James Gunn's Slither Inspired One Of Guardians Of The Galaxy 3's Biggest Set Pieces
Longtime James Gunn fans might have felt a twinge of recognition while watching "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" when our heroes don multicolored space suits and traipse around on a giant, fleshy planetoid called the Orgoscope. A living planet isn't exactly new to the MCU (Star-Lord's father was one himself), but the Orgoscope is something different. It's not a celestial body, more an organic one, made up of living tissue. Gross, irritated skin, coarse hair and nasty follicles, that kind of thing.
The Guardians need to infiltrate this organic ... thing ... in order to retrieve information that could very well save Rocket's life. It's a gross job, but a necessary one.
So, when they approached building this particularly disgusting location, you'd think they would have some leverage go a little cartoony with it. I mean, there's not a lot of fleshy, hairy planetoids out there to compare this one to, right? Not easy to source this thing. While they did go buck wild with the look of the Orgoscope, the creative team had a mandate in place to make even that outlandish idea seem like it could really exist. The inspiration for the final look is what might have triggered that "this place seems familiar to me" feeling while watching.
That's because Orgoscope was inspired by James Gunn's very first outing as a director, 2006's "Slither."
Who doesn't love Michael Rooker's beautiful smile?
Production designer Beth Mickle spoke with MovieWeb about the creative collaboration she had with Gunn on this project and specifically cited the look of Orgoscope as being something they knew they had to get right:
"It was probably a weekly conversation that we had, of just making sure we were being bold, and those fleshy surfaces were really palpable and really tangible and felt real. Marvel really did support us throughout and got on board with some of these wild ideas that they hadn't before, and hats off to them for that because I think it's paid off."
What better way to feel confident that her work building this particular location would resonate with Gunn than to use his own previous work as a jumping off point? And that's what she did.
"Slither" is a horror comedy about alien slugs mutating the residents of a small town and gets very slimy and gross. If you go back and watch that movie, suddenly the Orgoscope doesn't seem to come out of left field. It's definitely in Gunn's wheelhouse to delight in the macabre and it's even more in his style when he ties in that gross stuff to an emotional story beat all about the true power of friendship and love.
So, go watch "Slither" if you haven't. Much like Peter Jackson's early horror work, it's like a template for the masterful populist filmmaker he has become.