Guardians Of The Galaxy made Dave Bautista a household name. The WWE wrestler turned actor played Drax The Destroyer in James Gunn’s movie about this ragtag bunch of misfits. One of Drax’s attributes was taking things too literally, which led to some humor at the expense of his complete obliviousness to metaphors. In a podcast, Drax reveals how he found the comedy challenging and preferred the drama in those movies more.
Drax talked a bit about his struggle with the film’s humor in lieu of how Drax was written in the first one and rewritten in the second to tap into Bautista’s funny side.
And it’s weird, the role in the first one, James Gunn rewrote it, and Drax was written very differently in the second one. The second one, I think James kind of tapped into my humor a little bit in the first one and decided that he wanted to put more of that in the second one. But in the first film, the comedic stuff was a challenge for me. I struggled with it. Some of that stuff they reshot, like, ‘Nothing goes over my head.’ Because they wanted to get a sense of Drax being such a literal character.
But Bautista then gets down to the serious stuff. He’s been actively seeking out roles that have a dramatic flair but those don’t come too easy, more so now after his enormous success as a Marvel star. Bautista shed some light on how he prefers the drama in those movies especially in regards to Drax’s dark history.
The stuff in the first film that I looked forward to was the dramatic stuff, like Drax talking about his family being murdered right in front of him. Stuff like that scene, the really hard scene, was cut out. It was cut out of the film, because it was just kind of slow and dark. But that was the kind of stuff I was really looking forward to.
James Gunn is currently busy with The Suicide Squad post which he should take on Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. While little is known about the movie, we do know that Gunn has a script and it’s set to focus heavily on Rocket Raccoon and his backstory, perhaps even featuring his love interest.
As for Bautista, he did get a chance to display his dramatic chops a bit in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049. To close out, Drax declared that he would’ve never imagined himself as a star of that level, cracking jokes and displaying his humorous side.
I never would have thought, and I still don’t. It’s hard for me. I don’t find myself funny, so it’s hard for me.