James Gunn Now Claims Putting Out Too Many Movies Killed Marvel
Superman director James Gunn has changed his position again claiming that putting out too many movies is what killed Marvel.
In an interview for his upcoming Superman film with Rolling Stone, interviewer Brian Hiatt stated, “Over at Marvel, they’ve been pretty open about the fact that they realized what’s gone wrong over the past few years. They put out too much stuff.”
Gunn replied, “And [longtime Marvel executive producer] Louis [D’Esposito] said that privately to me. I don’t even know if it’s really their fault.”
After Hiatt claimed that putting out so much content was a corporate mandate, Gunn concurred, “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them.”
From there, Gunn shared the lessons he’s taken away from Marvel’s struggles, We have to treat every project as if we’re lucky. We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things, but hopefully on average everything will be as high-quality as possible. Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.”
Next, Gunn was asked about a potential Marvel/DC crossover and he seemingly contradicted his thoughts on too much content being what killed Marvel.
First, he shared the idea has been discussed quite often. He said, “We’ve talked about it a billion times. That could easily happen, but simultaneous to that, I think it would be interesting. But I also think people are a little over it.”
He then contradicted his claim that Disney’s corporate mandate to create so much content was what has led to the company’s downfall, “I think people wanna see good stories with their superheroes and that’s what matters. And they wanna see different types of stories with their superheroes. And people love superheroes. That’s obvious, but they need more variety, and they need just more quality storytelling. And just having Spider-Man and Superman team up isn’t gonna do it if it’s shit. So it’s gotta come from a real place, and it’s really hard to make that work.”
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Gunn previously shared his belief about super hero fatigue with Rolling Stone while promoting Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 back in 2023. Gunn said, “I think there is such a thing as superhero fatigue. I think it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes.”
He explained, ““It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring.”
“But I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether they’re superhero movies or not,” Gunn elaborated. “If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bashing moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.”
What do you make of Gunn’s claim that creating too many films and TV shows killed Marvel?
He's partially right. Yes, too many movies - of the garbage level of tier.
But he has no sane way to grasp that every single one of those movies would've been a success if they were not cram-packed with social lecturing and Bolshevist ideology.
When is the last time a good movie came out of Hollywood? Second Hand Lions? Passion of Christ?
Witness the destruction.
He is 100% right. All of the Marvel movies since "Endgame" were too many. Every single one. Also every show ever made for Disney Plus. And every Disney movie for about a decade or more were too many. And all their broken Disneyland rides were too many. Everything they have done for over a decade was too many.