Spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 below.
On the opening weekend of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy in August 2014, Mindy Kaling tweeted, “Let me get this straight: they made Bradley Cooper the goddamn raccoon?”
Her disbelief was understandable; in what world does it make sense to cast one of the most magnetic, recognizable and bankable actors of our time just to have him voice a CGI, gun-obsessed raccoon? This, in a Marvel movie light on other big stars and featuring a bunch of C-list comic book characters?
In hindsight, Gunn’s decision was a stroke of genius. Rocket Racoon has emerged as a major player in both the Guardians franchise and in the MCU overall; that he’s voiced by should-be-Best-Actor-Academy-Award-winner Bradley Cooper feels like a stunt-casting coup gone right.
Rocket’s biggest moment yet comes with this weekend’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., as he goes from fan-favorite supporting player to the de facto protagonist of Gunn’s final Marvel film. Making Rocket the lead seems as “out there” a creative decision as hiding Cooper’s face was back in 2014, but almost 10 years later, it makes a sick sort of sense: Rocket has stealthily become the MCU’s secret weapon.
Throughout Vol 3, Gunn reinforces the overarching narrative of the trilogy through the character of Rocket: These broken beings need one another, despite their natural inclinations to go it alone. Rocket is a frayed nerve, irritable and melancholic in equal measure, but someone who needs the people around him to be his best self. It wouldn’t hang together without Cooper, who recently described voicing Rocket’s final adventure as “very emotional.” In the behind-the-scenes footage of Cooper’s voice-over sessions, he brings a tremendous amount of physicality and emotionality to the role; a notable clip from Vol 1. sees him holding an air gun and half-crouching while delivering that now trademark snarl. In the hands of other actors, Rocket might be a paycheck job. Under Cooper, he’s more nuanced and fully realized than some of the human characters across the MCU.
When audiences first meet Rocket, he’s hanging out in a bustling metropolis, scoping out pedestrians for possible bounties and muttering cruel comments about passersby–muttering to a toddler reaching for his parents,“Walk by yourself, you little gargoyle.”
This is the Rocket Raccoon experience in a nutshell: a cruel, angry creature with a selfish and defensive-minded approach to his surroundings. Almost immediately, glimpses of Rocket’s tragic history provide the context for his behavior.
Upon getting booked into the Kyln prison, we see that Rocket is the subject of unwitting experimentation, the scars of which are still visible. “I didn’t ask to get made,” Cooper drunkenly snarls after a bar fight before threatening to fire several rounds into Drax (Dave Bautista).
Anger is Rocket’s defense mechanism, driving away those who dare get too close out of fear of showing vulnerability. He’s a microcosm of the larger group: all of the Guardians are loners, afraid to be honest. But they all find something in one another, and that love drives them to bond together and save the universe. And, perhaps, to let their walls down for one another, which Rocket does—albeit slightly—by the end of Vol 1.
By 2017’s Vol 2, Rocket’s facade has been obliterated. That film’s mission pairs him with the paternal space Ravager Yondu (Michael Rooker), where he receives a much-needed reality check. “You can fool yourself and everyone else, but you can’t fool me,” Yondu states. ”I know you play like you’re the meanest and the hardest, but actually, you’re the most scared of all.”
Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) might be the face of the Guardians, but Rocket is the group’s bruised, beating heart. Where Cooper first voiced the character with a squirrelly snarl (in an almost unrecognizable register inspired by Goodfellas’ Tommy DeVito), by the sequel’s climax, he’s become startlingly solemn, with remarks like “I can only afford to lose one friend today,” when it seems as if Quill might not survive the film’s final battle. Fittingly, Vol 2 ends with a shot of the raccoon finally finding a home after all these years of running.
So what happens when that family disappears? Despite Endgame juggling a lot of different subplots, the film provides Rocket with his own satisfying arc. As the only remaining member of the core Guardians, he’s responsible for helping the rest of the Avengers bring back those snapped away. It’s a savvy inversion of Rocket’s dynamic and gives Cooper a compelling character moment on Asgard with Thor. “I lost the only family I ever had,” he tells the God of Thunder. The rest of the movie eventually shifts its gaze to focus on the core Avengers, but not without giving Rocket a meaningful moment.
Vol 3 reverses those roles once again, letting the Guardians save Rocket. The film kicks off with new villain, Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) attacking Guardians HQ and gravely injuring Rocket, which sets the group on a mission to save him. With Rocket out of commission, Gunn dives into Rocket’s tragic origins. In a series of highly affecting flashbacks, we see the extent of the cruelty Rocket suffers at the hands of the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), the god-like being who made him.
These sequences, which briefly switch voice duties to Sean Gunn (James Gunn’s brother, who also plays Kraglin and serves as the on-set motion capture reference), finally explain why Rocket was so closed off and emotionally damaged when we met him. Watching Rocket’s brutal creation, during which time he befriends other experimentees like himself, feels almost like we’ve detoured into a cute Pixar film at first. Tragedy is inevitable. Once the Guardians get Rocket back in action, the climax becomes his opportunity to work through the trauma he’d previously buried away.
Vol 3’s final moments culminate with Rocket, finally at peace, as Florence + the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over” blares over the speakers in Knowhere. The reference is obvious, as all GoTG music cues are: Rocket has fully moved beyond his trauma. When the post-credits stinger hits, he’s in charge of the Guardians, signaling the conclusion of a surprising journey many scoffed at back in 2014. Now, with almost a decade’s worth of work from Cooper and Gunn, that goddamn raccoon is one of the brightest spots in the MCU.