way he initially debuted in the first Guardians movie.
Like Gunn said, there’s only so much backstory to go around, and that becomes especially true when we’re talking about a risky hybrid of origin story and cosmic expansion, one that already had a limited amount of minutes with which to introduce a raft of brand new faces that audiences around the world had never met before.
