James Gunn has recently revealed that he did have plans in the works for a Rocket and Groot movie, which would have focused on the backstories of those two characters and given us the look at Rocket's origin that we instead got in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Speaking with i09 in Los Angeles this week (thanks Gizmodo), Gunn began by talking about how he landed the Guardians of the Galaxy. "My pathway into the Guardians initially was Marvel talked to me about perhaps doing Guardians of the Galaxy," he said. "They actually had some art already done with Rocket in it. And I thought, 'Boy, this can be goofy. This could be like Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers.' I'm like, 'How can I not make it goofy?'"
"And I thought about, 'Well, okay, if there was a talking space raccoon, how would he have come to exist?' And as I mused upon it, I started thinking about how this was the saddest creature in the universe, and that was actually the seed to me for the entire Guardians trilogy. That was my way into it, this underpinning of just isolation and sadness, and all of these characters are isolated and sad. So I knew what Rocket's backstory was from that moment before I had come up with the rest of that stuff for Vol. 1. It was the first thing I came up with. I always thought it was a third movie thing because I thought we had to tell Peter Quill's story first and then get into Rocket's story. I think the only question was, was it going to be a Rocket and Groot movie or was it going to be Guardians 2—because initially, I was going to do it as Rocket and Groot."
It certainly would have been interesting to see a movie focused entirely on Rocket and Groot, and perhaps that could have better allowed for the emotion Gunn was clearly going for in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3. What do you think?