There are a lot of things in James Gunn’s first Guardians of the Galaxy movie that stick surprisingly close to the original comics, but Star-Lord’s signature weapon isn’t one of them. While Peter Quill’s Element Gun isn’t a consistent part of the character’s arsenal in the comics, he’s had it since his original appearance way back in 1976. His weapon could be customized to launch and control fire, air, water, or earth, which usually comes up when Star-Lord appears in other media like video games. For example, in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, all four of Star-Lord’s active skills are different attacks from the Element Gun.
Someone finally got around to asking Gunn about the Element Gun(n) this past weekend on Twitter. According to him, it was a deliberate decision. “An audience can only take so much new science fiction stuff explained to them in a two-hour film. Elegance is always my number one priority in storytelling,” Gunn wrote, which is funny to hear from the guy who made Slither, “and the element guns, which I love in the comics, would add one new weird thing too many.”
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Essentially, the Element Gun just ended up on the cutting room floor. Gunn later clarified that anything that would’ve even hinted at Quill’s dual blasters actually being the Element Guns would’ve just been too much. “Those things piled on top of one another in a movie where you’re also introducing a talking tree, a talking raccoon, all new characters and numerous worlds and cultures [becomes] huge and over-complicated.”
Star-Lord was created by Steve Englehart and Steve Gan in 1976’s Marvel Preview #4. In his original appearances, Peter Quill was an embittered astronaut who was chosen to become a “Starlord” by a space wizard who called himself the Master of the Sun. Equipped with his Element Gun and carried by a sentient spacecraft who answered to “Ship,” Peter adventured throughout the galaxy. He made a handful of appearances in various Marvel anthology books from 1976 to 1981 before being mostly forgotten.
Peter was abruptly introduced to the mainstream Marvel Universe in 2004 in Thanos #8, written by Keith Giffen and Ron Lim. This was a more cynical version of the original character, who’d lost almost everything, including Ship and presumably his original Element Gun, in a final battle against an enemy called the Fallen One. Peter went on to play a major supporting role in Giffen’s military sci-fi story Annihilation, the success of which led to several years of stories in which Marvel continued to explore its long-neglected science fiction roots. That included a revival of Guardians of the Galaxy by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with Peter as the leader of a team of misfits that desperately tried to keep order in an unstable, post-war universe.
Abnett and Lanning’s run on Guardians, as well as many elements from Annihilation, went on to inspire Gunn’s films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Due to those movies’ success, the comics’ Peter Quill was steadily evolved in a direction that skewed closer to Chris Pratt’s goofy well-meaning idiot, including the introduction of his history with Yondu and his space pirates. The Element Gun was reintroduced to the comics as part of Peter’s arsenal shortly before the debut of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, although its design quickly changed to resemble the “plasma pistol from Halo” look of Pratt’s guns in the film. He also picked up a hyphen somewhere along the way, going from “Starlord” to “Star-Lord” at an indeterminate point in the 2010s.
Gunn’s next project is The Suicide Squad, which is currently scheduled for release, COVID permitting, in August of next year.
Source: James Gunn/Twitter
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