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Former MCU director and now head of creative for DC James Gunn has blasted superhero movies that he deems “lazy.”
Speaking on the “Inside of You” podcast, Gunn spoke all things about the genre that made him a household name. “We're going to be very careful with the product that we put out and [are] making sure everything is as good as it can possibly be,” he said about his tenure with DC.
While the conversation of “superhero fatigue” will continue to rage on until the MCU doesn't put out a dozen projects a year, Gunn doesn't think that the issue is quantity — it's the quality.
“People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories,” he revealed. “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?'”
He 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.”
While the new head of DC did criticize the genre he's known for — nearly biting the finger that fed him — he did offer a solution, “having very different genres” within the larger genre instead of “this sort of middle-of-the-road type of genre and tone that so many superhero movies have.”
“I like very serious superhero movies, 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,” said Gunn.
James Gunn will kick off his DC regime with Superman: Legacy (at least on the film front). Here's hoping that the third act of his film isn't “lazy” and learns from Man of Steel with its third act.