James Gunn has declared superhero movie stories have gotten “lazy”.
The ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ director, 56, also assured fans the company will not “overextend” itself with content as it begins to launch a new DC Universe that includes his ‘Superman: Legacy’ and others.
He said during a recent interview on the ‘Inside of You’ podcast, after becoming the new co-boss of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran: “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 added lazy storytelling is a huge issue facing the superhero genre, 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 theatres 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.”
He added a solution to the problem is “having very different genres” within superhero movie genre instead of “this sort of middle-of-the-road type of genre and tone that so many superhero movies have”.
James said: “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.”
