Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has responded with his ever-reliable wit to the recent news of Karen Gillan and Pom Klementieff's emotional, even tearful response to reading the script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Initially responding by jokingly wondering whether the two stars had suffered an onslaught of paper cuts while flicking through the script pages, the filmmaker followed up by asking whether they had gotten so emotional due to their lack of lines. Something which he declares would be grossly unfounded.

"I hope it's not because they thought they had too few lines because honestly their roles are both pretty huge and it seems greedy," James Gunn said of their reaction, in jest of course, confirming that both Karen Gillan's Nebula and Pom Klementieff's Mantis have substantial roles in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy threequel.

Karen Gillan recently revealed that she and Pom Klementieff had read the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. script together, and that it had reduced them both to "floods of tears," meaning that the third (and likely final) outing for this iteration of the intergalactic superhero team is going to be a very emotional journey indeed. "We read it in the same room together, and then looked at each other and we were in floods of tears... so emotional," Gillan said. "You're learning more about existing characters and on a deeper level. I'm really excited at exploring Nebula, post-Thanos."

Not much has been officially revealed regarding the plot of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3., leaving us to speculate over what exactly left the two Marvel stars in such an emotional mess. One distinct possibility is that one or more of the titular team will meet their end in the movie, with director James Gunn recently suggesting that the characters are not as safe as they once were. "There's a much bigger sense of danger for all of our characters [in the Suicide Squad] because we know all of them could die. Whereas in Guardians, yes, obviously I killed Yondu, I killed the big original Groot, but it isn't the same thing. We know most of them are going to make it out alive. At least for two movies," Gunn teased.

The third movie in the MCU series will no doubt be poignant for all sorts of reasons, with the third outing also likely to be the final Marvel project for Gunn. "For me, Guardians 3 is probably the last one. I don't know about doing it again," the director revealed, before teasing future comic book movie adventures at DC instead. "I do find, because of the ability to do different stuff in the DC multiverse, it's fun. They're starting to really resemble their comic books. The Marvel Universe has always been a little more cohesive, and DC has always had more great single runs. They had The Dark Knight Returns. They had Watchmen. They had The Killing Joke. They had Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. The fact that they did Joker, which is a totally different type of movie, that to me is cool. I'm very excited about Matt's movie [Matt Reeves' The Batman]. They're getting some really good filmmakers involved. They're always going to be hit or miss - I just don't want them to get boring."

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is due to hit theaters on May 5, 2023. This comes to us courtesy of James Gunn's official Twitter account.