The Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for being a well-oiled machine, thanks to its constant supply of new content in theaters and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. But fans who spent years watching the Marvel movies in order will recall that there was a ton of experimentation in its early days. James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a huge risk, and the filmmaker recently recalled coming up with the MCU’s Infinity Stone lore in “three minutes”. Let’s break it down.
Before James Gunn became the DCU’s co-CEO, he was attempting to bring the Guardians to life in live-action. The OG 2014 blockbuster offered much more information about the Infinity Stones, although it turns out that the exposition dump by Benicio del Toro’s The Collector came together without all that much thought. During a conversation with GQ about his movies, Gunn revealed:
When I wrote the scene with The Collector explaining that there was this explosion, and the Infinity Stones were born, and what they mean and where they came from, that was literally me just sitting down for 3 minutes and writing that. And that’s then what became the rest of the Infinity Stones. There was never anybody that said anything other than, ‘I think the red thing and the blue thing are going to end up being Infinity Stones’. That wasn’t in the plan to begin with.
upcoming Marvel movies and TV shows, James Gunn actually wrote the Infinity Stones sequence in Guardians 1 on the fly. And those three minutes would end up being canon for the entirety of the shared universe. Talk about timing.
Kevin Feige and company have a master plan, ultimately its just regular people putting together each new blockbuster. James Gunn’s work on Guardians of the Galaxy opened up cosmic doors for the MCU, and provided backstory to the Infinity Stones, which would majorly factor into other projects including Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.
In that same interview he also revealed that they shot the first Guardians movie with the Power Stone being red, but it had to be changed to purple for the theatrical cut. Namely because they decided the Reality Stone aka the Aether from Thor: The Dark World would be red instead.
After the ending of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, fans are left wondering if/when the franchise might return to the big screen. The movie’s title card claimed Star-Lord would be back, but it’s unclear whether or not we’ll see the rest of the team. None of the Guardians were listed in the Avengers: Doomsday cast announcement.
The next installment in the MCU is The Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25th as part of the 2025 movie release list. James Gunn’s latest directorial project Superman is in theaters now, which once again creates a canon for a shared universe.