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.