The Guardians of the Galaxy: When Trauma Creates Love and Hope

 

3 movies in, and James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy franchise have changed the mold of the MCU that has been around since its inception in 2008. What makes the franchise so great is that it finds the humor within situations that are not humorous while also finding a way to use a character's trauma to make them feel more grounded and relatable. The best example of this is in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. Full spoilers ahead so read at your own risk. The character of Rocket Raccoon(who is phenomenally voiced by 8-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper) is unique in his own right being a cybernetically enhanced talking raccoon. As silly as that sounds, James Gunn gives Rocket a fleshed-out backstory in the 3rd Guardians film that makes Rocket seem more relatable and human than even characters like Chris Pratt's Star-Lord and Dave Bautista's Drax. As Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. illustrates, Rocket was part of a group deemed "Batch 89" with Rocket getting the designation "89P13". Rocket along with his friends Lylla the Otter(voiced by Linda Cardellini who last played Laura Barton, the wife of Hawkeye in multiple MCU projects), Floor (voiced by James Gunn favorite Mikaela Hoover), and Teefs (voiced by Asim Chaudhry) were experimented on by Herbert Wyndham (played by Chukwudi Iwuji who was last seen in DC's Peacemaker tv series on Max) who was a geneticist and CEO of Orgocorp who performed these experiments trying to create the perfect species. 

What Rocket and his friends learned was that they were the rejected experiments and that Wyndham only needed them to solve scientific problems that he and his team could not solve. Rocket soon found this out and clawed Wyndham's face to bits forcing him to have to wear a prosthetic mask. Wyndham soon deemed himself "The High Evolutionary". The High Evolutionary then took matters into his own hands by murdering Lylla and having his team murder Teefs and Floor. It is this tragedy that come the present day, leads Rocket to find Peter Quill and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy and have a newfound family. Introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 was a species known as The Sovereign. Led by Golden High Priestess Ayesha(played by Elizabeth Debicki). Ayesha hired the Guardians to steal her Anulax batteries and then when Rocket stole a bunch of the batteries, she sent the rest of the Sovereign to kill the Guardians. A mission that fails epically. Ayesha gets fed up and creates a new form of Sovereign named Adam who is introduced in the third film as played by Will Poulter. Without sugar-coating things, Adam is completely stupid and like a school science project you only complete halfway through. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Ayesha and Adam are tasked with capturing Rocket and bringing him to the High Evolutionary, which ends up failing and leading to the death of Ayesha at the hands of the High Evolutionary.

What Rocket gets with the Guardians of the Galaxy are the same things Peter Quill gets: family, hope, and love. Peter lost his mom and then had to murder his father(spoiler alert if you have not seen Guardians Vol 2) and then after all that was wiped out of existence for 5+ years thanks to Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) and what MCU fans call "The Blip". Rocket and Quill both have their fair share of trauma and memories they would like to forget. However, that trauma leads to them finding the family and love both of them never really had. Nothing in the world is more significant than love and family, what matters the most is what you do with that love from family. Family comes in different sizes. The Guardians of the Galaxy are not your traditional family, but they find a way to relate to one another. The Guardians have hope for the future and it is towards the end of Vol 3 that a new Guardians team is ushered in to set the scene for what promises to be a grand spectacle of cinema thanks to the next phase of the MCU. We do not know when we will see many of these characters again but one thing is for sure: the new wave of the MCU is ushering in a new wave of superhero cinema.