The film rights to Marvel Comics’ characters are divided between three studios, Marvel Studios, Fox and Sony and as a result the rights to various background and supporting characters can get muddled.  While Marvel Studios is establishing its cosmic side with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and its upcoming sequel ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’, certain alien races are off-limits.  The Shi’Ar belong to the X-Men, while the Skrulls fall under the banner of the ‘Fantastic Four’.  But while scripting ‘Vol. 2’, James Gunn, who directed the first smash ‘GotG’ film, found that another alien race was verboten… and rights had nothing to do with it.

In this case, Marvel nixed the use of the Sneepers, green-skinned humanoids with webbed feet, pointy ears and… um, the women have three breasts.  (Could that have been the reason for the censorship?  Surprisingly not!)  This alien race was created by Stan Lee and appeared for the first and only time in ‘Tales of Suspense’ #49 in 1964, a stand-alone sci fi story.  Nevertheless, Gunn hoped to include them in his next film but was shot down.

As the writer/director explained:

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.

Just to clarify, the Sneepers were NOT vetoed because of their three-breasted women, but because in one terrestrial nation, their name is a euphemism for another lady’s body part.

Well, whatever works… or doesn’t in this case.  Gunn said that he only intended to use them in the background anyway, so it’s probably not that important.

Kind of makes you wonder who pointed this out, though.

Are you sad that the Sneepers won’t be appearing?

‘Guardians of the Galaxy (Vol.) 2’ is currently slated for release on May 5th, 2017.

Source: Cinema Blend