Guardians Of The Galaxy made Groot – the Flora Colossus from Planet X – an instant icon, thanks to excellent motion capture work and the vocal stylings of Vin Diesel. The events of that movie led to something of a change for the character in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2., though – with him having been, essentially, re-grown from a cutting. As a result, Groot was seen as a child in both size and intellectual capacity. In the post-credits sequence, however, we caught a fleeting glimpse of teenage Groot, sulking about being lectured on room tidiness – and it’s this size in which he’ll appear in Avengers: Infinity War.
Teenage Groot is being portrayed by Terry Notary in the film – a renowned ‘mo-cap’ performer who’s previously starred as Rocket in the Planet Of The Apes franchise, Peon in Warcraft: The Beginning, and Kong in Kong: Skull Island. He recently spoke to Yahoo! Movies and gave some insight into what Avengers: Infinity War might hold for the tree-like alien, saying:
“Yes, I am playing teenage Groot. I’m having a blast with it. It’s really, really fun. I can’t say too much about him, but he’s coming of age, so you’ll see the teenager find a mentor to look up to and to model himself after. The character’s great, and the films are going to be great. We’ve got such an amazing cast and a great pair of directors at the helm. The Russos allow the actors to jam on scenes together to the point where it just feels great and everybody gets their moments.”
The interesting thing here is the idea of teenage Groot finding a mentor. This is notable, not only for the fact that this giant action movie – crammed full of beloved Marvel characters – will apparently take the time to show Groot bonding with an undisclosed superhero, but also for the fact that we will see Groot interacting with familiar characters outside of the Guardians Of The Galaxy. It begs the question, though, as to which character will be the mentor..
We can’t assume that it will be someone within the Guardians, as it would already have been apparent during Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2. Rather, it would make much more dramatic sense to have Groot find a mentor within the core Avengers group. Chances are, the role of mentor will fall to Thor, since we’ve seen that it’s he that first crosses paths with the Guardians Of The Galaxy out in space. Chalk that up as speculation for now, but we’ll find out how accurate that prediction is when Avengers: Infinity War is released on May 4th, 2018.
