There comes a time in every veteran actor’s career when they ask themselves: have I spent too long playing a large, talking tree? But for Vin Diesel, that moment is clearly yet to arrive. More than a decade after he first portrayed Groot in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the action star is still giddy with excitement about the prospect of stepping into the studio once again and uttering the three simple, anodyne words with which his character has become synonymous, over and over again. In an Instagram post this week, Diesel revealed that Marvel is considering some kind of Groot movie – or at least, we think that’s what he was saying. “Disney wants their Planet X! Which some say is Marvel’s most anticipated movie, haha,” wrote Diesel. “The film where Groot returns to his home planet.”
For those of you not familiar with the comics, Diesel is referring to the homeworld of Groot and his species, the Flora Colossi. Imagine if the Ents from The Lord of the Rings had taken over all of Middle-earth, invented spectacular technologies, delivered the most sustainable urban planning in the galaxy, and yet somehow regressed to sentences of no more than three words. That is an awful lot like what Planet X looks like. According to the comics, though, the Flora Colossi are not really speaking three words of English; that’s just what it sounds like to anyone who can’t understand the subtle inflections in tone and the deeply complex linguistic structures that, when heard by an educated listener, might mean the giant talking tree in question is in fact discussing the finer points of quantum physics, or reciting the Instructions of Shuruppak.
