“A harrowing, tough experience”: DCU Boss James Gunn Must Never Forget His $3 Million Superhero Flop Starring Himself, Elliot Page and Kevin Bacon

SUMMARY

• Before Guardians, James Gunn earned recognition for his work on Super.
• Despite being nowhere close to Guardians' scale, Super proved to be a challenging experience for Gunn.
• James Gunn isn't taking the writers for granted in the DCU.

The MCU has a history of hiring relatively unknown directors for its movies, which seemingly reflects the studio’s adamancy to control its filmmakers. But this wasn’t the case with James Gunn, who was brought on board to helm a movie about Guardians of the Galaxy, which, like Gunn, was relatively unknown in the mainstream landscape.

Guardians of the Galaxy | Credit: Marvel Studios

While the scale of the movie was miles above Gunn’s indie superhero flick, Super, surprisingly, the director was much more comfortable filming the huge-budget Marvel movie.

Super‘s short window proved to be harrowing for James Gunn

Super | Credit: StudioCanal

In contrast to the MCU’s alleged controlling approach, James Gunn had total creative freedom under Kevin Feige’s leadership from the get-go. Although this might’ve to do with the Guardians‘ relatively unknown status in the mainstream landscape, Gunn succeeded in transforming them into household names, thus kickstarting his dominance in the CBM scene.

Moreover, the MCU didn’t shy away from giving the film a massive budget of $170M. Still, despite the huge scale of Guardians of the Galaxy, which was uncharted territory for the director up to that point, the challenge was relatively easier than that of Super, which he deemed harrowing for its short window (via Collider).

We had to do like 50 set-ups a day, so it was just a harrowing, tough experience, and this is difficult, but it’s because it’s over such a long period of time.  But on a day-to-day basis, it’s actually a lot more – using the word easy is not the greatest thing but, yeah, it’s easier because you do have more time for the set-ups, you have more time for planning. 

Considering the director has continued to deliver critical and commercial hits with his superhero flicks since then, it’s safe to assume that the adequate window for production is responsible for his consistent track record.

James Gunn is bringing his philosophy to the DCU

James Gunn | image: Erik Drost, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Under his regime, Gunn is giving writers an adequate window to come up with the best storyline, which isn’t surprising given his stature as a writer/director. Moreover, instead of following Marvel’s approach, Gunn has been adamant about prioritizing writers, who are set to be the cornerstone of the new DCU, as no project will move forward without a finished script (via Collider).

There’s no set timeline for anything. The one thing that I’ve tried to make clear to people from the beginning, in the way that I hope we’re different, is that everything in DC is going to be based on the writers.

Given how he has continued to mold himself to different challenges throughout his career, whether it be Super, Guardians, or The Suicide Squad, one can’t help but admire Gunn’s perseverance as a filmmaker.

Super is available to rent on Apple TV.

Written by Santanu Roy

Articles Published: 1999

Santanu Roy is a film enthusiast with a deep love for the medium of animation while also being obsessed with The Everly Brothers, Billy Joel, and The Platters. Having expertise in everything related to Batman, Santanu spends most of his time watching and learning films, with Martin Scorsese and Park Chan-wook being his personal favorites. Apart from pursuing a degree in animation, he also possesses a deep fondness for narrative-driven games and is currently a writer at Fandomwire with over 1500 articles.