GEEKPR0N Interviews Dave Bautista – aka Drax the Destroyer

Last night I had the chance to see Guardians of the Galaxy (read our review here!), and before the film got started I had the opportunity to have a quick chat with Drax the Destroyer himself, Dave Bautista.

GEEKPR0N:  Hi Dave, I’m Rob with GEEKPR0N.com.  Congratulations on the film, we’re really excited to see it.  Looking back to when you first got the news you were cast as Drax, this was a departure for you as an actor compared to your previous roles.  What were you most excited for about bringing Drax to the screen?

Dave Bautista:  I was most excited about the character himself, you know, just the layers.  I think that he’s not even what most people are going to expect him to be.  I really was excited about playing those different layers, so I would actually get a chance to do a little bit of acting and kind of stretch myself, stretch my range a little bit.  And also show people that I was willing to stretch my range a little bit.  I didn’t want to be a generic super-hero action-guy.

GP:  Just the muscle?

DB:  Yeah I didn’t want to be Henchman #2, or somebody’s bodyguard.  I wanted to be a character that was interesting.

GP:  With Drax you definitely have a character with a rich backstory.  Did Marvel give you any reading material comic-wise, or just the script?

DB:  Not at all.  Not until I actually had the role, Marvel didn’t even give me the script.  So this is like three and a half months of auditioning before I actually had a script to look at.  But yeah, I got a sense of who he was, but really through James (Gunn) and my acting coach filling me in.  My acting coach is the biggest comic book geek and he’s actually the first one who kind of steered me onto Drax and the Guardians.  When I called him up and told him about the audition, he knew right away who the Guardians were and who Drax was.  So he kind of schooled me and gave me the background a little bit.  Also he explained to me why this would be the role of a lifetime, my dream role.

GP:  Now that comic-con has rolled around and the sequel has been announced, what are you looking forward to?  What part of Drax do you want to bring forward that we may not see in the first film.

DB: Personally, I’d really love to see more of his backstory.  It’s really sad when you really realize how heartbroken Drax is over the loss of his family.  I think it would be really cool if you saw how he was, what he was, when he was with his family.

GP: So seeing him as Arthur Douglas?

DB: Yeah man, but that’s speaking strictly as a fan boy, that’s the kind of stuff I want to see.  When I watched the movie for the first time, I stopped terrorizing my performance after the first twenty minutes.  Because really I do critique myself in a bad way, but when I stopped doing that and I started watching as a fan, by the end of the movie, I wanted to see more.  I wanted to see more of the Guardians going forward, where do they go, what happens to them, you know?

GP:  We’re out of time, thanks so much Dave.

DB:  Thank you, I appreciate it.

So that’s it for our chat with Dave Bautista.  Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy hits theatres tomorrow (August 1st), be sure to check it out!