All three Guardians of the Galaxy movies do a good job showing audiences just how weird things can get out in the depths of space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but James Gunn peaked with the introduction of the Orgoscope in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Featured in the second act of the blockbuster, it’s a planetoid made out of organic matter and therefore mostly has a real gross fleshy/organ look – which is both unpleasant and cool. It strikes an important balance, and that’s thanks to the work of talented filmmakers who researched some seriously gross stuff in the making of the MCU film.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 production designer Beth Mickle told me about the process bringing the Orgoscope to life earlier this month when I had the chance to interview her at San Diego Comic-Con. Like all major endeavors on a film set, it was a team effort, and required some sacrifice. In this case, Mickle credits the work of Lorin Flemming, and she remembers looking at some pretty gnarly reference material left posted on the walls in the production office:
It was great. We actually, just on the Guardians panel we did this afternoon, our art director Lorin Flemming who did that set just absolutely wonderfully, she was talking about the research she did in the first few weeks and she was like, ‘You look at the inside of your cheek and we were looking at colonoscopy videos and all kinds of things.' Pleasant stuff. And the research that ended up on the walls was really questionable.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 filmmakers aimed to make fleshy Orgoscope as realistic as possible, and it required some experimentation. Beth Mickle explained that the team had no problem recreating the appearance of bone, but the softer material – what she called “the meat” – presented the departments with a challenge. Said Mickle,
People brought in latex and were smearing gross jelly on it and holding it up to lights and seeing if there's translucency. That was a big fun one to play with, just to kind of see how we could achieve the textures. Bone was like our comfort zone. We knew we could achieve bone. We've done it before. That's plaster and paint and you know, we had great, great, great, great artists who we knew could do that. But the meat was tough. The meat was tough.
It’s hard work that pays off in the end, as the Orgoscope sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is one of the many things that make the blockbuster great and one of the best films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the last few years. It’s a heart-wrenching cinematic experience, primarily because of the origin story of Bradley Cooper’s Rocket Raccoon, and it provides wonderful conclusion to the arcs that writer/director James Gunn set in motion almost a full decade ago.
Following its theatrical release on May 5, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is now available for digital rental via online outlets including Vudu, Google Play, Amazon and Apple. The 4K and Blu-ray physical media releases will be released this Tuesday, August 1, and Disney+ subscribers will be able to stream the movie starting this Wednesday, August 2.
