After helming Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker, it's fair to say filmmaker James Gunn has some serious credibility when it comes to comic book adaptations.
Unfortunately, that's been questioned by some fans after he declared The Flash "one of the greatest superhero movies ever made," resulting in something of a rocky start to his tenure as DC Studios co-CEO alongside Peter Safran.
During a recent interview on Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast, Gunn shared his thoughts on where he believes many current superhero movies go wrong. He also stressed that Studios will be "very careful with the product that we put out and making sure everything is as good as it can possibly be."
"People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories," Gunn added. "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?'"
"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."
It's hard not to read this as a critique of Marvel Studios, particularly when they and Sony Pictures are the only ones outside of Warner Bros. making superhero movies on a consistent basis these days. Of course, Gunn now has the opportunity to put a new spin on the genre, something he strongly hinted will be the case by exploring it in a new light.
"I like very serious superhero movies, and I like very comedic superhero movies," Gunn notes. "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 again."
Thus far, it's been confirmed that Gunn will write and direct Superman: Legacy, while James Mangold has been tapped to helm Swamp-Thing. Much to the surprise of many, The Flash's Andy Muschietti is going to return to the DC Universe to take charge of The Brave and the Bold.
Superman: Legacy is set to be released in theaters on July 11. 2025.