When an injury triggers a fail-safe in the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Rocket, he and his friends must seek out deeply buried secrets in a dark and painful past to ensure his survival. For Rocket, it is a path of healing and self-discovery. For the rest of the team, it is a path that reveals the utterly demented mind of a psychotic atheist with a severe god complex: The High Evolutionary.
This month, Eve and I take on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. We were both a bit gun shy from Disney & Marvel’s increasingly liberal and progressive pontifications as we prepared to dip our toes back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s hypothetical water. We were thrilled to find nary a woke line in the entire movie!
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 picks up after the events of Vol. 2 and the Disney+ exclusive short, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. The Guardians have established a headquarters sanctuary in the former mercenary market of Knowhere. Then, out of the blue, a super-powered agent of the sovereign—whom the Rocket slighted in the first movie—attacks the Guardians unexpectedly. Rocket is critically injured during the battle, but when his teammates try to heal him with technology, they encounter a fail safe that prevents it. To save their friend, they need to track down the cipher key that will allow them to override the fail safe. Meanwhile, Rocket is reliving his first memories. And his worst ones.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 stars Chris Pratt as Starlord and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy ensemble, and Chukwudi Iwuji as “The High Evolutionary. It was written and directed by [unintentional?] firebrand director James Gunn, with music by John Murphy.
First Impressions
First and foremost, and before all else, Eve and I were both pleasantly surprised by the lack of socially progressive (i.e., “woke”) content. Given almost every other MCU Phase IV and V movie thus far, we had both girded our loins to face a barrage of humorous and sly condemnations of traditional and scriptural values. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 didn’t do that. Instead, the movie was a much more fun, light-hearted, feel-good movie that reminded us more of Ant-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok. It was as if the movie’s first goal was to entertain—a sorely lacking priority in so many other Disney movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 keeps the crude humor to a light-hearted innuendo, making it more appropriate for children than many of the other MCU movies of late. And, as we see in the MCU so often, many puzzle pieces fall into place, with callbacks to lines and easter eggs in prior volumes. The MCU does an excellent job of ensuring everything is consistent with the MCU canon. They also reward viewers who have paid attention and followed the MCU offerings on the Disney+ streaming platform.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 includes a long-anticipated cameo by fan-favorite actor Nathan Fillion. His cameo was so organic (pun intended) that it did not seem out of place and didn’t take us out of the experience.
We also liked that they broke some of the most common tropes of science-fiction team storytelling. First, not everyone speaks every language, and it makes a difference to the team’s success. There is no universal translator, no Tardis translation circuit. Second, there is conflict within the group that shows character growth. While this is less tropish, they did an excellent job with it and helped establish character growth often lacking in these fun ensemble movies.
Accepting your identity
Strangely, even though our first topic sounds socially progressive, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3‘s lack of liberal content makes this topic even more enjoyable. In a world where it feels like half the people are trying to force the other half to embrace a falsehood of their identity, this theme in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is more about learning and embracing the truth of identity.
Both Peter and Rocket must come to terms with who they are, but Rocket’s life depends on his self-discovery. While Rocket’s journey is all internal, Peter’s journey is helped along by Mantis in a way that is entirely consistent with her character. Even Nebula and Gamora have minor arches in which they understand who they are; in all cases, identity is couched in how they relate with others.
The same is true with Christians. First, we must accept that we are utterly sinful and fallen, incapable of any measure of salvation on our own. Beyond that, when we accept Christ as our savior, we must admit that our identity is in Christ as brothers and sisters in the invisible church. When we have been saved, we are no longer us:
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-20)
Rocket facilitated his recovery through introspection. He had to come to terms with what the High Evolutionary had done to him and what he was before in way reminiscent of scripture:
Counsel in a person’s heart is deep water; but a person of understanding draws it out. (Proverbs 20:5)
In the end, Rocket admits that he is indeed a raccoon, a truth about himself that he has fought all along.
The Imperfect Science of Perfection
The villain of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is called The High Evolutionary, an unstable megalomaniac determined to remake creation in his ideal of perfection. Putting aside, what he was doing was not evolution at all, but instead forcing mutations on a single creature. He’d been at this for a very long time and had been through many cycles of “perfection” followed by the idea that he could do better. As a result, he would destroy everything and everyone he’d created and start again. Each time he did this, though, he would eradicate all evidence of his previous attempt. This meant genocide on a global scale. It’s clear to the audience that this is a never-ending cycle, but the High Evolutionary cannot accept it.
Many agnostics feel that God is similar. So why does he let tragedy or cataclysm happen to his creation? In the High Evolutionary, we see a madman trying to hide his failures, not condemn sin. When God passes judgment, though, it is always to eradicate sin and prepare the way for His kingdom on Earth. He is shepherding in a world where we can enjoy Him forever. When Christ returns, and his Kingdom is established on Earth, it will be without sin. He wants us to understand that sin is incompatible with His kingdom, and we must cast it aside.
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
He knows as we should, that perfection is not something that we can achieve in this world. We cannot achieve it at all—we can only be made perfect in Christ. That’s the impact of the fall on all of creation. We should embrace our inherent desire for pure perfection because this longing fuels our growth.
For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. (Romans 8:19-22)
The High Evolutionary cannot fix what is wrong with the world through constant tinkering. He can’t even fix what he doesn’t like about it. Rocket sums it up near the end of the movie:
He didn’t want to make things perfect; he just hated things the way they were.
The High Evolutionary’s attitude brings to mind God’s response to Job in Job 38 through 41. God lays out for Job just how far beyond human comprehension God is. The High Evolutionary is trying to achieve a level of godhood but can’t even wrap his brain around what that could mean. He mistakes knowledge for wisdom in some truly evil ways. He claims to be fixing what God broke but only serves to demonstrate how broken he is.
To contrast the High Evolutionary to ACTUAL God, Jesus Christ, we look to Colossians:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)
At one point, the High Evolutionary references a line in an opera he’s listening to: “Be not as you are, but as you should be.”
The Hands that Guided the Hands that Created You
As Rocket lies dying on the medical table, he encounters his old friends and co-experiments in an afterlife reception room. Rocket is tired and wants to join them in a heavenly afterlife of peaceful sailing through the skies. When he asks if he can come with them, the mother figure of the group tells him that, no, he still has a purpose. Rocket bristles at this: “A purpose for what? They made us for nothing! Just a bunch of experiments to be thrown away!” Lyla responds with a very Christian philosophy: “There are the hands that made us…and then there are the hands that guide the hands.” She knows that all that has happened has served a greater purpose, and no matter what happens, it all serves a purpose. God was not caught unaware by the fall, and He is never caught unaware by our sin:
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:28–30)
All creation has a purpose, even gun-toting, smart-mouthed, physically tortured raccoons if they existed in real life:
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Just a reminder that the world we live in is far from perfect, check out this cartoon by Eve’s favorite cartoonist.
In conclusion
Chris Pratt has taken a lot of flack because he is an open Christian in a very anti-Christian world. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3 has a lot of him in it, though, and we’re both thankful that there is so much in there that feels right in line with a Christian worldview. However, we just touched the surface of some of the content: there are a lot of other topics we could talk about in this movie, so come join the Discord server where we can pull out more of the decidedly Christian undercurrents in the movie (such as the recreation of “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo and the high church style music surrounding the High Evolutionary.
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