Chukwudi Iwuji, Miriam Shor, and Nico Santos in The High Evolutionary and His Recorders
Guardians of the Galaxy battled the Kree warlord, Star-Lord’s father, Gamora’s adoptive father, and a handful of other villains throughout their journey, but none are quite as terrifying like Chukwudi Iwuji’s The High Evolutionary. In Marvel Studios Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, he strives to create a perfect world, even if it means destroying entire worlds on his way to that perfection. Even more terrifying is that he harbors a grudge against Rocket, who he created, and will stop at nothing to get him (and his brains) back.
“I had a lot of fun playing such an idiot,” laughs Iwuji.”But I sat there and looked at it and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so awful. you will hate me They’re going to hate me so much.’
But the most important thing is to hate him, as writer-director James Gunn points out. “High Evolutionary works well because Chuk is so good in the role.He’s so charismatic. You love hearing him talk, but at the same time you hate his insides.
For his third journey with the Guardians, Gunn was in search of a complex villain bent on a different kind of destruction. “You don’t want to just have a twisting mustache, an evil villain doing evil for no reason — ‘I want to take over the world, I want to destroy the universe,’ all those things that don’t make sense.” , that’s right, that I don’t want to have. But once you really get to know the villain and feel like he has a good reason to stop hating him, you gotta hate him, so Chuk really brings those two things.
“What it represents is terrifying,” Iwuji continues. “I mean, it’s very scary. Unanimity. A kind of narcissism. And the fact that, as we see, for much of the film he focuses his power on very vulnerable creatures.”At that level, it’s terrifying.
The High Evolutionary is determined to get Rocket back, and he’s not alone in his quest, with the help of his henchmen Recorder Theel and Recorder Vim, played by Nico Santos and Miriam Shor, respectively. They are at the High Evolutionary’s behest and follow his orders across the galaxy in hopes of keeping the Guardians from getting too close and potentially turning against their creator.
Iwuji loved working with these two actors, who created comical moments on and off screen. “They are so funny that Miriam can play a joke for a while.It’s like Miriam’s joke, I don’t know where, went, and a really serious conversation started. And then Nico, I can only laugh at the look on his face. He just has a great sense of comedy. James immediately got into it. Sometimes it was hard being the straight male in the group, keeping a straight face or being mad at them because I was desperate to break down.Shor and Santos were thrilled to join the MCU, and Shor noted that his work ultimately impressed his children. Meanwhile, Nico’s mom had just made a board for him and had MARVEL MOVIE written on it when he got the part.
“My mom used to say, ‘I guess you, I want you to be in a Marvel movie. Put that on the scoreboard, Marvel movie.” I had to say, yeah, that sounds good mom.Sounds good. I was just telling him I was in Atlanta on a completely different project. I told him I was doing an independent film in Atlanta. Did you just see the film and is it like an independent film?
