It’s with this unpredictable shift in narrative for Guardians Vol. 3 that it seems natural to start uncovering the why beneath the obligatory onscreen who, what, when and where. By delving into Rocket’s excruciating backstory - a terrestrial mammal tortured and manipulated into speech and advanced cognition via Chukwudi Iwuji’s biologically militant High Evolutionary - the film peels back layers of thematic inquiry previously absent from the MCU’s backlog.