this question just came to my mind and has been lingering around in my noggin so
if rocket raccoon were to get his own solo movie, what kind of plot would you want to see???
CLOVER BLOSSOM! i missed you ♡ i hope life is treating you to a hundred gentle kindnesses and tasty snacks. this is a great question — thank you so much for asking it!! — and i really wrestled with it. because i think it’s actually so important for our guy to be part of an ensemble cast? he’s been solo for far too long? the map of rocket’s entire life and so many pieces of his identity (especially in the mcu) are based on this aching, painful tension between loneliness & connection: the forced alienation at the hands of his abuser and an uncaring universe; the self-inflicted isolation of his survival strategies and fears and guilty conscience — versus love, empathy, support, communication. joy-sharing. trust. friendship.and not only finding these things, not only offering them — but letting himself accept them, too. letting himself embrace them for himself.
so i think any movie i’d like to see with mcu-rocket would have to have some sort of relational component. (not me, writing way too much raccoon-smut.)
i’ll be honest. i think we got robbed in not seeing gunn’s short film about rocket meeting groot & tibius lark. i would love a rocket & groot film so much, and i'd love to use this as the (really long) cold open for the start of "my" movie. we would zip through the star-systems and asterisms, zooming in on whatever rancid incarceration-space-station gunn had in mind [feature coordinates here], and sink straight from the stardust right down into the pit-prison. rocket, groot, & lark would already be there — rocket trying to figure out his own escape.
i broke outta eleven prisons. this one ain’t no different.
lark will start storytelling, explaining his history with groot — then extracting rocket’s promise to take care of the flora colossus. perhaps, in the course of this conversation — a word i use loosely — lark would express a certainty that rocket would benefit from groot’s company as much as groot would benefit from his.
it’s good to have friends, lark might remind him.
once he’s secured rocket’s promise and groot’s safety, lark dies — which is when rocket uses lark’s leftover (robot) bodyparts to build a means of escape. then, as gunn described, rocket and groot burst upward from the pit, escaping their prison.
[roll marvel opening logo, with all the superimposed images in the letters being frames from rocket & groot comics]
we’d reopen in space, in some ship rocket had stolen from the prison. our two heroes have gotten far away already, and are about as safe as two fugitives with bounties on their heads can be. rocket would be trying to come up with a plan to get rid of groot while still honoring his promise to lark (more or less). he hates what he’s gotten himself saddled with, but he’s not going to break his word, either. lark had mentioned that groot had come from planet x/taluhnia, so rocket decides he’ll take the flora colossus back to his home planet and drop him off — wash the dust from his hands, and go back to hunting bounties and blowing up moons. good deed complete.
groot tries to protest, but rocket doesn’t understand him yet. still, groot’s distress is obvious. rocket only rolls his eyes and pushes onward, more and more irritated by his new ward.
unfortunately, when they arrive on taluhnia, rocket discovers that groot's people are long gone, and his planet is being systematically destroyed: flora colossi slaughtered, forests leveled in the name of planetary harvest. enter our villain: something more-or-less (depending on how cartoonishly-comicky you want to go) inspired by beavertron incorporated, under the advisement of shareholder castor gnawbarque (from blue river score, 2017). a little hacking on rocket’s part informs the duo that taluhnia is not the only planet beavertron has its hands all over. the company's a real piece of work, colonizing and destroying dozens — maybe hundreds — of cultures and planets in order to seize their natural resources.
groot is horrified by this additional information, of course: so many planets, at risk of being destroyed like his own. rocket is starting to understand groot a little better — he can at least read his body language and expressions — and though our little ringtailed guy is disgusted by beavertron, he still tells the flora colossus not to overreact.
don’t you know anything? this is just how people are.
rocket does, however, get super-frustrated when he realizes that his plan to dump groot on taluhnia can no longer — under any stretch of the imagination — be considered sufficient in keeping his promise to tibius lark. it gets him incredibly pissed, i'm sure — pulling his whiskers, probably kicking some grass — before finally sighing with his whole fucken chest and admitting that he guesses he's gotta blow up a frickin' coorporation now, 'cause how else is he gonna get rid of his adopted idiot?
oh rocket. i love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.
anyway, highjinks ensue. rocket and groot probably manage to incapacitate gnawbarque — maybe there’s a collective somewhere that will pay good money to put this monster on trial. maybe beavertron collapses without gnawbarque, or maybe it hovers in the background to return for a future movie (perhaps volume two or three involves a heist at beavertron headquarters — trying to get some information down the corporation for good).
when the chaos settles and justice has been (more or less) administered, groot stands in the midst of a flattened taluhnisan old growth forest — bereft. rocket stands beside him, grappling with the increasingly-clear knowledge that groot really is the last flora colossus, and maybe this is the moment that our guy begins to realize how much he has in common with his new friend. i imagine rocket tries to offer some comfort — like he did for nebula in infinity war. a gentle, awkward pat on the hand, which groot tenderly and gratefully accepts. i imagine groot seeds as much of the forest as he can with his glowing spores, helping the leftover plantlife grow into something lovely and alive — but not sentient. the planet of taluhnia becomes a bittersweetly-beautiful living memorial.
and i imagine they both cry together. and perhaps that's when rocket begins understanding groot’s speech — fully, for the first time.
and then — standing side-by-side, silhouetted under the taluhnisan sky — rocket says, you know, i could probably bring in some bigger bounties if i hired some muscle. make more money that way.
oh rocket. i still love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.
and then my babies fly off into the stars together.
[roll credits]
our post-credits scene will just be a montage of groot and rocket in various prison cells, with rocket nonchalantly saying i broke outta ## prisons. this one ain’t no different. on repeat. ad nauseam.
