James Gunn says comic book movies are “mostly boring to me right now”

James Gunn has always made unconventional superhero movies; even before Guardians of the Galaxy makes him a household name with his attempts to put a Less serious spin on the brilliant Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gunn’s CV was filled with stuff like a dysfunctional mock super-team documentary The specials (in which he wrote and performed), and the black self-defense comedy of 2010 Great. When your more Conventional superhero movie features your hero defeating the universe level threat by dancing like a goofy jerk, it is probably considered read that you are not particularly is interested in the superhero film school “Beams and Punches and Portals in the Sky”.

So it’s not entirely surprising to see Gunn giving an interview this week, ahead of the release of Warner Bros. ‘ The suicide squad, which the director describes primarily in terms of being a war movie in a supervillain costume– in which he says the majority of modern superhero movies are “really dumb” and “mostly boring to me right now”. Talk to Irish weather, Gunn (who is spoken beforee when directors like Martin Scorsese launched their own superhero sacking machine) seems to speak mostly of a place of its own rapidly developing tastes and interests, connecting superhero movies to the same cycles that controlled the fortunes of other once-dominant genres:

We know how the cowboy movies played out and how the war movies played out. I don’t know, I think you don’t have to be a genius to put two and two together and see that there is a cycle in these kinds of films, and that the only hope for the future of comics and superhero movies is to change them. They are really stupid. And they’re mostly boring to me right now.

Gunn notes he was as excited as any comic book fan when the MCU kicked off, saying, “Wchicken Iron Man came out, I was in it. You are able to fly a guy who looks like a guy who steals. And it was a beautiful thing to be able to do. But if the films don’t change, ”he added, “Iit’s gonna get really, really boring. Hence the injection of elements outside the genre into the formula – which follows, given that many of the more critical modern comic book movies (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: Ragnarok) were the shameless nursery ones exterior genres.

Which brings us back to The suicide squad, with Gunn excited about the film in a way it’s hard not to see as implied criticism of his contemporaries:

WWe use more practical special effects than we have ever used in any movie. And to be able to really build this war-show movie, having Super Villains as the protagonists gave me a good excuse to be able to create a movie in the genre that I’ve loved since I was little, and to do it in a big, huge way. , and not having to hold back in any way. It makes the shoot more fun when I’m blowing things up rather than having silly CGI blasts.