‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Conquers Box Office, Negative Raccoon Sentiment

In a twist, a big-budget superhero sequel full of major stars absolutely dominated the box office this weekend. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the final installment of the James Gunn-directed Marvel trilogy starring Chris Pratt, is on track for a $116 million box office return in the US for its opening weekend, and $266 million worldwide. 

Guardians unseated the movie that has topped the box office for the past five weeks, The Super Mario Bros movie, which has pulled in roughly $500 million domestically to date. The star of that movie must be mad, right? Oh, wait. 

It would appear that Chris Pratt has, to use scientific terminology, played himself. 

Yes, Pratt also voices the titular super plumber in Mario in addition to leading Guardians as Peter Quill, the self-styled Starlord, meaning he has the top two slots in the box office all to his sweet, sweet self this week. Stick that in your physics-defying, comically large sewer pipe and smoke it, right? (We don’t talk enough about the fact that everyone in Super Mario travels via sewage pipe. You know what else travels via sewage pipe? Sewage. It makes you want to shower just thinking about it.) 

Fans have embraced the film with a 95 percent positive fan rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while critics had a few notes. Judging by fan reactions, however, the movie has had one very surprising effect: A dramatic rise in pro-raccoon sentiment. 

Fear not, we won’t be dropping any spoilers here, but it would seem that people are having some real feelings about Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), the gun-slinging cybernetic talking raccoon who has seemed to be in an ongoing identity crisis since his first appearance in the Marvel universe. He’s always mad, but he also loves his tree friend Groot. He’s a complicated little dude, and fan reaction tweets like this one are signaling something big for the lil guy. 

And then there’s this one: 

And then we’ve got Cooper himself telling ABC that ​​”Rocket went through a lot.” For the first time, we’re feeling a little worried about the welfare of a raccoon.

Given raccoons’ famously poor PR personas, could this mark not only a massive box office, but a sea change for trash pandas? Only time will tell.