James Gunn claims superhero movies have become “lazy”
James Gunn, the newly appointed co-boss of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran, has called out modern superhero movies for their “lazy” storytelling.
Speaking on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Gunn assured fans “We’re going to be very careful with the product that we put out and making sure everything is as good as it can possibly be,” adding, “People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories”. Gunn will soon be taking on the superhero movie Superman: Legacy, set for release in 2025, 12 years after the last standalone Superman adventure.
Continuing, Gunn adds: “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?’”.
Considering that it’s unlikely Gunn would criticise his own studio, such jabs are possibly directed at the Marvel cinematic universe and such recent movies as Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
“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,” he adds “I don’t care about the characters. And they’ve gotten too generic”.
The director further proposes that future superhero flicks toy with genre a little more, explaining: “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 again”.
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