Every DCU Movie Under James Gunn's Watch Will Feel “Completely Different”
While Superman is set to launch the new DCU with a hopeful, bright tone and a retro-classic hero comic book vibe, James Gunn doesn’t want that tone to define what follows.
In fact, he’s pushing hard for every movie in this new universe to feel wildly distinct in tone, style, and genre. Gunn told IGN:
“It’s really important to me that every project has its own stamp on it. This movie is very different from the R rated movie we're making, a body horror movie with Clayface.
“It’s very different from the Sgt. Rock movie we’re developing. It’s very different from Supergirl, which is a space fantasy — Craig Gillespie just walked by here a second ago, who directed that. So every one of these movies is completely different.”
Gunn’s approach sounds more like comic books than what we’ve come to expect from cinematic universes. He even points to the source material for inspiration.
“What I love about DC Comics and the graphic novels is that they allowed the individual artists and writers to create their own projects, and they each had their own voice.
“The Long Halloween, All-Star Superman, Dark Knight, Watchmen — those things have very little tonally in common with each other, except for they’re a part of the set of communal characters that are in the DC Comics universe. And now, we’re doing that same thing in the DCU.”
That’s a pretty cool direction to take things and very different from how Marvel Studios has handled its shared universe. While Marvel projects do shift gears in tone, they still feel cut from the same cloth, stitched together. Gunn’s DCU might end up more like a mixtape than a movie series, and I think that’s great!
As for Clayface, Gunn made it clear it’s not your average comic book movie:
“[It’s] pure f***ing horror, like, totally real. Their version of that movie, it is so real and true and psychological and body horror and gross.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with the different tones when all of these characters start to come together. But, if Gunn sticks the landing, we might be in for the most creatively free and unpredictable superhero universe we’ve ever seen.
What do you think, does Gunn’s “every tone is fair game” approach excite you or make you nervous?