James Gunn Is As Bad For DC As Zack Snyder…For The Opposite Reasons

Depressed and angry. That’s about right.

Warner Brothers Discovery is continuing a legacy of not knowing what to do with their comic properties when it comes to adaptation. Still overeager to get their own shared universe without the work put into it before Kevin Feige was given full permission to be an idiot. A discussion for another time, but I will probably reference him again.

Before WBD, AOL Turner Time Warner Brothers etc. decided that Zack Snyder would be the best choice to bring the DC Universe back to the big screen. He wasn’t, and his vision was so off that Warner Brothers actually tried to “fix” the mistake and lighten the tone of the DC movieverse. How they did it is was still a jerk move (the man was mourning his daughter’s suicide), but the direction change had become necessary…but too late. What made Snyder perfect for Watchmen, the reason they thought he could make them money with the mainline DC characters, made him a terrible choice for how DC characters are regularly depicted, not only with comic fans but with casual moviegoers who just like Superman.

So the new company turns to James Gunn. His rendition of the Suicide Squad was the one people liked (though there’s talk that David Ayers dealt with studio interference…according to David Ayers), his Guardians Of The Galaxy movies led to Marvel Comics completely altering the team from a futuristic Avengers to oddballs trying to do good because it was so well received, and his Scooby-Doo had made them money no matter how much I think it was hot garbage on a California July afternoon. Surely, Gunn would succeed where Snyder failed!

Well, so much for that idea.

Look, I’m not trashing either of these people. I don’t like Gunn’s style and Snyder isn’t for me, either. I still maintain Man Of Steel was a decent superhero movie but a terrible Superman adaptation, and I like nothing of what I saw after, but I’m not here to say he’s a bad director because I’ve seen so little of his work. I hear Rebel Moon wasn’t very good. What I’m trying to say here is that you need the right person for the right job. John Hughes’ take on Freddy Kruger would be as welcome as Clive Barker remaking The Breakfast Club. There are directors who can work with multiple styles, but not these two. Allow me to explain where they went wrong…and by “they” I mean Warner Brothers.

Maybe I should have added the trunks?

What Zack Snyder did wrong!

I don’t know what about Snyder’s history convinced WB that he was the right pic for the DC Universe outside of his being chosen for Watchmen. There were people upset that Doctor Manhattan replaced the giant squid for various reasons but otherwise the movie did well. The “Tales Of The Black Freighter” in-universe comic was turned into a direct to video movie and I hear it was later integrated into the movie proper on a special home video release. From what I know of Snyder’s style, he was a great choice for Watchmen and his affinity for Frank Miller’s work led to equal success adapting his graphic novel, 300.

The reasons he was a success there are the same reasons his DC universe failed so badly.

It’s easy to bring up the quote about him insisting that if you believed heroes don’t kill, you live in a fantasy world. That’s because it so easily explains the problem. DC IS A fantasy world, and you would think someone whose job is to bring fantasy worlds to life would grasp that. The problem is DC is (until Dan DiDio came along) a bright, hopeful world, something Snyder is not keen to produce. Sucker Punch alone could tell you that. Watchmen is Alan Moore rejecting the traditional superhero narrative before he was screwed over by DC. (Moore may be just shy of insane but he didn’t deserve his treatment, either.) 300 is about the Spartans biggest battle. In every case the story is dark, depressing, and telling you the heroes really aren’t.

The fact that Watchmen is to blame for the deconstruction now being dominant in superhero stories even in the comics tells you how unlike the traditional DC hero story it is. This is what Snyder is drawn to, the stories he prefers to tell. Nothing against that if they’re any good, but it’s not what the aspirational Superman and Batman should be treated like. The Bronze Age made the Dark Knight, not Tim Burton, but until the 90s the comics knew when to stop, and under DiDio it just got worse. Superman draws in audiences in movies and television for being bright, hopeful, and optimistic. That’s not a Zack Snyder story. He doesn’t believe in any of that, and that was reflected not only in his stories but in the rest of the movies created by others set in that universe.

Wonder Woman was a good movie that moved to World War II because they didn’t want to be compared to Captain America despite both characters debuting during the second war. DC got their revenge with Aquaman versus Namor by making the later character “Nahmour” and cutting off his ties to Atlantis despite the Sub-Mariner also debuting during WWII. Neither movie was by Snyder, but neither movie used bright colors until the sequel, and Wonder Woman 1984 at least had other problems. Only Shazam! and Blue Beetle embraced the lighter side of superheroes, and even then Billy Batson was the defeated New 52 Geoff Johns version instead of the optimistic original Captain Marvel. Justice League needed a controversial re-edit and outside of Michael Keaton returning as Batman nothing about The Flash has been called positive, from the actor to the speed effect.

The DC universe is hopeful and aspirational, embracing the fun side of superhero adventuring, and that’s why I was more drawn to it as a kid than Marvel. Not that either publisher or their movies are all that kid-friendly these days. So Snyder was out, and Gunn was in…and that led to the exact opposite problem.

How does someone with superspeed still not look like their urgent to stop a giant energy monster thing from blasting the city to rumble?

What James Gunn is doing wrong!

Gunn has two major things working against him when it comes to how he’s handled DC Studios and the DC Universe with only one movie and two shows–one animated and one live-action–that we’ve seen so far. There are a couple of other errors on top of that, but it all comes down to his signature style. Gunn couldn’t see a Superman story until he learned about Krypto, a character I knew about as a kid but apparently Gunn, a supposed fan who is older than me, didn’t. Look at Gunn’s successes: Suicide Squad, Scooby-Doo, Guardians Of The Galaxy…what do they have in common with his current output?

Simple: they’re all ensemble pieces with quirky characters. That’s what Gunn does best…or did. Peacemaker has its only July day temperature while Creature Commandos only seems to get praise in my circles for GI Robot, the only character anyone talks about this far after the show aired on HBO Max. Guardians Of The Galaxy has a bunch of characters people still talk about, Suicide Squad only has Harley Quinn (which Margo Robbie used to ruined the girls of Gotham City), and nobody talks about Scooby-Doo except when I use it an example of why I don’t like Gunn’s work. None of those things–ESPECIALLY PEACEMAKER with its orgy scene and language–are any more kid friendly than what Snyder was putting out. Remember, kids love superheroes (and Scooby-Doo–yes, James, even Scrappy), including many of these heroes, but both Gunn and Snyder remind me of that one headline from Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. To paraphrase: “DC Movie Makers To Kids: Drop Dead”. Critics have also noted he’s inserting himself into other DC movies marketing, even the “Elseworlds” stories he’s probably being forced to continue like The Batman. He’s not directing the main movieverse versions of Batman or Supergirl but he brags about the casting job he did with Milly Alcott and how he wants the costume in the Gunniverse version of Batman to look.

Peacemaker is also a great example of Gunn’s other problem: he only cares about the stuff he likes making. James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn was changed from Superman: Legacy to make us all call it “James Gunn’s Superman“, putting his name first like they did with the marketing for the movie. They talked more about Gunn than they did Superman, who I hear is barely in the movie due to Gunn’s previously mentioned quirky ensemble fixation. Even the next movie seems to be more about Lex Luthor, a character he seems more invested it.

What I haven’t seen brought up in the talk about this movie going to streaming early is that Gunn blamed it on needing information from that movie to follow season two of Peacemaker, a series Gunn is more invested in because it plays to his fixation, stars his wife and brother, and is what he’s more invested in than Superman. So far the only reason to see James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn first is because Lex Luthor showed up in Peacemaker. He only found a Superman connection due to them both having a dog, and even then he swapped Krypto out for a namesake of a different breed that’s basically Gunn’s dog with Kryptonian powers. It isn’t helped that Gunn’s stuff or stuff he liked (Blue Beetle or Peacemaker for example) is still canon from the Snyderverse to the Gunnverse. Thus forming a decent timeline is already impossible with only three productions already out in this continuity.

And like Snyder, Gunn’s other creators aren’t looking to be any better. The screenwriter for the Supergirl movie had as much trouble accepting a positive Kara the same way Geoff Johns did with Billy Batson, and like Gunn prefers the deconstructionist Tom King story in which Supergirl, who became the angry Supergirl in the New 52 like Billy, goes off to get drunk on a planet with a lower drinking age. It seems we’re not getting any more hope and optimism from these heroes if this is any indication. We don’t see it in Peacemaker having orgies and hanging out in a Nazi-run dimension so Gunn can tell us how terrible we are as human beings. You know, that thing DC didn’t used to do until the turn of the century.

That’s the big problem with both directors. Even if you like their other work, whether you’re a Snyder Bro, a…whatever cute name they give Gunn fans, or a fan of both or neither (I’m the latter), they just aren’t the right fit to RUN a DC Universe. There are characters or concept either could have been the director for, but as the one steering the SS DC Movieverse all they can hit are icebergs of their own making. What made them successful in the other movies is ironically why they’re a poor fit for trying to be DC’s Kevin Feige at a time when we’re realising he wasn’t the reason for Marvel Studios’ success in light of their own fall from the top, which is a whole other discussion that includes some of the other DC Studio failings we see might be coming, like with Supergirl. Basically, Snyder is too serious and Gunn isn’t serious enough, while both are different flavors of cynical towards humanity and embrace the opposite thing. They’re both rather extreme in their tone and that hurts the adaptation, while neither of them care about the source material outside of having a concept they don’t have to work to make.

Unfortunately I can’t really point to any experienced directors or producers who COULD do a proper DC universe because this kind of thing is all over Hollywood right now: quirky characters, a disbelief in the goodness of man, and having no idea how to have fun with superheroes. Snyder doesn’t believe in it, Gunn is promising the next Superman movie will be “less comic book” because the media pecking order is joined by a genre pecking order that’s also its own discussion but harder to follow. We want something that feels like the comics come to life, not something that happens to bear the names of the comics, who are also shadows of their former selves because DiDio’s Darker DC legacy still taints how the DC universe is run in the comics. This is why I HAVE a “Death Of DC” category, because right now hardly anybody is making the DC material that made me a DC comics fan at a time I really needed those heroes. If Warner Brothers, no matter who owns them this year, doesn’t fix this DC may actually be dead someday. As it is they’re missing what made DC so great with kids and loved by the former kids who grew up with it, because they keep hiring the people whose way of thinking is the exact opposite of the aspirational heroes we love so much.