Chris Pratt describes filming Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 as ‘real challenge’

Chris Pratt said his character in the final instalment of Guardians Of The Galaxy is more emotional which was a “real challenge” to act but he “loved the opportunity to try to do something different”.

The third film in the Marvel franchise will see the return of Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan and Pom Klementieff as well as Vin Diesel as animated tree-man Groot.

Stars of the trilogy appeared at the film’s European Gala event at the Avengers Campus in Disneyland Paris on Saturday, ahead of the film’s release on May 3 in UK cinemas.

Hollywood actor Pratt, who reprises his role as Peter Quill in the blockbuster, told the PA news agency on the orange carpet: “We see Peter in a more emotional way. For me, it was a real challenge.

“And I embraced that, I loved the opportunity to try to do something different.

“It’s the third time I’ve played this character. So it was nice to try and do it in a way that was different than the previous times and it’s a more emotional movie.

“I think the audience who were kids or young teens when the first one came out are a little older now and they’re ready for it. So it’s exciting.”

Pratt described the final adventure with his band of goofy space heroes traversing a variety of intergalactic worlds as “emotional”.

The 43-year-old told PA: “We’re all very lucky. We all feel grateful. It’s a nice process and so I’m trying to really embrace all of the feelings involved because I don’t want to miss out.

“I don’t want to one day look back and think wow, that was so busy. I didn’t feel what I was feeling. So I’m feeling it all.”

Meanwhile, Fast And Furious star Diesel, 55, described the end of an era as “bittersweet”.

He told PA: “I think that characters come into your life for reasons and I think the Groot character came into my life at an interesting and important time, so I think it’s bittersweet.”

Similarly, recalling the cast’s last moments together on set, Scottish actress Gillan said: “There was a scene there was a goodbye scene of sorts where everyone was together in their Guardians uniforms.

“We looked around and we were thinking, this is probably the last time that this will ever happen with this combination of people.

“So it was definitely bittersweet.”

French actress Klementieff, who plays Mantis in the franchise, said she feels sad but “extremely grateful to have worked with such incredible people and to have brought James Gunn’s vision to life”.

Speaking of director Gunn, the 36-year-old told PA: “It’s very rare for movies of this scale to have the same director to write and direct three movies and to have such an interesting arc of every character.

“I had so much fun playing Mantis because she started one way and then she developed and she developed in the current movie, you see how (much) stronger she is, more self confident, and how still insane she is, but in (a) beautiful way.”

US filmmaker Gunn also spoke about the trilogy at the event, which saw performances from Disneyland characters of Star Lord and Gamora.

The 56-year-old told PA: “I was planning on it being three films and I was always planning on this story really being story of Rocket (Raccoon).

“I knew that to fulfil that story I really needed to go back to where he started.

“To get to the end of the story we needed to go back to the beginning. And that’s what we did.”