For a character that only ever speaks three words, Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Groot is overwhelmingly popular among fans. But if you’ve ever found yourself wondering how some can interpret his minimalistic language, director James Gunn holds the perfect answer.
The tree humanoid alien has come a long way in the MCU since first appearing in Gunn’s original GotG film. After having him sacrifice his life to save the new team, the director introduced us to the much cuter and probably more dangerous version, Baby Groot. And to say that the character stole the spotlight in the sequel would be an understatement.
Groot turned into an adolescent boy, if you could call him that, by Avengers: Infinity War. And in that movie, he once again proved his worth as a superhero by helping Thor forge Stormbreaker. Then, in the Battle of Earth, Groot helped the assembled might of the Avengers fight Thanos and his followers. Now, with the Guardians returning for the threequel, fans are wondering about what’s next for this tree monster that they’ve grown to love, assuming that in hindsight, he’s had the best character arc out of all his teammates.
Well, we have a long wait ahead until figuring that out, but James Gunn recently appeared on Twitter to address why Star-Lord’s universal translator couldn’t decrypt Groot’s language.
“He doesn’t have a universal translator,” Gunn revealed. “He has a translator. And it doesn’t have all languages in it (it didn’t have Sakaaran in the first film for example). And people don’t learn Groot through knowing the language – they learn it through connecting with Groot.”
So, it seems that despite his limited spectrum of words, if you can connect with Groot on a more profound level, you may start to understand what he’s saying. This was previously demonstrated by Rocket Raccoon, and the rest of the Guardians to some degree by the time of Avengers: Infinity War.
Luckily for us, we’re still a ways off from the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which should give us ample time to improve or dust off our Groot-understanding-skills.