Michael Rosenbaum reveals Marvel ‘cut a lot out’ from his “Guardians of the Galaxy” role

“I'm in a big Marvel movie, life could suck worse,” he conceded.

Michael Rosenbaum plays a small supporting role in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies — but he says that his character was originally intended to play a much bigger part.

At Nashville Comicon on Saturday, the Smallville actor revealed that his character, Martinex, had a significant amount of screen time cut from James Gunn’s sci-fi trilogy. "The role was supposed to be a lot bigger. They cut a lot out," Rosenbaum said. "You were supposed to see.. it was written in the script to see Martinex's powers, which were really cool. But they had so much to talk about in the script that they ended up cutting it out at the end. And there was some other stuff."

Related: Chris Pratt thought James Gunn let people use his Guardians of the Galaxy body double doll as a sex toy

Rosenbaum clarified that he has no ill will toward Gunn, with whom he’s been friends since they collaborated on the 2008 TV series PG Porn. “It was fun,” he said of the Guardians experience. “For me, it's like, I'm working with my friends, I get paid, I'm in a big Marvel movie, life could suck worse, you know what I mean? I'm very grateful."

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Martinex, a crystalline humanoid alien hailing from Pluto, debuted in 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 alongside Sylvester Stallone’s Stakar Ogord, an old ally of Yondu (Michael Rooker). After briefly appearing toward the beginning of the movie, Martinex and Stakar reappear during the film’s finale during Yondu’s funeral.

Related: Why Smallville alum Michael Rosenbaum won't play Lex Luthor for 'Crisis on Infinite Earths'

Their short star-studded sequence also featured Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames), Aleta Ogord (Michelle Yeoh, who later played a different Marvel character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), and Mainframe (Miley Cyrus). That combination of characters was a tribute to earlier iterations of the Guardians, as those cosmic heroes fought alongside Yondu in Marvel Comics between the ‘60s and the 2000s. (Star-Lord, Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and Drax formed the modern Guardians lineup that inspired Gunn’s films in 2008.)

Related: How Epcot's first roller coaster expands the Guardians of the Galaxy universe at light speed

Stallone and Rosenbaum briefly reappeared in 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. There aren’t any immediate plans to bring their Guardians lineup back to the MCU, but Gunn did note his enthusiasm for Stallone’s team, the Ravagers, in a 2021 interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I always thought the Ravagers would be a great show,” the filmmaker said. “Whether that was with Sly Stallone's Ravagers or even more in-depth with just the pirates and what they were doing. I told Kevin Feige that when he first visited set when we were on the Ravagers ship for Guardians 1, I said we should make a Ravagers show. He said ‘If this movie's a hit, you can do whatever you want.’ Still no Ravagers show, so I don't know what happened."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.