Writer-director James Gunn‘s final Guardians of the Galaxy movie hits theaters today.

The original Guardians came out in 2014, and managed to turn obscure Marvel Comics characters like Rocket Raccoon and Groot into household names.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige commented on the original, “It was really our attempt of saying, ‘We don’t want to just do superhero movies. We don’t want to only just do Iron Man movies or Avengers movies.’ And it worked in a crazy way. It worked entirely because of James Gunn.”

He adds, “So it does feel like this trilogy and James writing and directing all three of them, it represents something unique within the pantheon of the MCU that I’m very proud of.”

Gunn expressed, “I’m going to miss the characters. That’s the saddest part. And I love all of them. I think there are certain ones that I have a special fondness for, especially Rocket. And yet the saddest part of all of this is…I’m not going to be writing the characters again, at least not in the near future.”

Guardians of the Galaxy turned Chris Pratt from that chubby Andy guy from Parks and Rec into a superhero. He teases that this time around, his Peter Quill/Star-Lord isn’t the plucky guy he seemed to be. “He’s lost,” the actor says, adding, “He’s a guy who’s constantly been searching for who he is.”

“He had found himself with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and then he thought he could find himself with who his father was [in Vol. 2]. And then he found it again in his relationship with [Zoe Saldaña‘s] Gamora,” but that too is “stripped away,” Pratt says.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.