Following this past weekend’s D23 panel where Marvel unveiled the very first footage from Avengers: Infinity War, Good Morning America caught up with Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista, who was full of praise for directors Anthony and Joe Russo and their handling of Drax and company in the hotly-anticipated superhero epic.
“My biggest, pleasant surprise was working with the Russo brothers,” said Bautista. “I was familiar with their films, but I wasn’t familiar with how they did, you know, things on set, how they directed films. And my big concern crossing over was that someone was going to try to take James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy and turn them into their version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. It worried me a little bit because I had already done two Guardians films and, you know, I knew Drax, I was comfortable with Drax and who he was and I didn’t want to take him in a weird direction that I didn’t think was good for the character.”
“But it wasn’t that at all,” he continues. “They kind of just let us do our thing. They gave us free reign to be the Guardians that we know and love and also gave us the luxury of having James Gunn write for us a little bit. But I was just amazed at how supportive they were on letting us just be our characters. They were like, ‘Just go for it.’ We’re really big on improving stuff, the Guardians are, and we started doing it business as usual and they just really got behind it.”
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As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment – the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.
Avengers: Infinity War opens on April 27th 2018 in the UK and May 4th 2018 in the US and will feature an all-star cast including Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (Wong), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Bradley Cooper (Rocket), Sean Gunn (Rocket, Kraglin), Vin Diesel (Groot), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Benicio Del Toro (The Collector), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Winston Duke (M’Baku) and Peter Dinklage and Terry Notary in as-yet-unrevealed roles.
Originally published July 19, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
