James Gunn Calls Out Lazy Superhero Movies Says There's "No Rhyme or Reason to What’s Happening"
James Gunn recently got into a conversation about superhero movies and how there are too many of them now with lazy filmmaking and storytelling. Superhero fatigue is real, it has kicked in, and the reason for that is the lazy storytelling! It’s just not as strong as it used to be.
While a guest on the Inside of You podcast, Gunn explained that DC Studios will not “overextend” itself with content as it begins to build the DC Cinematic Universe that will launch with Superman: Legacy. He said: “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.”
Gunn went on to stress that lazy storytelling is a huge issue right now, saying:
“People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories, 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 true, we’ve been seeing it with DC over the years, and we’re also seeing it with Marvel Studios now. This laziness extends to other films as well outside of the superhero genre.
When talking about the solution to the problem, Gunn said it’s “having very different genres” within the larger superhero movie genre as opposed to “this sort of middle-of-the-road type of genre and tone that so many superhero movies have.” He added:
“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.”
Look, I’ve always said that as long as these studios make great films that tell great stories I’ll continue to show up to watch them. The quality in a lot of these films has definitely gone down, though, and it’s sad. It’s like they’ve lost focus on the story and what makes these characters so damn interesting. The last truly great comic book films to come out have been Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which Gunn directed, and Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse. That movie just told a great story with its characters.
I hope these studios start to put focus on the story and characters again because fans and audiences will give up on them if the quality is dropping! We are already seeing it happen, people will stop paying to watch these movies if they aren’t good. I never wanted to see super hero movie fatigue kick in, but here we are, and the way to save it is to up the quality of the films that are being made.
What do you think about all this?