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Guardians Of The Galaxy's Rocket Raccoon is a "mean-ass fighting machine" - SciFiNow

Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Rocket Raccoon is a “mean-ass fighting machine”

Super director James Gunn on Guardians Of The Galaxy’s “mangy” Rocket Raccoon

Charlie Wen's Rocket Raccoon concept art for Guardians Of The Galaxy
Charlie Wen’s Rocket Raccoon concept art for Guardians Of The Galaxy

Speaking to HeyUGuys on the red carpet for Iron Man 3, Super and Slither director James Gunn, who is in London for the prepping of Marvel’s Phase 2 space opera Guardians Of The Galaxy, described how he’s been studying real raccoons for the team’s GC Rocket Racoon.

“We did,” Gunn confirmed. “I’ve done a lot of studying with real raccoons, and we had real raccoons come in. We’ve done photography with them, I’ve played with raccoons, and fed raccoons, and dealt a lot with real raccoons to get some of the behaviour down.

“Because it’s really, really important to me that Rocket Raccoon, who is the heart of the movie, is not a cartoon character; it’s not Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers, it’s a real, little, somewhat mangled beast that’s alone. There’s no one else in the universe quite like him, he’s been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine.”

Gunn then compared the character to the concept art released as part of the Marvel Phase 1 concept art.

“The Rocket that was by itself was an early version of my Rocket that I dealt with Charlie [Wen] when developing,” said the director. “He doesn’t look so much like that anymore, but there’s a lot of similarities in that he’s more of a grounded, real little creature as opposed to a cartoonish thing.”

Guardians Of The Galaxy is due in cinemas 1 August 2014. Pick up James Gunn’s Super on DVD for £4.49 or Blu-ray for £6.99 from Amazon.co.uk.