From Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Warner Bros. Suicide Squad to his early indie films, director James Gunn’s movies led him to DC’s new Superman movie.
With hindsight, this feels like it was inevitable. But when James Gunn took to social media in early March to announce he would direct Superman: Legacy, the first major film in the new DC Studios initiative devised by himself and producer Peter Safran, the news came as a complicated surprise to fans — and, it seems, to the filmmaker himself.
Gunn, known for his frankness on social platforms, previously admitted a hesitancy to direct the film. “Just because I write something doesn’t mean I feel it in my bones, visually and emotionally, enough to spend over two years directing it,” he said on Twitter. “Especially not something of this magnitude.” That’s not exactly a reassuring display of confidence for fans who have waited (and waited) for a new solo Superman film to spring forth from Warner Bros. since Man of Steel muscled its way into theaters 10 years ago. Gunn’s reticence would seem to dim the prospects for Superman: Legacy.
But Gunn is selling himself short. Heck, we all might be. Over the years, the 56-year-old filmmaker has become more than a Troma provocateur or the former golden boy at Marvel Studios; he’s become a thoughtful, capable storyteller through the projects he’s made, be they grody, goofy, or great. The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, and soon Vol. 3, plus low-budget fare like Super, The Specials, and Brightburn have all played a role in the development of Gunn’s distinctive voice as a producer, writer, and director. For me, it all adds up to Superman: Legacy having the chance to be the movie filmgoers have been hoping to experience since Christopher Reeve hung up his cape all those years ago.
Gunn’s path to Superman really began with superheroes. The Specials, his first credited post-Troma Entertainment work in which he wrote, produced and co-starred (as the shrinking hero Minuteman, not pronounced the way you think), featured an off-beat Justice League draped in late-’90s douchery. The Specials is a roil of Gunn proto-matter that froths with the sort of material that would later make him famous (or infamous): Ceaseless quips, fraught relationships, impromptu dance sequences, disappointment and ennui.
The Specials established other Gunn fixtures, like his affinity for misfits and needle drops. Specials is real Y2K lounge lizard super-stuff, fleshed out by an impeccable cast (including Thomas Haden Church, Judy Greer, and Rob Lowe) and boosted/hampered by omnipresent pop music, with a slight whiff of Daniel Clowes emanating from its skeezy innards. But threaded in its laconic Gen-X jadedness is a reverence for the weirdo superhero comics Gunn devoured as a kid.
