GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY to Be a Stand-Alone Movie

“I wouldn’t say that in a broad sense. The Thor film and the Guardians of the Galaxy film certainly are cosmic. Guardians and Thor will take the brunt of the cosmic side of the universe, particularly Guardians, which is 95% in space. I think Iron Man 3 shows the other side of Phase 2, which is delving deeper into the characters. Throwing them on a much more personal journey. And Captain America will showcase… What’s exciting to me about Cap – sort of about Iron Man 3 too if you look at it – is it’s tonally almost like a different genre. Shane Black has described Iron Man 3 as a Tom Clancy sort of political thriller, which I like a lot. We hired our directors on Cap because they loved our explanation that we really want to make a ’70s political thriller masquerading as a big superhero movie. Just like with the first film – we got Joe Johnston because we said, ‘We want to do a ’40s World War Two movie masquerading as a big superhero movie.’ I love that we’re doing a sequel to a film that’s a completely different genre than the first film. I think that’s fun. And the comics do it all the time.”

“I would say that it does not. It’s much more of a standalone film. It takes place in the same universe. And when we’ve been on the other side of that universe in other movies, you might see those characteristics in Guardians, but The Avengers are not involved with what’s happening out there at this time.”