UNDER THE GUNN

DC DISASTER?

Imagine being handed full creative control over one of the most vibrant and beloved fictional universes ever created, featuring some of the most iconic characters of the last century. With over 80 years of stories to adapt, there is no shortage of great material to work with. License to print money: granted. Now imagine screwing it all up so badly and repeatedly that some people are actually looking back on Zack Snyder’s films and saying, “Huh, maybe these weren’t so bad after all.” This is the position DC Studios head James Gunn now finds himself in — a debacle of his own making. Many of his creative decisions have been questionable at best. DC’s latest disaster — Supergirl (yes, we know he didn’t write or direct it, but still)– combined with the slurry of substandard Marvel films and TV output of recent years, may have killed the superhero movie once and for all.  Can Gunn weather the storm? And should he be allowed to? 

by Jim Cirile

“I don’t think James Gunn survives this.” — an agent speaking anonymously to comicbookmovie.com

I am not a James Gunn hater. He does some things very well — mainly ensemble stories about quirky, dysfunctional groups of smart aleck losers. His body of work includes the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which many people love (I found them kind of mid, personally,) The Suicide Squad (solid… ish,) and Peacemaker, a wildly funny and violent series that kicked gluteus in season one but absolutely sh*t the bed and lit it on fire with rancid napalm in season two.

But there’s one thing about James Gunn that I will never forget or forgive, and that is he is almost certainly a “friend of Epstein,” if his old Tweets are any indication. Some may recall these revelations actually got him briefly fired, then later rehired, by Disney on Guardians of the Galaxy pt. III. Gunn issued an apology, acknowledging that he had viewed himself as a “provocateur” at the beginning of his career, making “outrageous and taboo” jokes, but stated that he had since “developed as a person”. Whatever, dude. Some sick shizz if you ask me.

And so some folks were a bit wary about Gunn being hired to take over DC Studios, with the first movie on his slate: Superman, the king of superheroes. The good news: I mean, this had to be a step in the right direction, right? After all, Guardians was a successful comics adaptation, and The Suicide Squad was decent. And after The Flash, the aborted Batgirl movie, and the Zack Snyder abominations, heck, Superman might fly right.

The bad news: Gunn confessed publicly he didn’t know how to write the character; he couldn’t find a way in. Really, James? In that case, I dunno, maybe hire one of the thousands of incredible writers who’ve written brilliant Superman stories. J. Michael Straczynski, to name just one.

The James Gunn Era

Well, we all know how Superman turned out. Some liked it, some did not, but James Gunn‘s Superman by James Gunn didn’t exactly receive a hero’s welcome at the box office, barely breaking even with a worldwide haul of $624M — a wobbly start to the reborn DC cinematic universe.

Things grew shakier still when Peacemaker season 2 landed with a creepy/weird thud; Samba TV reported a season finale viewership of 435,000 – far less than many YouTubers’ videos critiquing the series, a 60% drop in viewership from the premiere according to Cosmic Book News. Yikes. Gunn‘s animated series Creature Commandos drew little attention (I hear it was decent). Which led to many question his judgment as to what he greenlit and why… Clayface, seriously? And most baffling of all, Lanterns – which teams two intergalactic cops and grounds them in an Earthbound story in the American midwest. Like adapting Star Trek and setting it in Topeka, KS.

Which brings us to what is shaping up to be one of the bigger bombs in cinema history…

By now, pretty much everyone can smell the stink coming off this film’s fetid carcass; there are reports of theaters trashing the standees after only the first week. Was Supergirl a total trainwreck? Well, the film did some things well. But it made fundamental mistakes, not the least of which being failing to develop the screenplay — leading to a movie shot through with illogic and a healthy dollop of derivative, topped off with idiotic contemporary songs because that’s the Gunn brand. Forbes called the film an unsatisfying amalgam of Gunn tropes: “trashy space bars, needle drops, and slow-motion fight scenes.”

Which finally brings us to the point of this whole screed:

Seriously, James Gunn, WTF???

Whether it’s arrogance, incompetence, or bad luck remains to be seen, but one has to wonder just how Gunn could have screwed up this badly. Every studio has union readers whose job it is to weigh in on scripts and try to prevent these sorts of train wrecks. Whether the execs or director listen is another story. But somewhere, the train went not just off the rails but careened headlong into the refinery on the side of the tracks.

First-time writer Ana Noguiera is taking some of the heat; Film Threat’s Alan Ng said something like, “There are thousands of people in Hollywood who paid good money to learn to write screenplays. Maybe Gunn should have hired one of them.” But who knows –she was almost certainly rewritten by Gunn and/or director Craig Gillespie, with whom Gunn allegedly had a contenious relationship. Weak source material (2021’s “Supergirl” Woman of Tomorrow” by Tom King) certainly didn’t help. And it was Gunn who reportedly also changed the ending of the graphic novel so that (SPOILER ALERT) Supergirl kills the bad guy — which subverts one of the movie’s themes and makes no sense at all in context (see our review.)

According to CBR, Gunn actually shelved Gillespie’s original cut (which tested in the 60s – very bad) and went with his own version (which tested in the 70s – still bad.) Just think — it could have been worse?

Regardless, the buck stops with Gunn.

Which leads us to wonder: at what point does Warner Bros. tap out?

The studio has acknowledged disappointment with Supergirl’s performance and the character’s failure to connect with audiences – a character Gunn elected to make “imperfect and messy,” because, well, James Gunn. Needless to say, Warners – and the industry — are not happy. “I don’t think James Gunn survives this,” said an agent speaking anonymously to comicbookmovie.com. “Warner Bros. missed on a lot of levels,” said an unnamed WB exec, noting that the female Gen Z audience did not show up as hoped; and despite grafting on the character Lobo (played by Jason Momoa) to the script, the movie didn’t bring in male superhero fans either.

So yeah – internal grumblings at Warner Bros. and Gunn‘s contract reportedly coming up for renewal this year may well yield some sort of shakeout. As well it should. Joss Whedon was canceled for far less; but Gunn gets to run a studio?

Meanwhile, DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran are proceeding apace with their highly questionable slate, which includes a Mr. Terrific TV series and a Bane/Deathstroke movie – C-list characters no one gives a rodent’s derriere about. Superman returns in Man of Tomorrow in 2028, but will anyone care by then?

For this ardent fan who grew up reading DC comics, the sad answer is: nope.