SALDANA: I've felt like an underdog my whole life.
But I was never tortured by it.
I wasn't defined by gender. I wasn't defined by color.
I could be anything I wanted to be.
I wasn't really interested in being a princess.
I didn't want to wear the princess costume for Halloween.
I was always the ninja.
I was either a white ninja or a black ninja or a red ninja.
It was like every Halloween, in a succession of eight Halloweens,
I was just a ninja.
I loved action movies and science fiction.
I loved icons like Whoopi Goldberg and Sigourney Weaver,
who at the time,
were the only females that I knew of
that were driving the action-driven storylines.
Come on!
And I felt like I could see myself in them.
WOMAN: (SINGING) I'm unstoppable
I'm a Porsche with no brakes
I'm invincible
Yeah, I win every single game
I'm so powerful
I don't need batteries to play
I'm so confident
Yeah, I'm unstoppable today
Unstoppable today Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today
Gamora is the most dangerous assassin in the universe.
And she's a killing machine.
(SCREAMS)
With a heart of gold and a true sense of justice.
Gamora is incredibly gifted in the art of violence.
(GRUNTING)
She can make you fall in love with her
and slice your throat in the same movement,
which is pretty awesome.
No!
What the hell?
I know who you are, Peter Quill!
PRATT: But as we peel the onion back further
through the course of Guardians 1 and into Guardians 2
and into the Avengers films, you realize that underneath it all, she's,
in her own way, on a quest to find out who she is.
When Thanos took my homeworld, he killed my parents in front of me.
The one thing that the Guardians each have in common is
that they have experienced loss.
Ronan murdered my wife, Ovette,
and my daughter, Camaria.
SALDANA: Drax has lost his family.
So did Nebula.
Quill has lost his mother.
Groot lost his planet.
Rocket has been experimented on like a lab rat.
And Gamora lost her family.
(SCREAMING)
Mother!
The real moral spine of the team has always been Gamora.
Because she's the one who has the backstory of having been raised
in such a incredibly traumatic and hurtful way.
Gamora. Surgically modified and trained as a living weapon.
The adopted daughter of the Mad Titan, Thanos.
PRATT: Gamora was raised by Thanos
and has a tragic backstory of pain and misery.
What's wrong, little one?
Where's my mother?
As a child, Thanos kills her parents in front of her,
which is an incredibly traumatic thing.
- (PEOPLE SCREAMING) - Uh-uh.
Thanos kind of adopted her
in a kidnapping way.
She's a lone wolf,
so she had to be strong at a very young age.
So, she grows up not really having trust in people.
I wanted Gamora to carry a kind of pain,
a kind of melancholy that comes with the loss of a loved one.
(SCREAMS)
That was relatable to me.
Mother!
That was why I wanted to say yes to playing Gamora.
My sisters and I went through a lot of hardships growing up.
We were victims of loss because my father had passed away
when we were very, very young,
and we needed outlets to deal with our grief.
So, my older sister began painting.
My younger sister became a great debater.
And I started dancing.
Dance gave me the ability to communicate emotion
when words were not around, when words were not available.
Dance, you're able to interpret loss.
It gave me the ability to imagine the unimaginable.
It was a blank canvas in a vast dark space,
where I can be anything.
As I grew up,
dancing gave me an outlet to deal with the fact that
I was being massively bullied at school.
It became like my weapon.
And I feel that my background as a dancer shaped who I am,
not only as a person, but also, it gave me the ability to pursue
a very, you know, great career, in action movies.
I wouldn't be as experienced in action movies,
or even in science fiction movies, had I not had a foundation in dance.
Dance gave me the ability to approach characters
also from a physical point, not just an internal one.
(GROANS)
GUNN: Zoe was my number-one choice for Gamora
because she was a fantastic action hero
and that's what we needed,
was somebody who had her depth and had the magic in the eyes.
Which is what I look for in actors.
Somebody who you can look at their eyes and they always feel present.
SALDANA: There's always a lot of me
that I unconsciously bleed into the characters that I play.
When I was putting Gamora together,
I knew she was gonna be doing a lot of action scenes
and I just didn't want her to look like the typical martial artist.
And I thought, "What can I add to her?"
The sword is her weapon of choice. It's a very classic
and old form of fighting.
So, I remember thinking,
I want her to move in a way that she's inviting her enemy
to come towards her like the way a bullfighter invites the bull to come.
The way that bullfighters move is quite graceful.
It's a dance that he does, you know, with the bull.
It's a duel.
And I thought, "Oh, my God, this is Gamora. This is who she is."
Nebula.
I don't think that I would be here today if it wasn't for my sisters.
We grew up with the kind of solidarity
that one needs to have in order to survive adversity.
We were always together
and we didn't like each other at times, (CHUCKLES)
but we loved each other.
As Gamora, I'm confronted with a sister, Nebula,
who is completely the opposite of who I am.
I'll be free of these shackles soon enough,
and I will kill you, I swear.
Nebula's extremely complicated.
There's a lot going on there, emotionally.
And I'd say that's not totally typical for a superhero.
I'm a daughter of Thanos. Just like you.
Gamora and Nebula are both dealing with, you know, being brought up
by an incredibly abusive supervillain, Thanos,
who basically took these children
and tried to turn them into warriors as extensions of his own ego
and was incredibly cruel throughout the process.
As a woman writing a character like Gamora,
I was channeling a lot of the sibling rivalry
that I have with my own sibling.
(GRUNTS)
And so one of the things that I really wanted to explore was
the idea that Nebula and Gamora were purposely pitted against each other
by this father figure.
Well done, daughter.
Because he knows how powerful they are and that if they were ever to team up,
they could bring him down.
You alienated my favorite daughter, Gamora.
He pitted the siblings against each other.
Gamora always won because she was better at fighting, she was the golden child.
Nebula, I think, was just so resentful towards that
that she took it personally.
Like a personal attack, almost.
(SCREAMS)
I have never had any type of experience where I've had to share the attention
with a sibling or felt overlooked.
And so, I kind of had to really do my research
and look at sibling relationships 'cause they're so complex.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
It was a dream come true to get to see a fight between two sisters
because in reality, when I was like seven or eight years old,
fighting with my sisters, in my mind, that's exactly what it looked like.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
Or that's what I wanted to be doing to them, you know?
But these sisters love each other a lot.
That's why the hate is so strong.
The rage, the anger, is just so evergreen, especially in Nebula.
As a child, my father would have Gamora and me battle one another in training.
Every time my sister prevailed...
my father would replace a piece of me with machinery...
claiming he wanted me to be her equal.
From Nebula's perspective,
I would say that she's extremely angry at Gamora
and Gamora has purposefully won all of these battles
every single time just to make her look worse
in front of her father.
There was a scene between Nebula and Gamora where they have a big argument
and they're sort of shouting at each other.
And then, it becomes emotional all of a sudden.
It takes a quick turn and you get a little insight
into how Nebula feels towards Gamora.
I don't need you always trying to beat me!
I'm not the one that flew across the universe 'cause I wanted to win!
Do not tell me what I want.
I don't need to tell you what you want! It's obvious!
You were the one who wanted to win. And I just wanted a sister!
GILLAN: And she's suddenly really vulnerable
and I think Gamora looks at her like,
"Oh, I didn't understand that about you before,
"but I'm seeing a different side of you."
"You're not just angry, you're really hurt and fragile."
And that was a breakthrough for them as sisters.
You were all I had.
But you were the one who needed to win.
Thanos pulled my eye from my head...
and my brain from my skull...
and my arm from my body...
because of you.
GUNN: That moment when Nebula looks at Gamora
and tells her that she didn't want to win, she just wanted a sister.
I think that hits home with Gamora.
And at the end of Guardians 2, when Gamora hugs Nebula,
and...
Nebula is just sitting there being hugged, not knowing what...
(CHUCKLES)
So weird.
She's just sitting there being hugged and then Nebula just takes her hand
like this and she just hugs her back.
Just hugs her sister back for a moment,
and that moment to me is so important.
It's just so important, like, to me.
That moment which is only in a wide frame that we see it
is as momentous as anything I've ever shot.
Because that is a person starting to accept love.
You will always be my sister.
Those are amazing scenes.
Those are amazing moments to experience with someone like Karen.
To build that trust with an actress on set was amazing because
up until then in my career, I have very few moments
with female actresses
because I tended to be the only female actress in a whole cast.
I didn't ask for your help.
And yet, you always need it.
So having someone like Karen play Nebula,
I didn't care if we didn't get along on camera.
I got to be with a sister off camera and that was wonderful.
People think that we hate each other.
- We don't. We're so close, look. - At all.
We're super close.
We look like twins.
Whee! (LAUGHS)
GILLAN: We've really bonded, I think, just over playing these sisters
and spending so much time together.
Zoe has been a mentor for me. She's done more of those big movies.
I was completely new to it
and she took me in under her wing like her little sister.
I wasn't like a really sporty kid at all. I was more like a theater nerd.
And so when I signed on, I was not good at fighting.
It involves a lot of stunts to play Nebula, so many fight scenes.
I had to train for two months to lead up to this fight sequence
between Nebula and Gamora, which was really amazing.
I felt like I was in action hero boot camp or something.
And Zoe really helped me with my stunt performance.
I'm really tall and so I, like, hunch,
and she stopped me from doing that for a start.
And then, she taught me how to run.
So I would also do this weird run with my fists clenched,
thinking that looked cool, and she's like, "Open them up."
And she taught me how to throw a mean punch.
And then, I suddenly wasn't terrible at fighting anymore.
I was, like, pretty good.
(GRUNTING)
We become sisters.
I feel like we've just had so many emotional experiences
during these scenes that we can't help but feel bonded to each other.
We can stop him.
She definitely inspires me to fight for what I believe in more
as a person and as a performer.
She knows what she wants.
She has her own mind and she really speaks it.
It's very empowering to watch and I definitely feel like I've learned
how to conduct myself.
Go!
(BOTH GRUNT)
He's too powerful. I can't!
I believe in you.
Sleep!
SALDANA: I do believe that Gamora and Nebula feel kindred
to Mantis very, very early on.
The difference between Mantis is I don't think that Mantis has experienced
the level of violence that Gamora and Nebula did.
MANTIS: Ego found me in my larva state.
Orphaned on my home world.
He raised me by hand, and kept me as his own.
The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are very touching
because it talks about the family that you choose.
GAMORA: He's our friend.
All any of you do is yell at each other. You are not friends.
You're right. We're family.
We leave no one behind.
KLEMENTIEFF: I love how resilient the female characters are.
I love Karen.
She's so different from her character in real life.
I would like Nebula to go to Chuck E. Cheese and take down Thanos.
(YELLS)
(BOTH YELL)
And Zoe, she's incredible. (LAUGHS)
I remember going to a Halloween party
after Guardians of the Galaxy, the first one, came out,
and I wanted to dress up like Gamora.
So, I bought some green makeup and a red wig.
I don't know, it didn't look great, but I wanted to be Gamora.
(LAUGHS)
And then I booked the role of Mantis, so it's kind of funny.
Like Mantis, I've always felt different
and it's very freeing to play this kind of character
because I get to be strange, to be weird, and to go back to being a kid, basically.
My dad was a diplomat so I traveled a lot when I was a child.
So, that's why I think I got attracted to escapism and traveling
and never staying in the same place.
That's what I love in movies.
To be, like, taken away and be transported in this crazy, imaginary world.
Can I pet your puppy? It is adorable.
Yes, please.
- (SCREAMS) - (LAUGHS)
That is called a practical joke.
(BOTH LAUGH)
I liked it very much.
KLEMENTIEFF: What I love about the character of Mantis
is she's an empath.
She has a superpower that when she touches someone,
she can change their feelings, their emotions.
(GRUNTS)
Who are you people?
You are scared.
(BREATHING NERVOUSLY)
I'm very emotional, too, so that, I feel that.
I feel the empathy for sure.
(BREATHES HEAVILY)
That's what you need to connect with other human beings
and, you know, to be a better person
and caring about others is something that is very important.
Some people lack empathy for sure.
Some people should be a little bit more like Mantis, I think.
(GRUNTS)
Sleep.
B-mark.
Quick and efficient.
Yeah. There you go. Cool.
ALONSO: For some of us that have been doing this for 30 years,
I was always the only girl.
Always.
And I was always the only head of department for the longest of time.
And I know that if I look at some of the amazing men
that have carried me through and taught me,
a lot of them are struggling with the idea
of having more women on set.
But I know that the importance of that is that we see things
that other people don't.
When you do an action movie, it's not just you.
It's a team effort.
MAN: And, action!
(GRUNTS)
SALDANA: It's your makeup artist. It's your stunt coordinator.
It's your costume designer. It's your choreographer.
It's your director. And then, it's you.
So, there's a lot of trust that happens with one character.
We are passing her around.
I'm a makeup artist for Gamora on Guardians of the Galaxy.
I was department-heading a movie called Death at a Funeral
and Zoe was the star in the movie and we hit it off.
We both spoke Spanish and just connected and became really good friends.
Gamora was not a person,
a human, that you just paint green and let's go to shoot it.
Green paint over a face with, you know, regular eyebrows,
it just never looks good.
It was gonna look like Halloween makeup versus something bigger.
I said, "I think that we should do special effects."
So, we did the whole mold of Zoe's face and chest.
The special effects makeup department started working on prosthetic pieces.
We covered the eyebrows with prosthetic makeup.
SALDANA: It was challenging because we were trying
to find the right green that wouldn't put people off,
but was also vibrant and kind of youthful.
That way, she doesn't look like a reptile.
She doesn't look so alien-looking that you can't really find
any kind of connection with her.
It was a fun, but very arduous, you know,
process that we remember every step of the way.
(LAUGHS)
Tails mark.
TRAN: We're pushing more than ever
in the last decade that I've been at Marvel to really find,
you know, female crew members behind the scene,
not just in front, but really behind the scenes.
MICKLE: I come from the indie film world in New York as a production designer.
There's a ceiling when it comes to being a woman trying to get these jobs.
Very few women get a chance to work in this giant franchise arena.
Especially in department head positions and especially in production design.
And my agent called me and said,
"James Gunn would like to meet with you for Guardians of the Galaxy 3."
And we had a great meeting.
Then my agent called later and said,
James would like to have me come on board,
and I literally fell off my chair.
And my world changed. My career changed.
Everything really changed with that phone call.
And by James deciding to take a leap on somebody
who didn't have that usual experience is really what kind of
changed the landscape for my career,
but I think, also, very much for art departments
and for these other departments looking to be more inclusive.
GREENBLATT: My first day on set was crazy.
I saw Zoe in full wardrobe and costume and I was just in awe
of how cool she looked, and her body language,
and how she completely owned the set.
I was like, "Wow! She's incredible."
It's like super intimidating for eight-year-old me,
but she was so welcoming.
And she was so warm and so sweet.
She's just such a motivating person to be around.
She's very strong, and she's very smart,
and I'm like that, too.
I grew up in a house that always loved everything comic books,
everything Marvel, everything superheroes.
I think it's cool to see yourself in your favorite characters.
I love Gamora and she's inspiring because she never gives up.
I think that's an important message because if you are a young girl at home,
it kind of gives you hope that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel
and that you can become stronger.
As actors, we have the power to really inspire people.
We do. We have that power.
Every day, I see a woman come up to me and say that my character inspires them.
My character keeps them going.
They were my character for Halloween.
They dressed their daughter as my character.
I never take any of that for granted.
That kind of visibility gives them purpose.
(CHUCKLES)
It makes them feel seen and heard and celebrated.
My name is Priscilla Frederick-Loomis, and my favorite superhero
in the MCU Universe is Gamora.
Gamora, to me, is just the ultimate badass.
I automatically connected with her fierceness
and just her overall confidence and her struggles.
She doesn't ever back down to a challenge
and I hope that that's something I can be.
I became a professional athlete in 2014
and I represented the country of Antigua and Barbuda.
And I went to the Olympics,
but didn't get to win the Olympic gold medal.
And then I was able to see myself in Gamora.
I saw her struggle and so I realized that I can be a superhero
even though I've had a really rough past.
Growing up, it was just my mom, my sister and I.
And so, seeing that Gamora was on this journey
kind of on her own and kind of ripped away from her family
kind of made sense, you know?
I have a very kind of distant relationship with my father
and I saw that I could overcome that.
And so, I started my own organization called
the Priscilla E. Frederick Foundation.
Our main goal is to assist single-parent households.
Connecting them to financial resources, housing, whatever they need.
I wanted to make sure that I did something that affected the world in a positive way.
Hopefully, I can be that person that helps the Gamoras of the world
build that bridge and get them where they want to be.
(BOTH GRUNT)
(SCREAMING)
GUNN: I love uniquely superpowered characters.
I think, you know, it's important to tell stories
about all sorts of different types of people.
I love Nebula
because she really was a really bad, bad character
in the first movie, and we get to see her slowly come around.
She has a change of heart and she becomes a Guardian of the Galaxy down the road.
And I think she's a superhero in many people's lives.
My name's Angel Giuffria.
I was born missing the lower half of my left arm.
It's called a congenital limb difference.
Seeing Nebula onscreen in Guardians of the Galaxy
being someone who has a prosthesis.
At one point, she chops off her hand to do something.
And I was like, "That's me!" Like, I take my hand off all the time.
So, it's been really exciting to see such a strong
and powerful and badass character that, you know,
really pushes and fights for what she believes in,
because that's something I've done forever.
Growing up as a kid with a limb difference,
I think, was difficult because I felt like I had
to kind of constantly fight to fit in.
I kind of had to develop a thick skin.
I had to develop a pretty good sense of humor,
just to show people that, you know, having any type of physical difference,
you're still the same as everybody.
So, I think being different my whole life has
led me on this path of being able to say,
like, let me show you why different is so cool.
Nebula definitely has a lot of anger and I guess I do resonate with that a bit
because it was so frustrating to have to convince people that I was okay.
You know, that being different wasn't bad.
I didn't understand why the default was that I was wrong,
that my body wasn't right, you know, for existing how I was.
Seeing Nebula be so confident in her robot body and going, you know,
"I could kind of make my arm look like her arm."
So, seeing her onscreen, I was like, "I wanna look like that."
I think that's what's important for young amputees,
young people with limb differences, everyone, really,
to see that we exist in this dynamic fashion,
that I feel like has been ignored in media.
The frustrating part is that's how people know things, right?
If you don't know someone who wears a bionic arm
or who is an amputee, why would you know?
So, seeing Nebula, seeing these awesome characters,
especially in superhero movies, is so exciting.
Like we get a superhero.
I get to be Nebula.
How do you like the Guardians of the Galaxy?
(CROWD CHEERING)
(ALL EXCLAIM)
(CROWD CHEERING)
Hail Hail
What's the matter with your head
GILLAN: I think Marvel films are so successful because they lift us
out of our everyday lives and put us in a fantastical world
where everything's extraordinary and amazing.
But underneath all of that is just really good messages
that we can all connect to in our real lives.
SALDANA: I dig it. I like being in space.
I get to play less girlfriends and more female parts.
More women.
Come and get your love
What? Whoa!
I need a picture right now!
I think that we do have the responsibility as storytellers
to represent what the world looks like today.
They're not just, like, badass and violent, you know.
They're like peculiar and weird and broken at the same time,
so it feels like we're getting accurate representation of women in the film.
You walk out into the world and there's all types of women, and so,
I think it's vital to reflect society, diversity, you know, all genders.
We just need to reflect the real society in our movies.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
KLEMENTIEFF: The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are very touching.
And I find it really beautiful
because you see yourself represented on screen.
I come out of these movies feeling more assured,
feeling stronger, feeling more optimistic, feeling more hopeful,
feeling like, yes, we do have control of our destiny.
PRATT: I have a daughter now.
She's one year old so I haven't shown her any Marvel movies yet.
But I like the idea that one day, we'll watch them
and she can see herself in these characters now.
She can see Gamora and Nebula and Mantis.
Something's happening.
I like the idea that my daughter can say,
"I don't need to be rescued by a boy, I can rescue the boy myself."
Peter! Take my hand!
- ANNOUNCER: Zoe Saldana! - (CROWD CHEERING)
WOMAN: You go, girl!
SALDANA: My hope is to be inspired every time I go to the movies.
And I'm excited to see more stories of heroines.
Of female heroes.
Because I enjoy this genre, I enjoy action movies,
I enjoy watching films with younger audiences.
It makes you feel very excited and proud of what you're doing.
So let's keep going in this direction. More, please.
(LAUGHS)