Some of our very own guardians, Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, and Vin Diesel take time out of their duties protecting us from evil to swing by Google NYC to discuss "Guardians of the Galaxy," their roles within, what it's like to be action figures, and many other topics. 

Hosted by Mark and Todd from http://youtube.com/BarelyPolitical

Vin Diesel, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt.

of all, we want to thank you guys for coming to the very center of the nerd universe.

Knock a lot of them out right out of the gate.

OK, so this movie, we all saw it last week.

It's really, I would say it's almost like 95% a comedy.

It's really like a fun, I mean, the tone is like super light and fun.

Like, Is it hard to keep it loose when you know that they're spending like a million dollars a minute?

around a million dollars a second, I think.

You know, it is a little difficult, juggling tone, I think, when you have comedy and action and drama and all those things in the same movie.

A lot of times when movies try to have all 3 of those things, they essentially fail at all 3.

Like movies that are trying to be funny and have action and have drama oftentimes fail at all those things.

And So it is a little scary, because you're there, and you're surrounded by alien makeup extras, and you're on this amazing set outdoors.

You know it's literally costing at least thousands of dollars a minute, if not more.

And they're like, OK, no, do the running man more.

If this doesn't work, it's going to be super embarrassing.

But I think Tone is something that's like, we just have to sort of trust James in the post-production process that he's going to polish it and test it and make sure that the comedy's working but not overshadowing the action and not overshadowing the drama.

I mean, I like to liken it to gastronomy, like those kind of dishes that shouldn't work together but do.

And it's the result of a chef knowing just how much caviar to mix with the lollipop and the cat food that tastes so good.

Yeah, because a lot of times it is weird when you're like, oh wait, now the raccoon's crying.

as long as the ingredients are really organic and fresh,

in the hands of a good chef, they can give you a dish that you're not used to eating.

But you're like, god damn it, that's really good.

Every time I'm only used food metaphors, you know I'm hungry.

Have any of you auditioned for any of these like superhero, huge superhero comic book kind of things before?

I know Vin, you've been in a billion action movies.

No, this is the first Marvel film, the first superhero film I've done.

And there was like a social media wave to get you involved in a Marvel movie.

I was at Comic-Con, and I was at Hall H for a Riddick.

And someone in an Iron Man outfit asked me a question.

How did I envision my relationship with Marvel would be?

And then the next day, Kevin Feige was there, and they asked him the same question.

And then 2 weeks later, Kevin Feige called me and said, you want to play a tree?

I mean, was it like, hey, just come in and give us 6, and then we're good.

I mean, the cool thing about James Gunn is that he really was invested in this movie.

And I was lucky because they had already shot so much of the movie.

And when I went into the ADR booth, I was loving what I was seeing.

So you got to play off the scenes that you already saw.

And I thought that there was only going to be 3 words when I came in there.

And there was a 50-page document with I.M.

I know some of you, I mean, if this is the nerd capital, you do know what a floricolossus is.

And essentially, people that are familiar with him can understand him.

But if you aren't familiar with him because he has a hardened larynx, you can't understand the nuance of his speech.

So James Gunn really wanted to give me the line.

And then the process was trying to make that line fit into the 3 monosyllabic words of I am Groot.

So speaking Groot, say if you wanted to say, I'll take the check.

Zoe, between Star Trek, this, and Avatar, you're in space more than you're not in space.

Is that something, is it hard for you to go, like, from that to, OK, now you're in Pittsburgh with Christian Bale, and it's a serious scene.

I kind of wish I was in space when I went to Pittsburgh.

The content of what we were doing was so not fun.

When you work in a movie like this, you're kind of skipping to work.

And you're just sort of bitching and moaning about the long hours of makeup and the 18-hour shoots or whatever, when you do a film like Out of the Furnace, we can be shooting it in Miami, in South Beach.

And you're still going to wish that you were in space.

And I have Christian Bale here and Casey Affleck there.

Like, it was just like, oh my god, I'm so like.

So it was good when after that movie, and I was very proud of it.

It's good to do things here on Earth sometimes.

And because then when you do get to go in space, you're like, yeah.

By the way, don't Sienna Miller me, please.

But Kristen Bale and Casey Affleck, not so much.

But was sci-fi something that you've been interested in?

Were you originally when you started acting?

No, I grew up in a household where my mother, if she wasn't watching science fiction, she was reading it.

And I remember I read Dune when I was very, very young, and I was Lady Jessica for many Halloweens.

And so there was something about the curiosity of what can happen there.

And having a lot of respect through my mother's eyes for the writers and creators that were able to imagine the unimaginable, I just thought It was such a bold decision.

And being an underdog myself, I kind of felt an affinity always with people that were able to go outside of the norm and see life for what it truly, truly is, which is a complete blank canvas.

So filmmakers like JJ Abrams, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg are not people that I would have thought that a girl from Queens would get to work with in the first 7 or 8 years of my acting career, and yet I did.

And then I connected all the dots, and it has to do with our affinity with space.

I did have a fear when James Gunn came calling.

You're going to be green now instead of blue.

That brings up, is it hard to play a green person or a blue person?

Well, because I'm a little lazy and hard.

I like motion capture better, because you guys get to do all the hard work.

And I do my work, and I put it all out there.

But then I walk away, and then it's all done in 2 years, like in posts and things like that.

For Guardians of the Galaxy, I have to sit there for 5 hours and it's not cool.

I have ADD, I have OCD, I'm in England, I'm away from home.

And you go in, and you're getting your makeup done.

And then you have like 16 hours worth of work to do.

And You can't complain because everybody's just so happy to be there.

We were just like, so does every actor know karate now?

Like It seems like, did you guys know any martial arts before this?

When you were in the booth, I am Groot, just doing it for fun.

No, but I mean, it seems like you guys were doing a lot of martial arts.

They had to really dumb down my martial arts skill.

I'm a 10th degree black belt in every martial art.

No, yeah, I did kung fu when I was, I think, in third grade.

So I was pretty much qualified to go kick ass in space.

Didn't she kick you pretty hard a couple times?

You know, she's really a very powerful athlete.

And people don't understand that power doesn't come from brute strength.

You see the most graceful mixed martial arts fighters, and they're not big muscle heads.

And she's a ballerina, so she whacked me once in the ribs.

I think I push on it and it hurts still, so it might be broken.

It's been like a year, so I think she broke it.

But yeah, she was wearing these boots, too, that are kind of like high heel boots.

But instead of having a heel, they have a thin rubber hard sole at the bottom.

And then a heel, They're kind of interesting, like a triangle.

And then she sort of drove that triangle, I guess, into my lung.

I'd say through my diaphragm, more into my lung.

It's like, do you want to wear your guard, your safe guard?

Everybody came, James Gunn, the stunt coordinator, everybody.

And I was like, seriously, Chris, you don't want to wear it?

So were you not supposed to make actual contact?

you work with a director, when you work with someone like James Gunn, he'll go like, well, you just get a little closer.

And you're kind of like looking at each other.

you're blaming James and me for not wearing some protective shield.

Look, the thing is, is when people do stunts, and when you do physical activities, you just get bumps and bruises.

And the fact that I got 1 from Zoe seems, for some reason, to be remarkable, because she's a female.

But she just happens to be another 1 of the people who did a lot of her own stunts.

And so you just get bumps and bruises when you do these things.

And the tougher bump I got was her kicking me in the ribs.

lot of talk about how, how in shape you got for this and how, how, you know.

You just got totally ripped, you know, Mr.

Do you now have to get back into comedy shape?

I've been doing some extensive comedy weight training, yeah.

I've definitely started incorporating fun things and tasty things back into my life.

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Guardians of the Galaxy | Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana & Vin Diesel | Talks at Google