Updated thoughts:
I gotta give big props to James Gunn. I am a fan of his but also big critic. I love Vol. 1, and Peacemaker was
way better than it had any reason to be, but I really don't like Vol. 2 and even The Suicide Squad was just fine to me. Kinda more of the same - irreverent not-heroes, arguing in the midst of battle, with shock humor and cheap deaths to raise stakes.
I also think sometimes he can be full of himself. Vol 2 characters laughing hysterically at subpar jokes, and he's not much different on the commentary; "look at this great joke I wrote, that's not improv, I wrote that." I appreciate that he engages with fans online but sometimes he's a bit too mic-drop-y with twitter trolls and I wish he'd just ignore them. He also takes a whole lot of credit from Nicole Perlman, Guardian's original writer. And I don't like that lately he's said that Star-Lord shouldn't/wouldn't have freaked out and punched Thanos in Infinity War - I feel like that degrades the integrity of the shared universe if directors are throwing other directors under the bus. If there's a Guardians 4 with another director, I hope he leaves the criticism to himself.
All that said, I thought I'd kinda figured Gunn out by now. I figured Guardians 3 would have...
- Serious moments undercut by dumb jokes
- A dramatic death or two - he's like Whedon, it's hard to resist
- He's the only one that understands and gets to play with these characters, so the originals are probably all done or dead by the end
- His brother in too prominent a role
- Characters bickering over literal misinterpretations
- Everyone is mean to each other but then they bond in a drinking scene and now we're family
...and this movie, essentially, had none of that! I thought he'd zig and he zagged instead. Totally different tone from 1 and 2, fully committed to the characters that have earned it (not Kraglin), giving each of them plenty of time to shine (unlike Vol 2, with too many characters who did very little). Having everyone live was the biggest shock of all, and now if the right project comes along, any one or two of them could return and it would make sense in the universe.
I don't know if he's matured as a filmmaker or if he just loved these characters enough to do right by them, ego aside, but either way... I'm very glad. And while I wouldn't say I'm remotely excited about the DC Universe he's making, I have more confidence that he'll do it
right rather than do it Gunn-y, which bodes well for Superman in particular.
Top-10 MCU film for me.
