Writer-director James Gunn apparently ensures that characters in his films do not have names that sound like Icelandic words for parts of a woman’s body.
Gunn, who is currently working on the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy, often shares his creative process with his fans through social media. In a recent post, he shared a decision he had to make about the script that involved cutting out an entire alien race:
While writing Guardians scripts I like to use the names of characters from the comics as much as possible – it makes watching the movie more fun for longtime Marvel fans (one of whom is me). Characters like Kraglin, The Broker, Bereet, and Garthan Saal all originally appeared in the comics, albeit sometimes in very different incarnations. Every name I use I have to run through the Marvel legal department. Lately, in the service of building out the Marvel cosmic side of the universe, I’ve been trying to clear names of alien species we see in the background. It’s always a bummer when I can’t use a name, usually because Fox or Sony or Hasbro or whomever owns the rights. But today I received a brand new reason for being advised against calling one of the alien species “Sneepers.”
“Sneeper is a word for clitoris in Icelandic.”
?Have a great weekend.
For the record, the word is spelled snípur but is pronounced more or less as “sneeper”, and is indeed the word for clitoris.
Gunn did not disclose whether he cross-checks names of fictional beings against words for the female anatomy in every language in the world, leaving us to conclude that Icelandic is clearly an important language to the writer-director.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is set to be released in 2017.
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