James Gunn will kick off a new, hopefully much more fruitful, era ofDCmovies this week whenSupermanhits theaters on July 11. Gunn was likely chosen, in part, due to his superhero movie pedigree. However, according to the man himself, Superman is the first superhero movie he has ever directed.
Gunn has been jumping betweenMarveland DC for years, handling theGuardians of the Galaxyfor the former, and until he was brought on board to reboot the DCU alongside Peter Safran in 2022, the second attempt at aSuicide Squadmovie for the latter. Despite having four, what most would consider superhero movies under his belt already, Gunn explained toGamesRadarwhy Superman is actually his first.
Superman will be James Gunn’s first-ever superhero movie, apparently
Don’t listen to him, Drax, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about
“You say I’ve made superhero movies with Marvel, but I really didn’t,” Gunn claims. “Guardians were space adventurers. They really weren’t superheroes. They didn’t have secret identities or masks or costumes.” Perhaps most interesting of all is the last thing Gunn mentions that he believes a superhero needs to officially be dubbed a superhero - superpowers.
The Guardians director notes that Star-Lord and the gang don’t really have superpowers; they just have powers based on where they’re from. Even Groot, who can grow his branches at will to use them as weapons and even completely regenerate himself after being blown apart, technically shares those gifts with the rest of his kind.
Even though Gunn will almost certainly never work with Marvel again, I’m still holding out hope we get to visit Groot’s home planet on the big screen one day.
If a traditional superhero has to check all of those boxes, then that rules out quite a few frontrunners.Batmanhas the mask and the secret identity, but he doesn’t have any powers, he’s just a strong rich guy with fancy gadgets. The same applies to Iron Man who doesn’t even have the secret identity box checked on his superhero qualification application.
All of that being said, I do kind of get where Gunn is coming from. Even though the Guardians and the Suicide Squad have fought alongside superheroes and reside under the Marvel and DC cinematic umbrellas, they’re not stereotypical superheroes. Superman, on the other hand, is about as stereotypical as it gets. While not technically the first-ever superhero, he might as well be, and almost 90 years later, he’s the most famous superhero ever created alongside Batman andSpider-Man. The Guardians of the Galaxy are still superheroes to me, but Superman will be the first traditional superhero movie Gunn has ever directed.
