Watch: Kurt Russell’s Guardians of the Galaxy Ego Costume Revealed

Not sure where James Gunn is going with this one, but at least he isn’t following the crap Bendis did.

Saturday at Comic-Con saw James Gunn reveal that Kurt Russell is indeed playing the father to Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 — but Kurt Russell is not playing Jason of Spartax — Russell is playing Ego (as in The Living Planet).

I’ve been traversing the internet and saw a bit of fan outrage on the matter as it differs a lot from the comics, but guess what? So did the first movie. I’ve pretty much come to accept that what Gunn is doing is not an adaptation at all of the Abnett and Lanning’s 2008 Guardians of the Galaxy or any of the Marvel comics.

That said, Gunn did offer a bit about Ego at the SDCC:

This is the biggie, I guess. And, yes, as many people guessed, or assumed, Kurt Russell is playing Peter Quill’s father. And Peter Quill’s father is (as almost no one has guessed)…

EGO.

Known in the comics as Ego the Living Planet.

Yeah, his dad is a planet. Sort of. It will all be explained in the film..

But to me, this is the absolute center of Vol. 2, and one of the reasons I’ve been so excited about it. When Marvel first approached me with the first movie, I thought, “Wait a second? A talking raccoon? Isn’t that a rather ridiculous idea to base a movie around?”

It was then that I took a step back and asked myself: Okay, if a raccoon could talk, and shoot a machine gun, how could that be? And answering that question ended up being the entire foundation of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. There was a sadness in the answer. Rocket was an animal experimented upon, torn apart and put back together, without compassion. He was the only being of his type, had never known any hint of kindness, and was utterly and completely alone until he met his fellow Guardians. And, one of them in particular – Groot – thought it was worth sacrificing his life for his sake. This melancholy and beautiful undercurrent helped to ground the character for me. He had far more in common with Frankenstein’s monster than he did Bugs Bunny. And I related to him, greatly, and I hoped other folks who felt like outsiders would as well.

Ego seemed, in many ways, like an even more ridiculous character. But I asked myself, if a planet was alive, how could that be? And how could it father a child?

The answers to those questions took me to a far deeper place that I expected. I don’t want to give away too many answers at this time. But what Nova Prime said about Peter’s father at the end of Vol. 1 is certainly true – he is something ancient and unknown. And, as we will discover, being a cosmic being, alone for eons, is perhaps even more lonely than being the universe’s sole talking raccoon.

I can’t wait for you guys to see Kurt Russell bring this character to life onscreen. It has been a rapturous experience creating Ego with him. We have both pushed ourselves as far as we can go in making him real, and grounded, and emotionally centered.

We can speculate based on what Gunn had to say that at some point, the actual Ego The Living Planet decided to take human form and met Star-Lord’s mother, and the two had a relationship, which is how we got Peter Quill. It’s also possible at some point we may see the actual comic version of Ego, which would be a hoot on screen.

Marvel also revealed video of Kurt Russell’s Ego costume from the movie at Comic-Con: