Guardians of the Galaxy is More Like Star Wars Than Spider-Man

Despite not having won the job (it ultimately went to Chris Pratt), Upside Down star Jim Sturgess is one of only a few people to have seen anything official out of Marvel on Guardians of the Galaxy yet, back when he auditioned for the part of Star-Lord, the team's leader and the film's focal point. As far as Sturgess knows, it was down to him and Pratt at the end, so he did more than one screen test and started to get a bit invested in the character and the universe, in spite of the fact that it's far from the Across the Universe star's usual role. Here are a couple of comments on the film that Sturgess shared with The Huffington Post:

"They're not films that I would go and see particularly but I really started to get intrigued by it. I went to the audition and I was called back for another audition and I had a screen test and another screen test. I think I got down to the last two people. It was fun. Again, I was really, really, really excited about the idea of making a film that other people were really, really excited about seeing. I was amazed instantly by the fact that our names got put out there as a group of actors that had gone out for it and everybody was writing about it and excited about it." "Then I discovered more and more about the story and it felt like more of a Star Wars than it does Spider-Man. You don't actually get to know that much about the project. It's all under lock and key which is crazy but obviously, it's based on a comic. What I realized is it's not rooted in reality. It's up in space and the character was a space pirate of some sort so it was much more in the vein of Han Solo rather than just dressing up in a tight fitting suit. I guess your competitive nature starts kicking in. When you go for the first audition you think, 'This is a bit of fun.' Then you get further & further down the line & then you think, 'S--t, maybe I really want to do this.'"