Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3's Chukwudi Iwuji 'Cannot Defend' The High Evolutionary
This post contains slight spoilers for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3."
I don't know about you, but I've heard enough actors muse about how they relate to their villainous characters to last a lifetime. For every well-spoken point an actor makes about the pain or trauma that drives people to make terrible choices, there's another actor somewhere out there spending a press tour giving eye-roll-inspiring answers about going Method to inhabit a sick and twisted mind. At best, defending totally indefensible characters sounds silly; at worst, it can sometimes be genuinely problematic.
Luckily, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" actor Chukwudi Iwuji doesn't have that problem. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he side-stepped the problem completely, saying, "I don't believe that you have to defend your character. He's sadistic." In the film, "The Underground Railroad" and "John Wick: Chapter 2" actor plays The High Evolutionary, a truly despicable dude who is obsessed with creating a perfect world free of all flaws. His ideal new world contains not just no crime and strife, but also nothing he deems physically imperfect — a narrow definition that disqualifies a whole bunch of cute, kind critters.
If all of that's not bad enough, he also experiments brutally on animals, treating them as pawns in his game and not showing one iota of concern for their wellbeing, physical or otherwise. Marvel fans have spent years debating which supervillain is the worst of the bunch, and we might finally have our answer: the High Evolutionary embodies both the eugenicist principles of the Nazis and the grotesque animal-splicing obsession of H.G. Wells' Dr. Moreau. He sucks, big time, and Iwuji unreservedly agrees. "His way of thinking has led us to some of the most terrible periods in our history and in humanity," the actor told THR, citing "People who think they know the right answer, people who want to cleanse, people who think they want to find perfection."
'It's a tireless and endless pursuit'
Iwuji also noted that it's The High Evolutionary who's deeply imperfect, not any of his experiments. "What he doesn't realize is that the flaw is in him," the actor says. "He's deeply unhappy with himself and projects it outward." The actor explained that, if left unchecked, a person with that kind of mindset would never be satisfied. "He would always see a flaw that he needs to fix. It would never stop. It's a tireless and endless pursuit."
If you've already seen "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," you know exactly what Iwuji is talking about. If you haven't, it's worth noting that the animal cruelty in this movie is no joke, as James Gunn applies his creative, gross-out sensibilities to a story about the manipulation of organic life forms. It's a choice that's already polarizing, but it ties back to the until-now unexplored backstory of the character at the heart of the series — Bradley Cooper's jaded underdog Rocket raccoon.
Despite his unequivocal condemnation of The High Evolutionary's actions, Iwuji told THR he's thankful he got to play the bad guy. "I cannot defend him, but I can defend playing him, because it was a gift of a role for an actor," he explained. The actor used that gift well, committing fantastically to the mad scientist bit to play a character who will likely go down in Marvel history as one of the MCU's most despicable villains.
"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is now in theaters.