Sean Gunn Didn't Know Guardians Of The Galaxy 3 Would Use His Voice For Young Rocket
Okay, enough time has passed so we can talk about Young Rocket in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" without immediately turning into a quivering puddle of tears. For years James Gunn has been telling us to prepare for Rocket's tragic backstory, but I don't think anybody was truly prepared for just how masterfully Gunn was going to manipulate our emotions.
We all know by now that James Gunn's brother, Sean, a talented character actor who also plays Kraglin in the "Guardians" films, is the on-set Rocket Raccoon. That means he does some performance capture and is there to deliver the lines to the actors so they have someone to work off of, but up until now, Bradley Cooper has always been the voice of Rocket.
Speaking to ComicBookMovie.com, Sean Gunn revealed that with this super sad backstory finally getting told that two other performers got to voice Rocket. One is Noa Raskin (editor Fred Raskin's kid) when we hear baby Rocket for the first time, one is Cooper as adolescent Rocket as he bonds with his similarly experimented-upon friends and then there's one in the middle for a very important scene with The High Evolutionary where Rocket figures out what's going wrong in the process of quickly mutating poor animals into his "perfect" creations.
That middle one was Sean Gunn.
We're not going to cry talking about Baby Rocket, we're not going to cry talking about Baby Rocket...
Now, Sean Gunn had developed a voice for Rocket going back to the first "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie, knowing full well it was not going to make the final movie and assumed his work on "Vol. 3" was going to be similar. He was in for a big surprise. As he told ComicBookMovie.com:
"The interesting thing is I didn't know they were going to use my voice! I'm always doing a voice as Rocket, so from the first movie, when I'm playing Rocket, I have the thing that I do. It's just not used, which is fine, as I never expected it to be. I'm just trying to give the actors something they can work with. For this movie, it was actually a surprise. I did work on the voice because I wanted him to sound right when we played the scenes, but it wasn't until, honestly, a couple of months ago that they said, 'Hey, we're going to use your voice for those scenes.' It was a surprise."
Since "Vol. 3" is James Gunn's send off to the "Guardians of the Galaxy," it's only right that he gave a little extra to the guy who has been the unsung collaborator on what's now an iconic MCU character. I've also gotta give it up to Noa Raskin for breaking my heart when uttering Rocket's absolutely devastating first word: "... hurts ..."
Oh, damn it. I guess not enough time has passed after all because I'm starting to well up again just thinking about that scene. Excuse me while I go look for some tissues.