James Gunn, Fired by Disney Over Stupid Tweets, Is Now Working on a Sequel to the Awful Suicide Squad
Not that. Anything but that.

Poor James Gunn. First, Disney fired the director of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy films after conservative trolls dug up some offensive tweets he had written years ago. Now he has to make Suicide Squad 2.
As I wrote back in July, when Gunn was booted from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, the campaign to get him fired was pure political retaliation: Gunn had criticized Ben Shapiro (while defending liberal actor Mark Duplass for saying Shapiro was someone with whom liberals should bother to engage), and in response, right-wing Twitter personalities Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec decided to search his archive for thoughtcrimes. They uncovered some gross jokes about children and sexual violence, and this was enough for Disney to can him. The Guardians of the Galaxy cast came to Gunn's support, but apparently to no avail.
Now Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is hiring Gunn to write for the (vastly inferior) D.C. cinematic universe. His job: to write, and possibly direct, the sequel to Suicide Squad, one of the worst big-budget films in recent memory.
This is a complete waste of Gunn's talents. Suicide Squad is beyond rehabilitation—there was so much wrong with it that no sequel could possibly work under any circumstance. (Seriously, this 30-second teaser trailer for Joaquin Phoenix's Joker film is vastly more interesting than Jared Leto's obnoxious, one-dimensional take on the character in Suicide Squad.)
I had given up hope that the injustice of firing Gunn over stupid tweets would be remedied, but this is truly adding insult to injury.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Ok, Green Lantern 2.
What's Aqua Man, chopped liver?
At least he doesn't have to make the next Star Wars sequel after that disaster.
On a slightly related note, prior to today I've seen only one episode of Jenny Nicholson and she said no one in Rogue One had a story arc despite the main character's switch from distinctly detached drifter to champion of the rebellion, the male lead moving from cutthroat spy to virtuous freedom fighter, the comic relief moving from distrustful minion to cherished ally... She went on to say that because none of the characters had an arc, nobody really died in a blaze of glory. I had only seen RO once at that point and by my recollection, literally every single character died in a hail of gunfire or was literally killed by an all-obliterating fire from the heavens.
If only Episode 9 were half as well done as Rogue One.
If only Episode 9 were half as well done as Rogue One.
Episode 9 hasn't been made yet. If it had we could take some solace in the knowledge that it was over.
I'd swear I hit 8.
*sets zoom to 90%*
*really sets to 80%*
I mean, I don't think any of the character arcs were handled terribly well in Rogue One but they certainly happened. That's an odd take.
Really they didn't.
Take the two leads. Except for being *told* (and being shown, once each) about how ruthless/selfish they are - they never again display those traits and then go on to be selfless heroes.
Rogue One was terrible (outside of it's cinematography IMO). It was a group of people I didn't care about, searching for a thing I knew they'd find, only to have them die exactly the way we knew they would.
All possibility of an interesting narrative was sucked out of a movie who's plot had been known since circa 1983.
Yeah - this was my problem with the prequels, too. They weren't fleshing out anything, they were just acting out in long form things we already knew from the exposition in previous movies.
Yeah - this was my problem with the prequels, too. They weren't fleshing out anything, they were just acting out in long form things we already knew from the exposition in previous movies.
Precisely, which is also bizarre since notably the exposition they based the movie on (a throwaway line, no less) just said that many people died yet we all knew they would all die. You'd think at least the two main characters, or one of them, would live to appear in later films. That's how you build a 'cinematic universe' in fact, and Disney damn well knows it.
Thus, the movie Rogue One is a narrative dead end to an event we've already seen. Why even bother to see it? What comparable movie in the Marvel franchise is a complete dead end like this?
I'm not sure it does. Disney's gotten most of its mileage in recent decades acquiring more creative studios as subsidiaries - in particular the Marvel Studios and Pixar. Overall, Disney seems like a bit of a zombie company, and the approach to Star Wars where they just keep making that one movie over and over again expecting it to be a blockbuster each time seems more standard Disney modus operandi.
This is a very good point, honestly. I think their problem, or one of them, is they genuinely don't know how to match the Marvel formula to Star Wars. They could have gone with adapting the hundreds if not thousands of books like they did with comics, but instead they choose wholly new but uninteresting options.
Well, there's the problem; DISNEY didn't do that. Marvel was doing it, Disney saw they were making money off it and then acquired Marvel, who mostly kept doing what they were already doing with minimal input or interference (James Gunn aside) from Disney.
Disney itself apparently doesn't have anyone intelligent enough to apply the lessons learned from Marvel to their other properties.
And given their desire to, allegedly, use MODERN Marvel stuff in movies...they are seeking to kill that, also. Marvel cant sell comics for anything.
Thus, the movie Rogue One is a narrative dead end to an event we've already seen. Why even bother to see it? What comparable movie in the Marvel franchise is a complete dead end like this?/i>
Which Hulk or Spiderman movie do I choose? I know the outcome of every WWI, WWII, or Vietnam movie, why bother watching any of them? If the plot can be summed up into an exposition and, thus, it shouldn't be viewed, why make any films at all?
The Marvel comic book universe is littered with plots that abruptly end and characters that go nowhere. Disney picked up one that has a better arc but the same stupid tropes hold true. You know going into The Avengers movie that The Avengers are going to be alive at the end and, if they aren't, there will be a sequel where they're resurrected.
I'm not saying that Rogue One is the best of the Star Wars trilogy. I'm saying that virtually any cinematic universe has films that are neither blockbusters nor duds. Rogue One is on par, in virtually every respect, with Age of Ultron. We didn't need to know where Vision came from and if neither Vision nor Ultron had anything to do with Ant Man, we don't need an Ant Man movie, or its sequel, after the fact.
All possibility of an interesting narrative was sucked out of a movie who's plot had been known since circa 1983.
Once you know the meaning of 'Rosebud' the movie becomes worthless to watch a second time.
I'm not saying the movie was excellent. Just better than about 10 hours of prequels and sequels. And that, objectively, people were killed in a blaze of glory.
Once you know the meaning of 'Rosebud' the movie becomes worthless to watch a second time.
Which is still one more viewing than you'd need to know the plot of Rogue One. Zero watchings of Rogue One will still leave you knowing everything that mattered from the plot of Rogue One, presuming you saw the original trilogy. That is, if you even remember the throwaway line about bothans.
Pretty sure everyone assumed, if they even thought about it, that those were some kind of aliens. Not a dumb word for mercenaries.
Pretty sure everyone assumed, if they even thought about it, that those were some kind of aliens. Not a dumb word for mercenaries.
So what you're saying is the 'plot reveal' from '83 doesn't actually reveal anything about the plot. Was it ever clarified whether the Bothans died retrieving the plans for the 1st or the 2nd Death Star?
No More Task Force Rogue Ones: A Tactical Analysis of the Raid on Scarif
every time i see the DC logo i fall asleep.
So, Warner Bros. hires a director that made one of the most successful films in the Disney library of superhero schtick and the conclusion is that his movies will suddenly suck. Because reasons.
Maybe Gunn can fix DC movies for WB.
I doubt it, since undoubtedly the Warner Bros. producers have Gunn by the balls, but hey one can dream. The big open secret is that he literally can't do any worse than Snyder. A film that isn't a cluster fuck is an automatic improvement at this point.
Suicide Squad is beyond rehabilitation?there was so much wrong with it that no sequel could possibly work under any circumstance.
Nevermind, it seems that Robby is unaware that in this era one can reboot a franchise just a few years after it launches and no one blinks an eye RE: Spiderman.
Nevermind, it seems that Robby is unaware that in this era one can reboot a franchise just a few years after it launches and no one blinks an eye RE: Spiderman.
Imagine going back to 1997 and saying that in a scant 8 yrs. 'Batman Begins' will redefine the superhero movie genre for a generation using the phrase "Better than The Matrix".
Personally, I'd choose to warn all the people waiting 25+ yrs. for a Ghostbusters remake about being more disappointed than they could possibly imagine.
Batman Begins, while a ton of people loved it, seems absurd to me. The whole idea of batman becomes almost farcical once you try and play it totally straight.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that's the biggest problem with D.C. movies in my view. They either try and play them straight when their protagonist is absurd, or they make them a cluster fuck. Nobody has any clue what they're doing over there except Wonder Woman, who notably is another absurd hero.
I mean, seriously, this is the brand with Aquaman in it. It's comedy gold, and they play everything dismally. Go figure that they're a tonal mess.
I agree. The Nolan Batman movies had virtues, but I also had a hard time getting over how seriously they expected me to take the whole thing. The second one was the high point. The third one was almost unbearable, Bane was so silly.
The trouble is partly that when you strike that serious of a tone, your audience starts thinking through the premise as if it's serious, and then it falls apart. The microwave-based doomsday device in the first movie would have been fine in the cheeky tone of the MCU, but if you're presenting it as part of some work of art to be framed and discussed - no, it just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Exactly as you say. When you play it seriously, you notice that it's a billionaire dressing up in a batsuit punching people, like evil clowns, for absurd reasons. In fact, the batsuit itself doesn't even make sense unless Batman is just as crazy as the villains. That's kind of the whole Gotham thing, and it was almost entirely missing from those films. Bizarre.
And yet, the best takes on Batman, for my money, have both been serious. The first one happened in the late 60s early 70s comics (partly in reaction to the campy TV show) when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams took over the character and returned him to his dark and obsessive roots. The second one was in the early 90s, with Batman the Animated Series.
I'm still trying to understand why I'm supposed to take Iron Man seriously. Or Thor. Or Captain America. At least Ant Man isn't played seriously, but the rest of that Marvel stable think they're acting out serious drama. Bullshit.
Except Bane gave us a funny "South Park" parody.
"Batman Begins, while a ton of people loved it, seems absurd to me."
Are you all dead inside, or just mostly dead (which is slightly alive...)?
Personally, I'd choose to warn all the people waiting 25+ yrs. for a Ghostbusters remake about being more disappointed than they could possibly imagine.
"I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit," would have probably been my response. I was a huge Star Wars nerd back then, so I would have reached for the Han Solo quote. As such, I would have preferred a warning about the prequel trilogy. Anyone who didn't think the rumored even back then Ghostbusters sequel/ remake/ raping wasn't going to suck balls was kidding themselves. Any movie that gets stuck in development hell for that long has no chance.
Better than that was all of the wailing that it was only misogyny that would make you dislike the remake.
Snyder's Man of Steel was pretty good, and Batman v Superman was great.
Compare to Iron Man 2 and Civil War, and DC wins going away. Throwaway popcorn movies vs. timeless classics.
The problem with DC is that they have characters with actual characterization. Not just collections of stupid quips and wisecracks. You actually have to think a tiny bit with DC. Not a lot of course, but even a tiny bit of plot is more than any Marvel movie expects from you.
If nothing else, the saga of James Gunn should be a cautionary tale of what happens when you engage with bad-faith alt-right trolls.
Or that karma is one harsh bitch. YMMV
LOL
Or that what goes around comes around.
On being handed his pink slip someone should've whispered, "Roseanne sends her regards."
Has he been critical of Roseanne?
Yes and at the time he tweeted how the company had the right to fire her for her comments on social media.
Like I said, what goes around comes around.
I generally don't like the DC universe as well as Marvel, but found Suicide Squad far more fun than either of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Hopefully Gunn won't ruin the second go.
I'm a fan of both comics but really the only thing that the Suicide Squad film had going for it was Margot Robbie prancing around in hot pants and lifting up her shirt in one scene. Literally that was what the buzz was about when the movie came out ? that and Wil Smith playing the same wisecracking street guy he did in half of his previous films (which was totally not who Deadshot was in the comics). With Guardians of the Galaxy, they also deviated from the characters but they went out to make them memorable and it actually worked.
With Guardians of the Galaxy, they also deviated from the characters but they went out to make them memorable and it actually worked.
It is a somewhat true statement that nostalgia sells tickets like hotcakes these days. You want a huge successful franchise? Start it in in the early 80's.
No spoilers, please.
You're probably the only one who holds that opinion. In fact, you're probably the person on the planet to put "Suicide Squad" and "fun" in the same sentence. Unless it was something like "Watching Suicide Squad is as much fun as being waterboarded."
I wish that was the case, as if so it would probably be free-to-stream somewhere instead of being priced more highly than I want to pay to own it.
It knocked down three quarters of a billion dollars at the box office. That didn't all come from me.
A lot of people went to see it, that's true. That doesn't make it a good movie, that just means it was marketed well. I saw it once, so ~$10 of that is from me. I'm sure it had some parts that were OK, but I don't remember much about it other than the fact that I'll never get those 2+ hours of my life back.
The Lucas Star Wars prequels sold a lot of tickets too. All three of them. Wonderful films, I take it?
The market decides what is good and what is not, right? So if it pulled in 750,000,000 it must be pretty great.
/s
I'm not going to say its a good movie (it isn't) but I am somewhat confused on why its apparently considered the worse movie ever. There are some fun, if generic, bits and I thought that the Justice League movie was way worse.
We can quibble over whether Suicide Squad or Justice League was worse. Personally, I thought Suicide Squad was awful, while Justice League was merely bland and bad. But I hope I can get broad agreement that Batman vs Superman is the worst of the DC movies.
I'll go with Batman vs Superman as the worst. I thought that Suicide Squad > Justice League > BvS, but it's really turtles all the way down.
Justice League was a mess. Should have let Snyder or Whedon do it. Mixing both didn't work.
Twitter, the destroyer of careers. Why does anyone use it?
It's a helluva drug.
It's the normalfag's favorite shitposting fuckhole.
I prefer IG for my shitpost consumption.
tallest soap box in town
Thanks for remind that we won't be getting any more Guardians movies.
I"m glad James Gunn is working again.
Now I can sleep at night again.
There's more evidence the support the accusation that James Gunn is a pedophile than there is to support the accusation that Kavanaugh is a gang rapist.
#Credible
#VeryCredible
And let's not forget the accusations that Kavanaugh was a child molester and should not be allowed to coach girl's sports.
Your link is broken.
Ummm....there is no link, grandpa.
Gunn made pedophile jokes, ergo there is already more evidence that he's a pedophile than the zero evidence to back gang rape allegations.
I know when this party happened because he posted it on Twitter.
Not saying he's a pedophile as much as the evidence against Kavanaugh is so low earthworms don't trip over it.
The bar for evidence that is.
Funny, so was Christine Ford's.
Twitter personalities? The fact that this is even a thing makes me hate humanity even more than I already did. I didn't think that was possible.
this
And where there's a Twitter personality, there's a YT, instagram, snapchat, and whatever the fuck the latest and greatest social-media-rancid-ranch-semen-pool the kids are using. Fucking wackos.
Shit I read that as tweaker personalities. Kind of the same thing I guess.
Suicide Squad is beyond rehabilitation...
They could always implant an explosive in its neck and send it on a mission to fix the problem it caused in the first place.
And then detonate the explosive anyway.
He should be fired for that haircut.
Yeah - it's hair that screams "I'm not 52! I'M NOT!! I'M NOT!!'
I'm officially bored.
Peter Gunn Theme
I'm less bored.
I make offensive comments all day and regularly where my "dick clock" shirt, but I've never been threatened with termination. Of course, that assumes that my company still knows I'm on payroll. Hell, I still surprise my coworkers when I exit the "coding closet" to get a drink from the soda fountain.
Daaang, they let you inside at your coding job?
It turns out being outside isn't open enough for their liking and doesn't promote enough synergy. It's best to shove us monkeys into a room with a few tables and see what we shit out. (I use "we," but I just chill in the closet and write poor documentation.)
You're in an open space though? Surely they don't give you *shudder* offices?
I nominate this word to be banned from the language.
Seconded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWrjYdD0Tg0
RIP BUCS
Dang, this will be the second dying tech giant I've worked at. I just hope I make enough money to buy a ranch before I get fired.
You can always live in my van with me. I promise to only molest you once a night.
Dang, that only leaves two of my molestations for me.
If you're looking for that shackbrah ranch life, Boulder County Parks and Open Space occasionally has an opening for someone to babysit their Walker Ranch property in the off-season.
And here I thought the reason Verizon offered buyouts to a third of their employees was to boost short term profits so Google would want to buy them.
Ah, this Lauren Weinstein?
Quick! This man needs a nickname when he decides to become a professional villain!
Pyrestarter
Floridian.
You just need Margot Robbie. Forget about everyone else.
How about a story about Rachel Butera, who didn't make jokes about raping babies, but did mildly criticize Ford's performance before the Senate? The left wing mob is after Disney to fire her, along with their usual harassment causing her to have to delete twitter.
This is an unfortunate sign, to be sure, but she shouldn't have expressed such heinous views and then expected her employer to not do something. They are a private entity, and if they want to fire her, that is between them and the mob of people demanding it.
Also, today in wokeness news
Breaking: Looks like the kid who roundhoused the woman has a bit of a history... attacking women.
Personally I didn't think Suicide Squad was all that bad.
So now in addition to peddling pseudo-Christian imagery, DC is shilling for the Gunn Lobby? Fascism is taking over, people.
^ this was not meant to be a reply to chemjeff
Whatever, we already know both you commies are in cahoots.
Yeah, yeah, you keep saying "commie" while you can, bougie-fash. That old moldy piece of parchment isn't going to protect that hate speech forever.
I didn't think suicide squad was that bad either. Kind of hokey but it's a comic book movie, I wasn't expecting The Godfather. I didn't think Will Smith was all that great in it. I usually like his characters.
jfc nerds
Eh, they're not bad, but the only reason I ever go out of my way to pick up lunch from Juvenile-superhero-movie-arguments Fried Chicken is the drumsticks, honestly.
wtf a vlogger link?
jesus robbi
why have crusty juggler and unlabelable mjgreen seemingly jointly agreed that capitalization is evil
i thought i was the marxist-leninist footsoldier in this comment section
I'm just happy a lot of people I missed are all posting here. Now X just needs to poke in and I'm set.
wheres he gone then?
No idea. He just disappeared one day. Just Say'n insists it's my fault, but I still hope he'll show up again.
Oh, shit, sorry, I didn't realize you guys were having a reunion here. Didn't mean to intrude. (Definitely the first time I've ever had occasion to say that.)
Anyway, Citizen Crusty already posted, so you're all set.
You're one of my favorites too. Don't be so tsundere about this.
YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I AM NOT YOUR SLAVE!
screams through tears
I admit Suicide Squad was not very good (but still much better than Superman vs Batman), But Robby is invading Kurt Loder's territory with a movie review.
As for Gunn, I'm sure he's crying his eyes out landing a multi-million dollar gig shortly after being fired. I'll feel bad for the man when he's reduced to directing TV commercials for local car dealerships, not switching over to the other huge superhero franchise.
Besides, it's not over yet for DC. Wonder Woman was quite good, and they could still find their footing. Marvel slipped a lot, in my estimation, with the last Avengers movie. Gunn is talented, the villains of Suicide Squad are pretty interesting, and he might be just the guy to turn it around.
"...Twitter personalities Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec..."
There is such a thing as a "Twitter personality"? I guess I should get out more...
Wow I really figured that DC was scraping the whole DCEU
This is a complete waste of Gunn's talents. Suicide Squad is beyond rehabilitation?there was so much wrong with it that no sequel could possibly work under any circumstance. (Seriously, this 30-second teaser trailer for Joaquin Phoenix's Joker film is vastly more interesting than Jared Leto's obnoxious, one-dimensional take on the character in Suicide Squad.)...These sentences serve as proof positive that Mr. Soave is a pandering officious butt munch, who is only as smart as the last person he gave a blow job to. We'll not go into the rest of the article (and by article I mean this piece of shit that he scrawled) since it would be compounding the felony.
Last I heard Venom stunk. Last I heard nearly every movie Marvel has made stunk, with the exception of the MCU. And even there most people conveniently forget the awful titles like Iron Man 2 and 3. Let's not even talk about the horribleness of the reboot of the horribly Fantastic Four. Meanwhile DC has had the excellent Dark Knight trilogy, and Wonder Woman, as well as the original Superman and Batman movies that will outclass anything on the screen today.
Yeah, Suicide Squad stunk. So what? So did The Hulk. And I dare say The Hulk stunk several magnitudes worse.
Robby, why must you be so blatantly biased? You lead with saying "trolls" dug up "offensive" tweets. If Gunn were someone with different politics then you would not try to discredit the people finding his tweets. You also would have quickly remarked about the sexual and pedophilic nature of them as well as some of the other things that suggest he wasn't fully joking.
Off the political angle, your Marvel fanboy take also sucks. I love the Guardian of the Galaxy movies and would hope any sequels maintain that same spirit. If that means it is created by someone I have reason to dislike, then give me the product however it must be done. The Suicide Squad movie did not at all live up to its potential despite having a great animated movie it could have leaned on. That said, the mistakes were more about pacing and timing for jokes. It's a franchise that could easily do well with a competent writer and director
I agree!!! You can discuss with other side. That's how you learn and expand your view points.
http://www.mkoutletfire.com/mi.....-rose.html