Thursday, August 10, 2023

Monsters and Perfection in Guardians of the Galaxy 3

What is far better than an evil genius, the High Evolutionary, tinkering with perfection and thereby creating monsters who are worth nothing - who can be incinerated without a second thought - the High Evolutionary treats them as valueless in comparison to the perfect ideal being that he is seeking.

"There is no god! That's why I stepped in!" the High Evolutionary exclaims. In Guardians 3, there is no god - just this pseudo-god, a sort of twisted demiurge, whose hubris and obsession with a vision of perfection turns him into a monster. And there is nothing worse than a powerful monster who demands nothing short of perfection, who cannot accept flaws, who is incapable of seeing or valuing the goodness of what falls short of his standard. 

In contrast to the hatred for all that falls short, the horrors - the monsters who are also victims - he has created as experiments by torturing and disfiguring their bodies  - they create something like a peaceable kingdom in their prison cages. These "monsters" - Floor the rabbit, Teefs the walrus, Lylla the otter, and Rocket the raccoon - extend humaneness (wrong word because they aren't human) to each other--the camaraderie of suffering. They are actually beautifully kind and caring. They extend value and intrinsic goodness to each other. They become friends and family. They give themselves names, refusing to be just numbers or barcodes to each other. They build a sort of happy life in each other's company, playing games, laughing, dreaming of a future together where the sky goes on forever.  

In a world without a beneficient god, it is this friendship that prevails. What is far better than the High Evolutionary's Counter-Earth is the companionship of the misfits, the monsters, in the real world. What we see emerge in the prison cages of the lab is also embodied in the Guardians. Even the evil ferocious battery eating beasts, the Abilisks, are called Mantis' "babies" and join the new society. Mantis says "they eat batteries, not people." In the midst of battle, she reenvisions the abilisks as "not-a-threat" - not enemies. She chooses to see the monster in a different humane way - transforming the monstrous into something relatable, someone who can be touched and empathized with - as persons with value. 

While the High Evolutionary was trying to create a "perfect race" and a perfect society - in the Arete lab - Arete is Greek for "excellence, perfection, virtue" a word given to something that is the ideal or fulfillment of its type. It is the Noah's ark of the Guardians Knowhere that all these misfits and monsters come together in friendship and companionship, caring for one another, that the real utopia emerges, symbolized in the dance party at the end of the movie. Even when things are far from perfect, happiness and joy can emerge by loving, being connected, choosing each other, caring for one another.

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