James Gunn wrote and directed both. But do they exist in the same universe?
Long before James Gunn proved himself to be a visionary filmmaker worthy of helming a massive Marvel franchise, he directed a small horror-comedy by the name of Slither. Gunn, who previously penned films such as Tromeo and Juliet and the Dawn of the Dead remake, made his feature debut with Slither, a film that drew a whole lot of inspiration from ’80s horror movies. Coupled with the aforementioned Dawn remake, Slither helped make Gunn a household name in the horror world – his mainstream success, needless to say, makes us incredibly happy.
But Gunn is not one to leave his horror roots behind. You may have spotted Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman in a brief cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, and if you were paying extra close attention, you may have even spotted a direct callback to Slither in the 2014 Marvel movie. The space slugs, the primary antagonists in the 2006 film, are seen in the Collector’s, well, collection!
Take a look:
Of course, the slugs arrive from another planet in Slither, so it stands to reason that the Collector (Benicio del Toro) would’ve at some point come into contact with them. But is the appearance of the slugs merely a fun homage to Gunn’s feature debut, or is there something more to it? Revisiting Slither this week, after seeing Guardians Vol. 2, I noticed something really interesting.
Around the 51-minute mark in Slither, a teenage girl named Kylie is taking a bath (Nightmare on Elm Street homage alert) when one of the space slugs crashes the party. It enters her mouth for a brief period of time, planting its own memories into Kylie’s brain. And Gunn shows us those memories in a visionary sequence: on a distant planet that is most definitely not Earth, the alien lifeform attacks a rat-like creature and seems to lay waste to the entire planet. Kylie later notes that the slugs move from planet to planet, eating or absorbing all life they find there.
Okay, so the slugs from Slither appear in Guardians of the Galaxy. Big deal, right? Well what I noticed on my most recent revisit of Slither is that the aforementioned rat-like creatures in that nightmarish vision are almost identical to the Orloni, a race of rat-like creatures that are found in both of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Native to Morag but commonly found on other planets, the Morloni creatures pop up a handful of times throughout both films – they’re prominently featured in the incredibly awesome opening credits sequence of Vol. 2.
Pictured below: the rat creature from Slither & an Orloni from Guardians…
Maybe it’s a crazy fan theory stretch, but it’s kind of fun to imagine that Slither gave us our first glimpse of either Morag or another planet that Gunn would years later bring to life in Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course, even he had no idea he’d eventually direct Guardians at the time of making Slither, but he seems to have at least made an effort to retroactively connect the two.
Some fans have even pointed out that the monster known as the Abilisk, featured at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, resembles the tentacled final monster form from Slither – it’s worth noting that the Abilisk is flanked by, you guessed it, Orloni creatures. But that’s a bit of a stretch, as the likely explanation is that Gunn just plain digs tentacle monsters.
Long story short, Slither exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Deal with it.
