James Gunn discusses “lazy” superhero movies in comment that hopefully won’t come back to bite him
His next batch of superhero movies better not be lazy, or he'll fall into his own trap
Aux News Gunn
James Gunn is one of the few filmmakers who managed to make multiple movies in the Marvel Studios machine that actually have creative fingerprints on them and he did it without everyone getting sick of him, which means the pressure must be pretty high for him to maintain that record now that he’s co-running DC Studios with producer Peter Safran. If the DC movies aren’t noticeably better than they used to be once stuff like Superman: Legacy starts coming out, then everyone’s going to pin the blame squarely on him (Safran will get off clean either way, because he’s not famous).
And now Gunn is potentially making things even harder on himself by going on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside Of You podcast (Rosenbaum has some superhero bonafides of his own, having playing Lex Luthor on Smallville and the Flash on Justice League Unlimited) and pointing out that some superhero movies are “really lazy.” Gunn says that some filmmakers take it for granted that superheroes are popular, saying they’ll decide to make a movie or a sequel without considering what makes that character’s story “special” or what “the heart of it” is.
It’s tough to argue with that at least, but Gunn went on to say that “there’s a lot of biff, pow, bam stuff happening in movies” where there’s no “rhyme or reason to what’s happening” in the third act. “I don’t care about the characters,” he added, “And they’ve gotten too generic.” That seems like a perfect opportunity to unfairly criticize some of his movies, but… The Suicide Squad and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 had solid third acts. There was character development while they were fighting the starfish monster, and the end of Guardians was all a payoff to Rocket’s arc. Damn it, it actually seems like he knows what he’s talking about!
(By the way, despite hyping it up and all that, Gunn didn’t really have anything to do with The Flash.)
Gunn’s suggestion for fixing all of this is to try “very different genres” within the “superhero movie” umbrella. “I like very serious superhero movies,” he said, “and I like very comedic superhero movies. I like ones that are a murder mystery but it’s with superheroes. I like to see these different types of stories, as opposed to seeing the same story told over and over again.” He’s right, superhero movies are better when they branch out to other genres, but also where are these superhero murder mysteries he’s talking about? We’d like to see more of those.
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It’s been a long time since I was in school, but I remember that every so often I would begin writing a paper with a particular point of view on a topic, and find out halfway through that I no longer agreed with my original argument. This was very frustrating, because it meant that I basically had to start from scratch, but I guess I could have also just used the second half of my paper to argue why the first half was nonsense and turned it in anyway.In conclusion, Superhero movies are a land of contrast. Thank you.
Gunn’s superhero movies are pretty decent, but it’s not like they’re amazing or anything. Feels like a glass houses thing.
Yeah the first Guardians movie was good, second was overlong and the third was good again. Suicide Squad was a lot better than the first one and probably the best modern DC movie, but neither of those are a high bar to clear. His best superhero work is probably Peacemaker and that’s barely a superhero show.
Yeah, like, I’m not complaining, they’re good, but they’re not, like, AMAZING (except the Peacemaker opening credits, which are amazing)
Disagree, they are amazingIt’s hard to make things seem effortless
Don’t forget about Super.
Shut up crime!
GotG/Suicide Squad/ and Peacemaker are all the same kind of Superhero setup too. Just a cast of mostly D-list heroes/villains being quirky as hell and managing to save the day despite all their dysfunction. The movies are generally carried by the character interaction which tends to bring out great cast performances rather than having good storylines/plot. Gunn has been pretty formulaic with his biggest successes. Which isn’t really a bad thing but we’ve yet to actually see him work with fully established characters that aren’t Harley Quinn (who Margot Robbie solidified more than anything).
Eh, I’d argues Gunn’s standalone superhero movies have very cohesive plots in comparison to other superhero movies. Mainly because he generally focuses on the character motivation to drive the story. It’s quite true though, that all his recent successes have been ensemble films focusing on dysfunctional friend/family dynamics. It’s going to be interesting to see how his Superman movies turns out to be. Superman isn’t really a fit for that and he’s basically got the future of the DCU riding on his shoulders with it.
You want character arcs? Wait ‘til you see Superman struggle with notions of heroism while his alter ego fails to stop the daily decay of journalism and Lois Lane learns to live with borderline personality disorder!
At least he seems to actually like the heroes he works with. Plus he knows how to portray characters like actual people and actually understand the comic arcs he’d adapt.
The way DCEU Superman had been treated outside of post-credit scenes, made it seem like the director didn’t actually like the character (or didn’t have a real idea how to use him other than treating him like a more emotional Dr. Manhattan).
Agree.
Agree. Guardians is so, so overrated. The only time I actually enjoyed them as characters was in the avengers films, which Gunn recently disavowed, saying that Starlord would never do anything emotional and impulsive. Because apparently he never watched the other Guardians movies.
Guardians routinely places near the top of most best of Marvel lists, and I don’t know anyone outside of Snyderboys who doesn’t think The Suicide Squad has been the best DC film (Wonderwoman or Aquaman be damned). I don’t know how much better they need to be to be considered amazing superhero movies, unless you generally don’t like the MCU era and prefer Nolan Batman, Rami Spider-Man, or Singer X-Men. Maybe you’re even a Burton or Donner guy.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a matter of the quality of his films, but it’s that he’s really pushing character over generic superhero fluff. It seems formulaic at this point, but he doesn’t mince words about what he’s trying to drive home with his films. He’s not lied or been wrong with what he’s been saying.
where are these superhero murder mysteries he’s talking about? They’ve got the murder part covered.They just need a lovably quirky supernerd with superpowers to solve any mysterious ones.“Only Murders in the Multiverse”
I thought “The Batman” was going to be close to that and play up the “world’s greatest detective” angle, but it turned out that the detective was fairly oblivious and had to be led by the villains and even a sort of random bit character, so I look forward to someone doing it right someday.
Lolwhat. Zero-media-literacy folks use this talking point a lot but the whole movie was Batman figuring out Riddler’s clues. It’s just that he was wrong about the bigger picture because he assumed Riddler was fighting against him.
What’s wrong with a detective failing to solve the crime?
What we need is a Batman with the analytical abilities to solve a riddle with the answer “A Ballpoint Banana”, or at least with a sidekick who can.
The only possible meaning.
It’s insane that Michael Keaton’s Batman was the only one to actually do detective work before the most recent Batman movie.
Watchmen was a superhero murder mystery, right? And…oh oh Mystery Men was a murder mystery plot iirc.
I don’t know if I agree on Mystery Men.Casanova Frankenstein easily lures Captain Amazing into a trap and holds him hostage, but Mr. Furious witnesses Amazing going to Casanova’s lair. So the team doesn’t have to figure out who abducted Amazing. And it’s the Mystery Men who ultimately kill him.
Yeah sorry it’s been quite a while.
If you’re talking about who killed Captain Amazing that was solved pretty early. If you’re talking about bowling guy then, yeah, I guess you’re right
when they announced his dc slate he said the ‘lanterns’ tv show was gonna be like superhero true detective…but we’ll see if we get that far.
Maybe now that they’re tapping into the Grant Morrison Batman well, maybe we could get an adaptation of the Island of Dr. Mayhew. Casting international stars as the Batmen from around the world would be delightful enough in it’s own right.
Poker Face?
Detective Chimp.
They’re saving it for the Fantastic 4 reboot.Only Murders in the Baxter Building.
Only Murders in the Baxter Building.There it is. I knew that joke was out there someplace.
Watchmen is the classic superhero murder mystery. It begins with a death and ends with the murderer confessing.
We’ve reached the late 70s western’s era of superhero movies.
‘bif, pow, bam’ in superhero films?!Next you’ll be telling me that romance movies have…KISSING!!!!
Not anymore, thanks to Cleanflix!
where are these superhero murder mysteries he’s talking about? We’d like to see more of thosePlease let this be a cue for a Sandman Mystery Theater show. Or, heck, even one starring Ralph and Sue Dibny would be fun.
The Question, played by Michael Fassbender (who is, in fact, naturally redheaded). Potentially voiced while in the mask by Jeffrey Coombs.
That’s my dream, anyways.
I’d like to see that myself, but at the same time I’m a bit worried about the effect of having the lead character of a TV series be a conspiracy theorist.
I am too, but only about the same amount I’m worried about the fascist power fantasies of superherodom/vigilantism to begin with. Really, that’s a problem for “looking in the mirror after” Pgoodso, these things can still be fun in the moment, hehe.
What weird shade to throw on Gunn for absolutely no reason. He’s probably one of the hardest working creatives in the bizzImo it isn’t so much laziness as cynical business people who don’t even care about the properties trying to trick people
You could carve at least an hour off of Guardians 3 and do nothing but improve the picture. Take everything with Adam Warlock out too.
I saw Guardians 3 about six hours after seeing Across the Spider-verse and it was a brutal experience. The film just limps across the screen looking bloated and unfocused in comparison, this albatross of ‘we have to deal with revived Gamora 1.0 I guess’ hung around its neck and it’s just a mess! A MCU-CGI-murky mess and it made me very sad.
Rocket’s bits were great, but that’s what, 20 minutes of the movie? Goddamn.
Take out all the animal abuse, too!
I mean aprt of me thinks that’s the only part of the movie that actually has any emotional heft to it, but on the other end I could not figure-out the tone this movie was trying to go for. Even by MCU movies this was not a film for children – so why the big fucking toy push?
I mean, it’s really, really fucking easy to get emotional heft from, “here’s a bunch of absurdly adorable animals, now let’s kill them!”
It was so shamelessly manipulative and cheap. Ugh.
What’s so manipulative about it? Just because the subject matter is sensitive, doesn’t mean it’s manipulative. It’s storytelling. If it evokes no emotions from its viewers, it shouldn’t even bother existing.
I mean yes.
On the flip side, it’s the only emotional beats the movie has going for it.
True. Which is why I really didn’t like the movie.
Seen people say this but it doesn’t add up. Its not really manipulative unless they added a furry character just to do that. The team has always had a cocky murderous talking raccoon, so taking the time to explore his softer side & tragic backstory finally makes him not a one-dimensional character. Gunn wants ya to worry about him & identify with him so the ending is happier when he’s saved & rescues all the other raccoons. It’s story/character stuff. The lion king wasn’t being manipulative when it killed Mufasa, it was part of Simba’s story. Or Bambi’s mom. Total manipulation.
Rocket’s “bit” was the focus of the entire movie and basically the whole premise. His backstory, the villain, his arc, and even the motivation for the entire adventure was to save Rocket.“Dealing with Gamora” was like 5 min of the movie in total, spread out. And those 5 min were basically : “Hey I like you, the old u loved me.” “I dont.”“That sucks. I’m lovable, are u sure?”“I’m sure.” “Fine, I’ll get over u then. Cuz the other u was much more chill. But much respect.. have a good one.” — That’s about it and basically amounted to minor comic relief moments. Meanwhile u say u liked rocket which was the whole story. I don’t even think the movie was excellent like the first but it was good. Ur comment just confuses me hence the ramble.
Editing as I posted on wrong article. Don’t have much to say on this one.
Well, I’ve never liked a single James Gunn movie except for Slither.SO THERE!
The commenters on this site really like their marvel movies, huh
Im more excited to hear the excuses when Gunns version of DC flops then any movie coming out of Gunns DC. I don’t want to live in Gunnland and you can’t make me.