James Gunn knows superhero movies as well as anyone. He’s directed films for both Marvel (the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy) and DC (The Suicide Squad, the forthcoming Superman: Legacy), but without naming names, he thinks the quality of the pop culture-dominating genre has gone down in recent years.
“People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories,” Gunn said on the Inside of You podcast. “And they have gotten to the place where, ‘Oh, it’s a superhero, let’s make a movie about it.’ And then, ‘Oh, let’s make a sequel, because the first one did pretty well,’ and they aren’t thinking about, ‘Why is this story special? What makes this story stand apart from other stories? What is the story at the heart of it all? Why is this character important? What makes this story different that it fills a need for people in theaters to go see?'”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, to name a recent example, was a fun watch because it combined the stuff you would expect from a superhero movie, like Drax punching a weird alien’s lights out, with genuine affection for the characters. Sure, one of the characters is a talking raccoon, but don’t tell me you didn’t get misty-eyed during the flashback scenes.
Gunn continued, “People have gotten a little lazy and there’s a lot of biff-pow-bam stuff happening in movies and I’m watching third acts of superhero films where I really just don’t feel like there’s a rhyme or reason to what’s happening. I don’t care about the characters. And they’ve gotten too generic.”
In unrelated news, The Flash had the biggest week-to-week drop off for a superhero movie since Morbius.
You can listen to the podcast below.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
