Dan Abnett Says The Movie Guardians Of The Galaxy Are True In Spirit To The Comics

Dan Abnett didn’t invent the Guardians of the Galaxy, but he and Andy Lanning did write Annihilation: Conquest and the 2008 relaunch of the Guardians’ ongoing series that set the lineup used in the upcoming movie. The British writer was rewarded for his contributions with both set access and acknowledgement by director James Gunn.

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Since Abnett also wrote the Guardians of the Galaxy: The Universal Weapon mobile game and a Rocket and Groot prose novel that is out now, he’s pretty much the expert when it comes to comparing different versions of these characters. As he told Bam Smack Pow in a recent phone interview, fans of the source material shouldn’t sweat it when they see that Drax is out for revenge against Ronan instead of Thanos, or that Gamora is described as dangerous instead of deadly.

“Actually, I think the differences are pretty cosmetic,” Abnett said. “I think by necessity, different formats — a game, a movie, a comic, a novel, whatever it is — require you to slightly alter things to make them fit. I think they’re doing it brilliantly.

“When you’ve got a movie format rather than an ongoing comic, you have to be more direct about certain things. So what surprises me is actually not how different characters like Drax are from comic to movie to book or game, but how essentially similar they are, aside from those minor cosmetic details that need to be altered.  I think they’re absolutely true in spirit, and that probably means they are, and always have been, extremely well-rounded, strong characters, since their inception in the late 60s and early 70s, which is part of their longevity, really.”

Abnett also said that the biggest challenge Gunn is facing in the film is that he needs to introduce the entire team of heroes in one shot, something Marvel didn’t have to with the Avengers since Iron Man, Captain America and Thor already had solo movies. On top of that, there’s the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy is serving as a sort of mainstream gateway to Marvel’s cosmic side, something moviegoers have only glimpsed so far.

“I think the movie shows that there is a huge cosmos out there that is barely being explored,” Abnett said. “It shows that the Marvel Universe really is a universe, and not just an extremely complex and interesting planet, Planet Earth.”

In other words, Abnett’s message to people worried about the transition from page to screen can be summed up by a catchphrase from a different pop culture property: don’t panic. Guardians of the Galaxy is set to bring both the scope and personality that fans of the comics are expecting on August 1, even if a few of the fine details are a little different. Most of all, he feels the franchise he helped revitalize a few years ago is in good hands with Gunn.

“I think the ambition of the movie is huge, and I think he’s going to pull it off with great aplomb.”

Watch for more from Bam Smack Pow’s interview with Dan Abnett later this week, including what it was like to revisit characters he knows so well in Guardians of the Galaxy: The Universal Weapon.