Guardians of the Galaxy 3 deserves a content warning for violence against animals

polygon.com:

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is wrapping up the story of James Gunn’s Guardians team as he moves on to DC projects. But in order to move them forward, it’s also diving into their pasts. While bits and pieces of the story are clear in the trailer, a few things only hinted at in previews might be better for some audience members to know ahead of time, like the fact that the movie has extensive, intense, and graphic moments featuring animal cruelty.

As unpleasant as that may sound, Guardians 3 never plays its animal abuse as anything but tragedy, and it represents an important emotional core for the story. But it’s still the kind of thing that will touch many people deeply and that may disturb younger viewers in particular, and moviegoers might not expect it from a silly ol’ Marvelfilm full of banter, insult comedy, and explosions.

If a warning was all you needed, and you want to head into the rest of the movie completely unspoiled (or wait for a streaming version), you can stop right here.

But for folks who’d like a more specific overview of ideas and images of animal abuse they’ll encounter in Guardians 3, below is a description that has the lightest spoilers possible, while laying out what to expect when you head to the theaters.

[Ed. note: This story contains light spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.]

As the trailer teases, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 spends a lot of time focused on Rocket Raccoon’s backstory, and as Rocket himself has suggested, it isn’t very pleasant. In the course of finding out how surgical experiments made Rocket into a talking raccoon, we meet other animals who can talk, feel, and scream like humans as well. This storyline is the avenue for the movie’s most gruesome