Writer, director, and producer James Gunn has come a long way since his days of working for Troma Studios, making the most offensive low-budget movies unfit for print. From his early days working under Lloyd Kaufman at Troma to becoming the co-chairman of DC Studios (with Peter Safran), Gunn has always had some pretty strong themes in his films. While some of his written work occasionally strays into much darker territory (looking at you, “The Belko Experiment”), the movies that he writes and directs tend to be darkly funny ensemble pieces with at least a bit of bloodshed and a surprising amount of sweetness. Gunn has worked for both Marvel Studios and DC, and despite there being some pretty big differences between the tone and content of these superhero stories, they still all contain some of Gunn’s telltale trademarks.
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Starting in 2006 with his debut solo feature, “Slither,” Gunn has shown audiences that he can craft compelling cinema no matter which genre or franchise he’s working in, creating a unique storytelling style that has become more complex with each iteration. His upcoming “Superman” has the power to make or break the new DC Universe, so let’s take a look at some of the things that make a James Gunn movie a James Gunn movie.
A team of misfits become found family
Gunn seems to absolutely adore the idea of found family, as most of his films follow misfits who end up finding love and camaraderie with one another. In “Slither,” the survivors of an alien invasion must work together. In his 2010 superhero satire “Super,” a pair of vigilante outcasts find (deeply complicated) friendship with each other. This theme of found family has worked best in his more mainstream superhero cinema, however, as it forms the basis for both his “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy and the 2021 film “The Suicide Squad.” (It’s also the foundation for his two Max shows, “Peacemaker” and “Creature Commandos,” but we’re here to talk movies.)
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In fact, Gunn is so great at telling these big group stories that some comic fans are worried that he’ll lose focus on the man of steel in “Superman,” but since Superman’s life is a story of found family, that really shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it kind of makes Gunn the perfect man for the job.
It’s great that Gunn seems to almost exclusively write about outcasts because there are many people in the world who feel like they don’t fit in and are in desperate need of some kind of family. His films show us that no one is undeserving of love, and sometimes, the biggest castoff is also the one most in need of a little understanding.
The scariest protagonist is the secretly sorta sweet
Another thing that keeps popping up in Gunn’s filmography is a character who seems scary to begin with but is actually kind of a sweetheart. In “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) and mono-syllabic tree-guy Groot (Vin Diesel) both seem kind of intense initially but end up being giant softies, and in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” Ravager leader and Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) adoptive dad Yondu (Michael Rooker) ended up being the secret heart of the film despite previously acting like a tough, potentially totally immoral baddie.
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Then there’s one of Gunn’s most beloved adaptations of a comic book character: Nanaue, A.K.A. King Shark, in “The Suicide Squad.” Voiced by Sylvester Stallone and physically portrayed on-set by Steve Agee, the CGI King Shark is a physically imposing beast of a creature that is somewhat confusingly hot, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he can rip people in half and bite their heads clean off. In fact, he almost eats Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) before her rat Sebastian notifies the squad and they stop him, but she introduces him to the idea of friendship and he full-heartedly embraces it. He even tries to gift Peacemaker (John Cena) with a little version of the helmeted anti-hero made out of explosive putty and make friends with some very hungry alien piranhas. Gunn loves characters who aren’t what they first seem, and he has a habit of making monsters with kind souls.
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Characters take a slow-mo stroll to a sweet soundtrack
Some of Gunn’s staples aren’t as character-driven, like his tendency to create absolutely killer “mix-tape” style soundtracks for his films and almost inevitably having a scene where his characters walk in slow motion while a super cool song plays. In the first “Guardians of the Galaxy,” we get to see the gang suit up for the big final battle and then do a heroic slow-mo walk set to “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways. Then, in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” they get a kickass climactic battle scene that ends with an even more heroic slow-mo walk, all to the tune of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by Beastie Boys. In “The Suicide Squad,” the squad gets to walk in slow motion in the rain with Pixies “Hey” setting the pace.
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Since Gunn plays both the soundtrack and score on set to help the actors really feel the scene, that means that when we see these characters looking so impossibly cool, it’s probably because the actors also feel pretty impossibly cool in the moment. I mean, how do you not feel cool carrying comic book weaponry and walking with your team to some of the best songs of the 20th century?
Familiar faces from other Gunn projects
That whole idea of found family seems to extend beyond the fictional worlds Gunn creates and into creating the films themselves, as he has a tendency to work with some of the same folks over and over again. One is his actual brother, actor Sean Gunn, who provided the motion capture work for Rocket Raccoon and portrayed the Ravager Kraglin in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, as well as playing the Weasel in “The Suicide Squad.” Then there’s Nathan Fillion, who starred as Sheriff Bill Pardy in “Slither” and has appeared in several other Gunn projects since, including playing Karja in the “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” as The Detachable Kid in “The Suicide Squad,” and in the upcoming “Superman” film as a bowl cut-wearing Green Lantern. He’s also worked repeatedly with Rooker, who has been with Gunn since “Slither” and has appeared in the “Guardians” films as well as in the opening sequence of “The Suicide Squad.”
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Gunn’s close companionship with many of his cast members means that fans are bound to wonder who might show up in each new project, with lots of great guesses about who might end up appearing in “Superman.” Here’s hoping these cinematic bonds continue for many years to come because it’s a blast seeing Gunn re-team with his filmmaking friends every few years.
At least a splash of splatter
Although Gunn hasn’t directed a movie firmly in the horror genre since “Slither,” his appreciation for the blood and guts of his early work and time at Troma is apparent in every single movie he’s made. “Slither” is wildly violent, really pushing its R-rating with total gross-out gore, and “Super” is also brutally bloody, so it was surprising when he was hired to direct “Guardians of the Galaxy” for Marvel and Disney, though he made the most of the PG-13 rating to delivery a movie that still had plenty of carefully-used splatter. The “Guardians” movies have their moments of darkness and horror that clearly point to Gunn’s early days while still toned down enough for families to watch together. “The Suicide Squad” and its spin-off TV shows have quite a bit of blood and gore in both live-action and animation, showing that the writer/director hasn’t lost his talent for fun fantasy violence.
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While we’re probably not going to see a ton of blood and gore in “Superman,” it’s almost guaranteed that Gunn is going to use his experience creating emotional impact through a bit of brutality. We’ll have to see where “Superman” ends up on the list of Gunn’s best films, but if he’s stayed true to himself and his comic-book-and-horror-loving past, it’s sure to be amazing.
