Ron Howard is waiting by his phone!!!
Look, the guy deleted the tweets before the controversy, and apologized for ever doing them. I don’t know what more he could have done, other than time travel back and tell his 10 year younger version of himself to stop being a shock-humor edgelord on twitter.
It is interesting how this is happening to athletes now, specifically baseball players.
certainly they don’t get fired, but they get standing Ovations from the home crowd
I think the Brewers handled the situation much better than Disney. Hader seemed legitimately remorseful of awful shit he said as a dumb teenager and had the support of his teammates (many, maybe even a majority of who aren’t white).
I can’t pretend to know what every person’s specific reason for cheering was but it’s not a big shock that fans will cheer a player as a way to show they forgive him.
They’d be more foolish to reinstate Gunn than they were to fire him in the first place. Firing 101 is you stick with your decision, no matter how much you might later regret the decision.
What if the cast strikes?
Whether you want to rationalize the pedophilia tweets he made when he was in his 40s as jokes when he was younger or otherwise, he also did stuff in other contexts like this: http://archive.is/MdOm6 . The guy who posted the video for him was later convicted of actual pedophilia too, so it’s at best a pretty unfortunate thing for James Gunn to put in a personal blog post.
I hate outrage mobs (usually started and fueled by people who are complete losers, especially compared to their targets), and would love to see another Gunn Guardians, but as Dr. Crypt said, that’s not how firings generally work, especially for a company like Disney.
No way they do that. Not a chance. This isn’t the kind of thing you stake your career on.
Yeah, they’re all under binding contracts. They’d actually be cratering their careers if they did that. That said, I’m not sure I want another Guardians movie under a lesser director.
I would imagine their contracts would prevent them from striking, at least with heavy penalties.
I think Telefrog suggested Taika Waititi, I could get excited about that. But yeah, I’d be nervous about almost anyone else.
What if they just do poor work and say they can’t get anywhere with Ron Howard?
Yeah, he’d definitely be the best choice based upon the current roster of Marvel directors, at least.
I’d he brings along Jemaine Clement, I could be down with Waititi.
I know a lot of people disagree with me, but I’ll also say: the Guardians movies were average superhero movies at best, and I’m sure they will continue to be at least average under another director. They were Gunn’s best work, sure, but his resumé reads exactly like the resumé of a film maker who was fired for pedophilia jokes: Tromeo and Juliet, Citizen Toxie, Slither, and–uh–Scooby Doo 2. I think the controversy is ridiculous, but Gunn’s not some savant. He is absolutely and totally replaceable, if only because Marvel’s true filmmaking superpower isn’t writing or directing, but casting… and the core Guardians cast will still all be doing what they did in the previous films.
That’s exactly the attitude that got us all the “decent” but not better films early in the MCU - that route gets you the Star Wars and other Disney movies. Opting for better directors and more personal visions allowed the MCU to really come into its own - there’s no doubt that the past 5-6 MCU movies are as good or better than any that occurred before, and they are very different in style and feel from each other.
That said, everyone is replaceable. People were really happy with Whedon’s Avengers (at least the first one), but him leaving allowed the Russo Brothers to take over, and their movies have all been amazing, at least to this old timer Marvel zombie.
I’m not about to say James Gunn is irreplaceable, but they’ve added an element of uncertainly to the whole mix now. They’ve upset the balance on what was a pretty darn good formula - I’m pretty bored with the whole superhero thing at this point and I really liked the two Guardians movies. Sure, if the Beatles had had to replace George Harrison I bet they would have been a pretty darn good band, but it wouldn’t have been The Beatles.
What “attitude?” Leaving aside the fact that you’re reading in whole universes of meaning that simply weren’t in what I wrote (i.e. visionary directors and writers are meaningless), the observation that Marvel’s ability to cast roles is better than its ability to nurture visionary directors is not an “attitude.”
No one is saying Marvel hasn’t been well-served by allowing talented directors to do their thing on their own films. Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok is a testament that visionary directors can still make superlative comic book movies (in the former case) or at least massively elevate mediocre material (in the latter case).
But I’d argue James Gunn isn’t such a visionary. Gunn’s direction neither made the Guardians movies superlative, nor elevate their mediocre material. These films are fine, but not great, and what makes them work has a lot to do with the cast. I just don’t think this franchise is losing that much here.
He was booed when the Brewers played in SF the following week.
The latter is what I’m arguing. Anyone who can take a bunch of third-rate (or lower) misfit characters who nobody in the general public has even heard of, who had only even existed as a group for a handful of years, and make a movie that returns $333 million - more than Batman vs Superman, despite the stature of those characters, for instance - should not be lightly dismissed.
Marvel could easily have gotten a Suicide Squad out of Guardians, and while Kevin Feige, etc. deserve some of that credit, you’re diminishing the importance of James Gunn in that result. You’re lauding the casting, but Suicide Squad had one of the biggest historical box office stars in Will Smith, and others like Margot Robbie who are career peaking, and it also didn’t match the performance of Guardians, let alone critically, or spawn an even more successful sequel.
“Good casting” does not mean “hiring major box office celebrities at their career peak.” It means casting actors who suit their roles and, as a cast, are greater than the sum of each actor’s individual talents. Suicide Squad was not well cast, and that was just the beginning of that film’s myriad problems. Certainly, it’s not a great example on why James Gunn is indispensable to the success of Guardians, since Suicide Squad was a complete creative misfire in every conceivable way.
Obviously, this is partially a taste issue. I think the Guardians movies are pretty dull, and I feel like the humor in them is pretty bottom-of-the-barrel, but obviously, they resonate with a lot of people. But I still just have a very hard time seeing James Gunn as indispensible to this formula.