James Gunn Says Everyone In The Marvel Universe Should Be Insane By Now
James Gunn thinks the Blip would have made everyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe crazy
If you have been keeping up with the massive MCU franchise, you will know that things have gotten a bit confusing and upsetting in the past few years – or, at least, they should have. According to Rolling Stone, James Gunn, new head of the DCU and writer/director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, the films that exist after the “Blip” that occurred in Avengers: Infinity War are, in a way, kind of just ridiculous. “I really want Marvel to keep making good movies,” he said. “I think it’s really hard in the wake of the Blip.”
The Blip, for those who don’t know (or can’t keep up with all the interrelated Marvel films and television shows), happened when the villainous Thanos snapped his fingers and eliminated half of all of the life in the entire universe. The life forms that disappeared then came back five years later, which, James Gunn says, makes it kind of weird that Marvel characters just go on living their lives as if nothing happened.
“There’s this worldwide, universe-wide event that happened,” said James Gunn, who just finished working on Marvel’s final Guardians of the Galaxy film. “And in truth, everybody would be stark raving mad at this point. So it’s hard to write stories in the wake of that.”
Don’t let that fool you into thinking that James Gunn is just criticizing Marvel just because he works for DC now, though. In fact, later on in his interview with Rolling Stone, he says that the better Marvel movies perform, the better things will be for DC movies and vice versa. Every bad movie, regardless of which superhero or other franchise it comes from, makes people want to go see movies less. So good movies sell other movies, basically, so it is in James Gunn’s best interest to keep wishing the best for his old team at Marvel, because he and his team at DC are now planning to release two to three new films per year.
Luckily, James Gunn’s final work at Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, was somewhat removed from the whole Blip situation. Actually, in his opinion, this particular series is actually somewhat removed from the Marvel universe in general. While the Guardians do help out the Avengers, they are mostly off on their own adventure, which he classifies as more of a “space opera” or a “family drama,” not a superhero story.
In fact, when James Gunn first started work on 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel, he felt like the superhero fare was getting stale, so he purposely borrowed ideas from a different genre of movie: Star Wars. He did worry, at times, if this would mean the movie wouldn’t be a success, but now it is clear that that kind of distinction from the rest of the Marvel movies is exactly what audiences were looking for.
With Guardians 3 having wrapped production and scheduled to premiere this summer, James Gunn is saying goodbye to Marvel and fully moving over to DC. But, he still hopes to work with the Guardians cast in the future, as they all developed a close and special bond. In the meantime, fans will just have to hope that Marvel can write themselves out of the corner they wrote themselves into with the Blip and continue making cool movies.
