"I feel really good about it," the director tells TimeOut.
"It's been a long journey making this film, but it's been a great process for me and I can't believe the amount of freedom and support I've had from Marvel in really creating something that's new and different. So it's been a wonderful experience."
Spoken like a true company man. Did Gunn feel as if he had to change his style for the film?
"I think this movie is 100 per cent my style, if I think about the things I'm really interested in.
"People associate me with extreme violence or extreme dark humour, and those are aspects of my personality. But what I really care about is the relationships between characters, and making those as real as I possibly can. And putting those characters in unique situations where you don't know what's going to happen from one moment to the next. And I think that's something true in Guardians, Super and Slither.
Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy
"Super was made for a very specific small audience, and I really made it specifically for that group. Guardians is a different sort of story, it's a different kind of movie, and the kind of movie I personally love just as much -- it's like the movies I grew up with.
"It's a movie for the world. And I feel great that I was able to make a movie for the world and still inject a lot of novelty, heart and emotion into it."
That's all well and good, but surely Marvel executives asked him to tone down his trademark weirdness?
"No. It's the exact opposite and I swear to God this was the case. I turned in my first draft of the movie and everyone was really happy and I think relieved because they didn't know what kind of draft I would end up writing -- and they had seen Super after all.
"We went in for a meeting and [Avengers writer/director] Joss Whedon said: 'You know, there's one thing I wish that you would change -- I just wish there was more of James Gunn in it. I wish you had more asides, I wish you had more of the banter that you're so good at writing.' And I looked around the table at [Marvel executives] Louis D'esposito and Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonzo and they were all nodding their heads. And so I was like, 'All right, it's your funeral'.
"At that point I felt like I had carte blanche to do what I wanted to do. So there was never a time when they asked me to tone down anything. If anything, they pushed me further."
Still, Gunn's movie is also the tenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has its own part to play in the mega-franchise. Still, the relatively marginal comic book history of Guardians helped make it a natural fit to the big screen.
"I think that one of the things that the MCU is looking to do is to stretch its wings a little bit -- to go into new areas and different genres. I think that's what Guardians is, just a way to find new angles and new ways of playing with the film universe. Guardians in particular is more a cinematic property than a comic-book property in that we're really able to create these characters in a new way for a new audience."
Gunn says the cast, which in effect hides its most recognisable stars such as Vin Diesel as the tree-like Groot and Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket Racoon -- was a challenge to assemble.
"It was fun. Although it was a very difficult discovery process, some characters were very difficult to cast. I auditioned 100 actors before we got to Chris Pratt, and the minute he started auditioning I knew he was the right guy. But it was very difficult finding him.
"On the other hand we had somebody like Zoe Saldana.
"When I first went in to talk to Marvel, they wanted me to talk about who I would consider casting for the different roles and the first person I brought up was Zoe Saldana as Gamora. So she's been there since the beginning. Some people were difficult, and some were easy."
One member of the ensemble is Lee Pace, who plays mega-villain Ronan The Accuser. Pace jumped back and forth between the British sets of Guardians and the Hobbit trilogy, where he plays the elven king Thranduil. On set, Pace regaled Gunn with tales of working in New Zealand.
"He talked quite a bit about that. He was staying at Peter Jackson's house when he was in London and I got to visit, which was cool."
Not that he met the landlord. "I just got to go in his house and go through his drawers and look at all his stuff."
Who: Chris Pratt, actor; James Gunn, director
What: Guardians of the Galaxy
When: Opens at cinemas today
- TimeOut
