Editor's Note: The following contains Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 spoilers.Marvel has had a villain problem in the past. A compelling villain needs to be given close to the same amount of screen time as the hero for the audience to learn about their plan and who they are. While building their franchise, the MCU has focused on building the audience’s relationship with the heroes, though, and often neglects to fully develop the villains' stories on screen. This is definitely not the case in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) was a thoroughly developed MCU villain, with genocidal tendencies and no regard for any living things besides himself. He is truly an evil genius. His comic book counterpart is far more complex than what we saw on screen, though. He’s much more of a benevolent creator in the comics, albeit just as judgmental and callous as he is in the movie, too.
The Comic Book High Evolutionary Cared for His Creations
In Guardians of the Galaxy 3, The High Evolutionary makes his disregard for the life he creates very clear. When Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) points out that his creations are dealing drugs, he acknowledges that this population he created must be completely destroyed so he can start over, and points out that he’s committed genocide against his own creations many times before. The High Evolutionary in the comic books, however, was not nearly as detached from his creations and obsessed with his goal of perfecting genetic evolution.
He began his scientific career studying genetics under Nathaniel Essex. His genetic experimentation was met with skepticism and a violation of life by the scientific community at large. With the help of a benefactor, he built a citadel on Wundagore Mountain and continued his experiments. The uranium being mined from the mountain to fund his research started to make people sick, which is why he created the silver armor covering his entire body in the comics. Soon after, his experimentation with genetic augmentation and alteration moved more towards genetic acceleration, creating his half-human half-animal creatures he called New Men. He trained these creations in combat, but he also taught them chivalry and made them into what he considered Knights. The High Evolutionary of the comics wanted to create a new society, and used accelerated genetic experimentation to create what he believed were beings better than humans, but he cared about his creations and taught them how to lead good lives.
Without the compassion and regard for living creatures he demonstrated in the comics, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff would not have survived. After they were born and abandoned on Wundagore, The High Evolutionary placed them in stasis chambers until he could find suitable surrogate parents to raise the children. When a faction of New Men rose up against him, Thor fought alongside him to regain control of his citadel. This was when he turned his citadel into a spaceship and brought his remaining New Men to settle on a distant planet, Counter-Earth. In a second New Men uprising, he began using his experiments on himself, and he descended into madness, seeing every natural born creature as inferior and needing to be fixed. He fought alongside the Fantastic Four to save his new world from Galactus, and later saved Galactus from a poisoned world he ate by evolving him. He’s confronted his former mentor Mister Sinister alongside the X-Men. Adam Warlock and the Avengers fought against him when he tried to send an Evolution Bomb to earth and forcibly mutate everyone. In short, The High Evolutionary is far more complex than the utterly villainous version we were shown in the film.
It Makes Sense for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ To Change the High Evolutionary
James Gunn struck a wonderful balance between the focus on the main characters and the villain. Rocket (Bradley Cooper) came full circle in this trilogy by confronting the man who tortured and experimented on him, and the film showed enough of his backstory for the audience to gain a level of fear and understanding that made The High Evolutionary a truly despicable villain. Rocket’s genetic alterations and augmentations made him into the being he is today, and it cost him everything because the film version of The High Evolutionary had a total disregard for the life of his experiments, the opposite of his comic book counterpart. The film villain was made even more devious because of his hatred and jealousy of Rocket. When Rocket discovers the problem in his genetic acceleration machines, The High Evolutionary becomes resentful and lashes out at Rocket for thinking of a solution that he wasn’t able to see himself. He can’t stand that one of his creations could have a higher intellect than him. Later, he shows that his priority is perfecting his experiments rather than the well-being of his creations when he explains to Star-Lord his plan to obliterate the entire population of Counter-Earth to start somewhere new with the latest species he created. The comic book version wanted all of his creations to thrive. His care for them was more out of a desire to further study his work than out of any feelings of love or connection with his creations, but he still regarded their lives as valuable. This film version wasn’t anything like that.
Making the High Evolutionary more single-minded and obsessed with his work raised the stakes considerably in this movie. The problem with past Marvel villains was that too much time was spent trying to make the audience sympathetic to the character, but this only led to the villain feeling like less of a threat. The High Evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy 3, however, was going to stop at nothing to take what he believed he needed to continue his work. There is no reasoning or running from a character like this, and the audience is much more invested in a conflict that there is no possible way the protagonists can avoid. When you consider how this character was used in the story that needed to be told about Rocket and the significance of a found family, the changes that were made from comic book to screen made The High Evolutionary one of the most compelling and formidable villains in the MCU franchise.