James Gunn’s Superman could not be more different from his first forgotten superhero films

James Gunn is apparently used to hate superheroes. We can see him in several of his first films. The fact that he is now the master of a completely serious superhero universe – directed by his own Aw -Shucks “Superman” film – feels strange. The man clearly made a 180 degree turn from his ethical and young impulses towards deconstruction and has embraced a superhero gravity in the face of Po that the young Gunn may not recognize.

Example: In 2000, when the writer / director James Gunn was still increasing, he wrote the comedy of superhero on a low budget of Craig Mazin “The Specials”, with Thomas Haden Church, Rob Lowe, Jamie Kennedy, Padget Brewster and Judy Greer. Gunn and his brother Sean also appeared in the film. He followed the superhero team holder on their day off, when there was no crime to fight and no super-vilains to thwart. The specials all had superpowers, but seemed widely banal in civilian life, despite an energy with blue skin. They all discussed trivial and personal subjects, Kvetching on their personal relationships and their financial difficulties. One of them, the weevil, even plans to leave the specials of a team of superhero funded.

Gunn broke down the superhero conventions with “The Specials”, representing ultra-through not as noble fighters for justice or even self-sec vigilants embodied by guilt, but with simple, not too intelligent voice of all the people infected with a recognizable daily lust. They would fight against the crime if the situation provided for him, but they were, back at the base, as petty as you or me.

And “The Specials” is not the only case of Gunn tearing the heroes in tatters. At least three of his films relate to the way in being a superhero is terrible in practice. Something has changed along the way, however, and Gunn changed his air. It is perhaps the success of “Guardians of the Galaxy” which transformed him from a satirist into a company man.

We could also recall Gunn’s film in 2011 “Super”, his second feature film as a director. In this film, Rainn Wilson played Frank, a sad and disconnected Cook whose woman had recently left her for a charismatic drug trafficker and owner of the strip-tease club. Frank is depressed and only comforts himself in a low-budget Christian superhero show entitled “Holy Avenger”. Unexpected (literally), Frank meets God, who removes his cap and directly touches his brain. Frank becomes convinced that he should be a superhero and covers his own costume, calling himself the Bolt Crimson. It stops with a heavy metal monkey key and descends into the streets.

“Super” underlines, however, that people in the head with a key are a bloody and terrible thing to do, even in a context of vigilance. “Super” also underlines that superheroes are not motivated by justice, but by a combination of rage, sadness and perhaps a little sexual fetish; His acolyte Boltie, played by Elliot Page, is awakened by superhero costumes and wants to use the violence of vigilante to return to the ex-girlfriends. “Super” is a dark and sad tragedy on how superheroes are a sad escape from our sad life. And the filmmaker would continue to do “Superman?” It is a very strange change of ethics for Gunn.

Four years after “Super”, Gunn wrote and produced “Guardians of the Galaxy”, a science fiction thriller PG-13 for Marvel Studios which was a satire partly to nine parts of the CGI action approved by companies. There is cynical humor for the “guards”, of course, and there is certainly an absurdity to make a film which presents a speaking tree and a violent and violent raccoon, but Gunn had clearly sanded its own edges. The “guards” spoke of a dysfunctional group of misfits becoming a family found slightly functional. The bitterness of films like “The Specials” and “Super” began to fall by the way.

Gunn’s new philosophy to make a slightly irreverent superhero films brought him a massive commercial success. He made two feature films “Guardians of the Galaxy”, as well as a special Christmas “Guardians”. Mixed in the middle of these films was “The Suicide Squad”, another film on the super-villains who are joining forces to do good. “Squad”, however, was more interested in exploring the seriousness and emotional seriousness of the character, stressing that damaged people are capable of redemption. Although the film was violent and classified R, it always had a disarming and not satirical quality, targeting the heart of the public and not their fingers in the middle.

The fact that Gunn made a fully simple “Superman” feature film is all the more confusing in the light of “Brightburn” by David Yarovesky, a 2019 horror film that Gunn produced and which was written by his brother Brian and his cousin. “Brightburn” spoke of a young boy by the name of Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) who discovers that he has superman powers, including theft, invulnerability and eye lasers. Also like Superman, Brandon is raised in a small Kansas farm, but his life is embraced by poverty, and his childhood ruined by intimidation. When Brandon, 12, finds that he has powers, he sees no reason not to become an avenging monster, killing those who have done him wrong.

Although Gunn has not written or directed “Brightburn”, he clearly signed the idea that Superman, in the real world, would quickly become a villain. Power Corrupts, Gunn seems to say, and Superman would be the most corrupt of all.

Now, barely six years later, Gunn is back to play it directly with “Superman”. He lost his anger, his cynicism. The emotional seriousness and commercial security seemed to have served his career better, and he is probably matured as a human, of course. However, it is wild to think that Gunn has so dramatically lost his punk coat and exchanged it for a costume and a tie.

“Superman” is now in theaters.