Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is finally here, bringing back the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, along with it, a very healthy dose of weirdness. This is one of the defining traits of this corner of the MCU, and why it's always so fun going back to it. Among other moments, the Orgocorp sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is definitely one of the weirdest things in the movie. It's set in an intergalactic company complex that's made of organic tissue, so, technically, it is alive. Yes, weird. The whole thing seems like it was taken straight out of a highly psychedelic Rick and Morty episode, almost as if it's an homage of sorts.
Guardians' director James Gunn himself is a master of the weird, growing up on low-budget horror classics things like Night of the Living Dead and beginning his career at Troma, a production company that's a staple of the genre. He kicked off the cosmic part of the MCU and has made this aura of strangeness intrinsic to it, adapting sci-fi elements combined with horror, to the point that you can't have one without the other. Nowadays, Rick and Morty is the only place we can have this apart from Gunn's movies, so it's only natural that they draw on one another. Let's see how.
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What Are Orgocorp and the Aretê Laboratories?
This is the first time a business enterprise is used as a villainous organization in the Guardians franchise. Orgocorp is a company founded by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) as a way of funding his research and giving it a legal facade, although we know the actually twisted ends to which he takes his work. His goal is to create a superior species, one perfect and more advanced that wouldn't bear the flaws and problems seen throughout the universe. While Orgocorp is the "legitimate" part of his work, it's in his Aretê Laboratories that the worst experiments are conducted, and where Rocket (Bradley Cooper) was made, along with his band of misfit friends of Batch 89: Lylla (Linda Cardellini), Teefs (Asim Chaudhry) and Floor (Mikaela Hoover).
After Rocket is mortally wounded by Adam Warlock's (Will Poulter) attack on Knowhere, the Guardians find out he has a kill switch, something the High Evolutionary installed on him to prevent any third parties from stealing his technology. The villain has never activated it even after Rocket fled Aretê Laboratories because he's just too valuable to risk, being the only super smart subject of peaceful nature (well, not that peaceful, granted) ever to successfully come out of the experiments. So the only way of saving Rocket is to steal his data from Orgocorp, where it's stored. And, if you thought that things were not already weird, then strap in...
The Orgocorp complex is something straight out of a psychedelic dream. It's like a gigantic unicellular organism inside which an actual company works. With actual employees. What would be the outer hull of the complex is actually skin tissue, complete with follicles and hair, security cameras are literal eyes, and outlets are like the cell components we learn about in science class.
All of that is made perfect by the visual effects team, to the point where we feel guilty when the Guardians cut an opening on the outer tissue because it's definitely hurting somewhere. Or when they cover the security eyes to disguise their entrance, too. It's an eye, it's supposed to cause discomfort, right? Even contact lenses are weird if you think about it — now imagine sticking something directly to a bare eyeball... Ew!
How Is Orgocorp Similar to ‘Rick and Morty’?
No one makes sci-fi nowadays like Rick and Morty does. People may feel differently about the show due to its foul-mouthed characters, especially leads Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith (both voiced by Justin Roiland), but the writers' creativity in coming up with weird stuff is truly admirable.
What's remarkable about the Orgocorp (merely an abbreviation for "Organic Corporation," while "Aretê" is Greek for "perfect") sequence is how it uses gore and this idea of causing discomfort. In a way, we are made to sympathize with the building itself, but not necessarily with the employees of the company. In Rick and Morty we are presented with many similar situations, like, for example, Mr. Meeseeks (also Roiland), who is an actual being whose sole purpose is to make whoever summons him happy in the episode "Meeseeks and Destroy." Neither the Orgocorp building nor Mr. Meeseeks is supposed to have value for the story, only to perform a specific role, but we still can't help but feel sorry for them.
Interestingly enough, Rick and Morty has parodied many classic elements of Marvel Comics in the past. For example, Rick's best friend, Birdperson (voiced by series co-creator Dan Harmon) is basically an adaptation of The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). Another great example is the Council of Ricks, very similar to the Council of Kangs, which we saw in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The multiverse concept is adapted almost literally from the comics in Rick and Morty, complete with the idea of alternate timelines, variants with multiple backgrounds, and dimensions that serve a single purpose.
What's even weirder, though, is how Marvel Studios has been going after Rick and Morty writers to helm their movies and series, but has been falling short of achieving the same level of weirdness as the Adult Swim animated series. Many scribes of recent Marvel projects are behind some classic episodes of Rick and Morty, like Quantumania's writer Jeff Loveness writing "The Vat of Acid Episode,"She Hulk's Jessica Gao with "Pickle Rick," and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Loki scribe Michael Waldron, who wrote "The Old Man and the Seat."
When we talk of how Orgocorp feels like an homage to Rick and Morty, it's because it uses the same drives and tools to evoke the same feelings in the audience that the animated series has mastered. No one's creativity is being put into question, it's pretty much unanimous that writing Rick and Morty requires some crazy levels of inventiveness. Still, how come James Gunn is able to build something like Orgocorp and actual Rick and Morty scribes can't come up with stuff at the same level they once did? Thinking about it, maybe the problem is the MCU mold, which requires nearly all movies to feel a certain way. James Gunn is definitely a very particular case, granted, but if he can pull this off, others should, too. The weirder the MCU gets, the better this post-Endgame phase will be.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is now playing in theaters.
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