I think I come in on the side of @Desslock here. Not that I claim Gunn is some kind of rare visionary, I am the wrong person to judge that, but that his effort was indeed far better than it had any right to be.
What stands out to me for directors is things like tone. On a technical level I basically have 3 levels. Brilliant (I’d put Peter Jackson’s LotR work here), competent, and Michael Bay. Very few movies stand out to me on the technical directing level, most are in the great middle. It’s not to say there aren’t differences , I just don’t notice them. Unless they are Michael Bay so shaky I can’t tell what the hell is going-on with the action bad. I hate them for the same reason I love old school Jackie Chan.
But tone is one area where I can feel a director. And it’s one thing Gunn nailed. Guardians were a thing nobody knew, in the mainstream. And, yeah, they had the Marvel success to trail off of, but still. It was the biggest conceptual risk. But the tone of the film perfectly meshed with the actors, the characters, and the story. Captain America: the First Avenger was good, and had the right tone for the material, but if you took that and applied it to Guardians, it would be terrible.
So while Gunn may not be the only right choice, he certainly was a right choice. Taika Waititi would be easily another right choice.
It’s actually a perfect example of the contributions an individual creator can have, even in an organization like Disney, despite you finding the movies pretty dull. I liked the first Guardians more than the 2nd for some of the reasons you mentioned - largely finding the humor and style to have stretched too thin - and far preferred the Guardians characters in Infinity War (which Gunn contributed to, for those characters). But if not for Gunn’s creative talents, we could easily have gotten a misfire like Suicide Squad which, as you said, was let down by its creative process in every way.
Casting is nowhere near as important as the director in a film, ever. A good cast cannot save a creatively flawed movie, and a poor cast can’t ruin an amazingly creative one. Directors like David Lynch seem to actually enjoy working with substandard actors and molding their performances and images into his unique creative visions. The director is really all that matters in a film.
I would recommend anyone to read Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”. Really made me think twice about outrage mobs and Twitter.
I would also wholeheartedly say that the Guardians of the Galaxy movies have been some of my favorite Marvel movies, because they have had a pretty singular creative vision from Gunn, and the excellent cast, and the writing talents of Nicole Perlman. The movies haven’t felt like they were created in the boardroom, like the other Marvel movies. Thor Ragnarok felt this way as well, and that was largely thanks to the freedom given to Taika Waititi.
If they ruin GOTG it will be a shame, and canning Gunn in lightning speed really felt like that boardroom Marvel/Disney working again.
The studio recognized that “Guardians” cast members such as Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana stopped short of threatening to quit the series, but there is widespread belief that the actors will show up for future installments, regardless of their personal feelings about Gunn. For one thing, most are under contract and would face legal action if they opted out of a sequel. Still, the public endorsement of the director was notable for its vociferous support.
t this point, the letter does not seem likely to save his job. Gunn’s firing was approved by Disney Studios chief Alan Horn, with his boss, company CEO Bob Iger weighing in on the final decision. The involvement of the highest levels of Disney signals that the cast pressure to rethink the Gunn ouster will struggle to gain internal support. “I don’t see Disney re-hiring him,” says one person close to the matter. “Those tweets were so horrible and Disney has a different standard then other studios.”
As for replacing Gunn, Disney feels no pressure to immediately find a new director, according to sources, and is willing to wait until the right A-list filmmaker comes along. For one, the studio never gave the film an official release date, even though it was widely expected to hit theaters within the next two years. Depending on how long it takes to land the right director, Disney may in fact wind up pushing back the film’s original February 2019 start date.
Spokespeople for Disney and Marvel declined to comment for this article.
So far, the studio has yet to meet with any Gunn replacements. There have been rumors that Marvel regulars like Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”), Taika Waititi (“Thor: Ragnarok”), or the Russo brothers (“Avengers: Infinity War”) might be enlisted, but sources say that many of the usual suspects are busy with prior obligations. That means that there is a higher likelihood that Disney will reach outside the Marvel family to find a director with the kind of offbeat sensibility to handle the comic-book franchise.
I guess it would come down to the terms of his particular contract. If there is language in there that they could be considered in breach of, he could probably end up walking, and Disney would probably rather do that than have some sort of legal battle.
That would suck too, because Draxx is secretly the best part of the GOTG characters, and Bautista is a really stand-up guy.
It really feels like they made the decision far too quickly. I mean, look at CBS, they got a guy accused of actually harassing women and they are slow-rolling their thoughts and actions. But I guess if you are a CEO you get a pass.
Kinda sorta. I feel like Guardians was fun because of the cast and humor, but the movie itself I thought fairly middling, mostly because of the shoulder-shrugging plot. A movie to me is a symbiosis of a good script, a good director, and a good cast. You can wing one of those elements but when they all come together you get something to remember.
With Marvel, you get executives to add to that list, that will trump the director every time, so in some ways, I give them credit for the consistency and quality of these movies, and how they’ve probably diminished how much the director could make his mark.
edit-- that said, I wish the executives would get out of it. You’d get more highs and lows, but that’s the price you pay for getting unique work that stands out.
Didn’t you do some CGI work on Guardians 2? I wonder if you saw any of that Marvel Studios dynamic at play in how it impacted your job. Did you have a sense of who was directing the vision?
Of course if you can’t, or don’t feel comfortable, answer that’s perfectly fine too!
I came onto the show late to help out and did a lot of the Abelisk performance in the intro, the pink tentacled eye of the beholder thing. I haven’t been on a Marvel shoot yet, so I can’t really speak to the dynamic there, only how it filters down into editorial changes and the like.
Broadly speaking though, things have changed over the years as the stakes have grown. As an animator, you’re looking at your lead, the anim supervisor, the internal vfx supervisor, the client vfx supervisor, and sometimes the editor weighing in and giving notes before the director sees it. His/her notes could be fairly destructive, but at least they were the last word. These days the director is only the gateway to the next step of executives and focus screenings, and then everything can change again. Last couple of shows I’ve been working directly with directors (not Marvel) and the pressures on them are evident, often tailoring decisions as to what will appeal to the executives. And when they don’t, all hell can break loose, I’ve seen that too. So it’s not like they’re always on set making decisions, but it’s clear their mandate is being subconsciously addressed.
But whereas executives understand that shouting over the shoulder of the director onset is wasting thousands of dollars, they love piping in to animation reviews. You hear stories of them in conference calls when we’re presenting things for final, “looks good to me, approv–” “Y’know I’m thinking, it would be funnier if the raccoon shrugged. Make him shrug.” There’s an almost inaudible sigh. “sure, make him shrug.” And add ten days to the schedule.
